Love is undoubtedly one of the most confusing words ever coined. Today more than ever. The reason for the confusion is that most don’t really understand it. Is the pinnacle of love the romantic journey leading toward marriage? Or is love just the momentary thrills of sexual pleasure? For some, it is. But the absolute pinnacle of love is found in Christmas.
This brings us to our second most confusing word ever coined – Christmas. Christmas has been so bedecked and bejeweled that its original purpose is often difficult to find. And the problem is that we often confuse results with beginnings. For instance, some may see the Christmas celebrations as being all about family. But family is not the beginning of Christmas; it is a result of Christmas. Others may see Christmas as about giving or receiving gifts. Ah, that’s a bit closer. Christmas, you see, isn’t about what we give to each other but what God gave to us.
The beginning of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. God became flesh. Only through Jesus Christ can we understand the true and absolute pinnacle of love. Jesus taught and modeled love for all to see. For you see, love is all about giving. God loved the world and gave us Jesus (John 3:16). Jesus taught that “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13, NLT) Jesus demonstrated that same love by dying on the cross for us. The Apostle Paul would amplify Christ’s message and explain that God loves us even though we are not worthy of His love. “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (Romans 5:7–8, NLT)
God didn’t do this to prove how good He was. His purposes were two-fold. The first purpose is that we would embrace and receive His love. The blessing of the giver is when a gift is welcomed. The second purpose is that we would likewise give the gift of love to others. Not the romantic kind of love, but God’s kind of love. And that we, as Christ’s followers, would lay down our own lives in some way for the sake of love.
But there is one final piece needed to clear away the confusion. While love is part of our emotional vocabulary, love requires action. Christmas itself is love in action. All that Jesus taught and did is love in action. What Jesus asks of us is love in action to a lost and dying world. That is the meaning of Christmas.
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