The Cross of Christmas

As we prepare our hearts to celebrate Jesus’s birth on Christmas day, 25th December, (the real reason for the season), have you ever wondered why God had to send Jesus to earth to be born as a baby? 

Although the Nativity story is found in the Gospel books of Mathew and Luke, having recently studied the book of Hebrews, I was amazed to come across many verses pertaining to why Jesus was born. 

So, I thought I’d share them with you as you ponder and reflect on the celebration of the birth of our King and Savior, Jesus Christ…

1. Jesus was born so that He could become the son of God that would make us His children and God our Heavenly Father - Hebrews 1:5; 5:5
2. Jesus was born as a human of flesh and blood so that He would no longer be immortal but would be able to die so that His blood could be poured out for us. - Hebrews 2: 14
3. Jesus needed to be born, so He could die in order to destroy the devil through His death- Hebrews 2:14
4. Jesus needed to die to deliver and free us from sin and break the power of death and the devil - Hebrews 2:15
5. Jesus was born so He could become human like us and know how it feels to be tempted and suffer - Hebrews 2:18
6. Jesus was born to become the guarantee and mediator of a new covenant between ourselves and God - Hebrews 7:22; 8:6; 9:15
7. Jesus was born so He could have a body that could be sacrificed like an unblemished Lamb for our sins- Hebrews 10:5

When you add the Cross to Christmas, it gives meaning to the purpose of Jesus’s birth. Our wreaths of holly and berries symbolize a wreath for His death and represent the crown of thorns He had to wear and the berries, the drops of blood that dripped from His brow. 

The Christmas lights represent the light that Jesus brings to the darkness of the world, to our own darkness and how we should be reflecting His light to others. Whether you have a star or an Angel on top of your Christmas tree, both are symbols of God’s glory that ushered in the announcement of Jesus’s birth.  

The very tree represents the wood that was cut up to become the cross. The ornaments we put on our trees can represent things we should nail to the tree or they can also represent our blessings and inherited gifts we have through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

Christmas offers us the hope of eternity in Heaven. The Old Testament’s sacrifices were just a parole but with the New Testament and Covenant, we are given a full pardon. Yes, the devil may still seem active in our lives, but he is like a dog that has been chained up to the stake of the Cross.  He can growl and bark, but he can no longer harm us, as long as we stay out of his reach. 

Christmas is God reaching out to us.  It is the celebration of His incarnation that He is Emmanuel and is always with us. It should not just be a holiday tradition, but become our response to God for sending Jesus to restore our relationship with Him.

Wishing you all a Blessed and meaningful Christmas!

Much love, 

Samantha

The Passover Blood of the Cross

The Church I belong to (Life Changer’s – Century City) has been studying the Exodus story in their series ‘Move Again’, and I’ve come to see how the final plague of the Passover night was a foreshadow of Jesus on the Cross at the time we celebrate as Easter.

The Passover is a beautiful illustration of the gospel. It’s a story of redemption and deliverance from bondage. It’s a story of faith in the grace of God and it’s a story of victory. The tenth plague was God’s wrath on sin, idolatry, pride, false religion, cruelty, and so much more. The Angel of death would sweep through the land of Egypt and lay waste in one of the most heart-wrenching ways of killing every first-born. But, as always, God made a way.

God instructed Moses for the people to put the blood of a sacrificed, innocent lamb upon their doorposts, which would rescue and save them from death. When the angel of death saw the blood covering the doorposts, he passed over them, sparing them from death. However, it was not the blood itself that protected them, but what the blood represented, as a sign of a covenant.

When you think of the action of those people who painted their doorposts with the blood from a basin, using the leaves from a branch of a hyssop tree, they were performing the sign of a cross. The blood from the top crossbeam would have dripped down the center, and painting the blood from the left -side post to the right-side post, would have completed the sign of the cross.

In the Old Testament, blood was used to seal covenants and to create an inseparable bond of relationship, a blood link between two parties. The sacrificing of an animal without blemish and the sprinkling of its blood was also used to consecrate, to purify and to atone for the sins of the people.

The night of the Passover gives us a picture of what Jesus did when He shed His innocent blood to save us from our sin and give us eternal life. It is Jesus’s blood that covers our sins, like it did on those doorposts, so that when God looks at those who believe and have placed their faith in Jesus, He sees His child because of our precious blood covering and passes over us, sparing us from the penalty of our sin and giving us eternal life.

Jesus hung on crossbeams and bled for all of us. His blood covers anyone who surrenders to put their faith in Him. We don’t have to be innocent or perfect, because Jesus was on our behalf. Those rescued from Egypt were imperfect people, and so are we and just like those who God rescued from Egypt, we have to follow Him out of slavery. God didn’t deliver Israel so they could stay put in bondage.

Jesus came to sacrifice His life to rescue and save ours. He was perfect, without sin, and through His sacrifice, He offers deliverance from the power of sin in our lives. Jesus was our Passover Lamb.

When we plead the blood of Jesus over our lives or over our situations, we are not doing a ‘Harry Potter’ like incantation of breaking a curse, but we are acknowledging and standing on the promises of the power of what His blood signifies, and celebrating our inheritance of what His blood has given us.

So as you partake of Communion this Easter, consider this verse:-

1 Corinthians 10: 16-18 “The cup of blessing that we bless—isn’t it a sharing of Christ’s blood? The bread which we break—isn’t it a sharing of Christ’s body? 17 Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body—for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider physical Israel. Those who eat the sacrifices—aren’t they partners in the altar?

 Wishing you and your family a blessed, holy and meaningful Easter!