The Promises of Christmas (Week 5)
Happy New Year!
“The Promise of God Making All Things New!”
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 & Revelation 21:1-8 (NAS95)
In Luke 1:30-33, a messenger from Heaven announced a kingdom that will have no end:
The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”
This will be the kingdom of the Messiah and the angel is referencing the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 9:6-7:
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of these promises of Christmas during some of the darkest days of world history when a tyrannical empire was attempting to destroy all that was good upon the earth:
The authority of this poor child will grow (Isa. 9:7). It will encompass all the earth, and knowingly or unknowingly, all human generations until the end of the ages will have to serve it. It will be an authority over the hearts of people, but thrones and great kingdoms will also grow strong or fall apart with this power. The mysterious, invisible authority of the divine child over human hearts is more solidly grounded than the visible and resplendent power of earthly rulers. Ultimately all authority on earth must serve only the authority of Jesus Christ over humankind. With the birth of Jesus, the great kingdom of peace has begun. Is it not a miracle that where Jesus has really become Lord over people, peace reigns? That there is one Christendom on the whole earth, in which there is peace in the midst of the world? Only where Jesus is not allowed to reign—where human stubbornness, defiance, hate, and avarice are allowed to live on unbroken—can there be no peace. Jesus does not want to set up his kingdom of peace by force, but where people willingly submit themselves to him and let him rule over them, he will give them his wonderful peace.[1]
“every knee shall bow… and every tongue confess…” .
Through Christmas, God promises to make all things new, but as Bonhoeffer noted, this something new actively opposes the old order of things—diametrically opposed to human stubbornness, defiance, hate, and avarice, which is greed and covetousness. This new thing that God promises will require each person to choose for themselves if they want Jesus’ kingdom of peace to be birthed in them.
One of the great promises of Christmas is that Jesus came to bring something new to the world—in us and then through us. Listen to Paul explain this in 2 Corinthians 5:14-21,
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. [emphasis added] Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
This morning, as we prepare to enter into the New Year of 2021, I invite you to find your peace, hope, love, and joy by becoming a new creation in Christ Jesus and then learning to live in union with Him as a new creation. No longer entrust your peace or hope, your love or joy in the counterfeit promises of the world. After the chaos and emptiness of 2020, do not expect anything but Jesus to bring order to and fill 2021. If there is anything we should have learned in 2020 is that there is only One who can give us peace and hope.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
To be born again means we must be converted, through faith and repentance, into something different than we were—born into something new, something other than we were. Paul teaches us in Titus 3:3-7,
For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life (cf. Ephesians 2:1-10).
It is good news to know that we can have a new beginning when we come to Jesus Christ and are filled with His Holy Spirit—the presence of God in us, eternal life, here and now. Being born again is just the beginning of this new life, which is eternal life—Jesus Christ is the “doorway to all the promises and blessings of God.”[2] We are now called to live in them as citizens of a new kingdom. We are to repent and believe.
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Jesus ushered in something new—the fulfillment of God’s promises. Paul explained Jesus’ words in Galatians 4:4-7,
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
Jesus knew that His coming, the first Christmas, was the ushering in of the fullness of time when the Old Covenant would be fulfilled with the institution of the New Covenant between God and humanity.
“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (cf. Jeremiah 31:33–34; Ezekiel 11:19–20; 18:31–32).
“I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Acts 3:18-21 recorded this as the message of the early New Testament church:
“But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time (cf. Acts 10:38-44).
“If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.”
It is God on His throne in Heaven who has given us these magnificent and precious promises of His fulfilled kingdom in Revelation 21:3-8:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Footnotes:
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, ed. Jana Riess, trans. O. C. Dean Jr., First edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 68.