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There’s something that’s easy to lose sight of at Christmas time: the very purpose of Jesus coming into the world, and the gift he gives to us, something Spurgeon reminded me of as I read Christ’s Incarnation recently:
Jesus Christ did not come into the world to help you to forget your sin. He has not come to furnish you with a cloak with which to cover it. He has not appeared that He may so strengthen your minds (as some men would have you believe,) that you may learn to laugh at your iniquities, and defy the consequences thereof. For no such reason has the Son of God descended from Heaven to earth. He has come, not to lull you into a false peace, not to whisper consolation which would turn out to be delusive in the end, but to give you a real deliverance from sin by putting it away, and so to bring you a true peace in which you may safely rejoice.[1. Christ’s Incarnation, 81.]
That is a great gift. Jesus didn’t come to make you a better person, but a new one. He brings true peace, peace everlasting. It began with his incarnation. It continued through his life, death, and resurrection. It continues still as his Spirit resides in us as we wait for his return. And even in the new creation, when his kingdom has come in all its fullness, there will be no end. There will only be the fullness of peace, the peace of Christ, which we receive by faith in the God who entered into the world as a baby.
