Great Christmas Rescue

The happiest person is not someone who received a wonderful present on Christmas Day, but someone who after days in an open boat, or after hours in a crippled airplane, or after minutes in a burning building, is RESCUED!

We are thrilled when we read the rescue of miners or mountain climbers or a child who has fallen deep into a well. What irony when a soldier risks his life to save a buddy, only to have this buddy refuse help, claiming that he can solve his own problem. And then he dies!

The greatest rescue operation of all time began on the first Christmas Day, yet many of us refuse to be rescued! We are confident that we can solve our own problems. We deny that we are in danger.

But man's danger is fantastically great:

• the 'ordinary' dangers of sickness, accident, war, poverty, and death
• striving for the wrong goals in life
• misplaced self-confidence and uawareness of the spiritual world
• the lack of realization that he is destined to live forever - in unspeakable sorrow or in unspeakable joy.

In fact, man's danger is so great that the infinite God had to become man in order to rescue man. No one else could have done it! God became man in the person of the baby Jesus. That is why Christmas is so important.

You see, man has sinned. Now sin is not some minor weakness that can be cured by a few good intentions, or a few good works, or even a few prayers and other religious activities. No, our sin is a rebellion against God; a selling of ourselves to the devil; a total pollution of our wills and minds and souls.

The only rescue from this pit of degradation is by someone taking the punishment due us and also having the power to clean up our innermost being.

This someone is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the sinless Son of God, and only He can bear the infinite anger of God against all sin. Jesus sends His Spirit into the lives of all who come to Him to cleanse them from every impurity.

The proof of God's amazing love is this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. No condemnation now hangs over the head of those who are 'in' Christ Jesus. For the new spiritual principle of life 'in' Christ Jesus lifts me out of the old vicious circle of sin and death.

This rescue however must be accepted. We must confess our sin, ask for God's forgiveness, and accept the only way of salvation: faith in Jesus Christ.

If we freely admit that we have sinned, we find God utterly reliable and straight forward - He forgives our sins and makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil.

For God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him should not be lost, but should have eternal life.

What a wonderful salvation from a horrible condition! This is why we can now rejoice and celebrate Merry Christmas with joy and thanksgiving!

Adapted from tract by Faith, Prayer & Tract League, Grand Rapids, Michigan