Merry Christmas! I pray you have a wonderful Christmas celebration with your family, friends, neighbors, and everyone else God places in your life over these next few weeks. It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior as God’s gift of love, grace, and forgiveness to us.
However, I want to remind everyone today that Jesus was born in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago as God with us (Immanuel – Matthew 1:23) to go to battle for us!
He came to enter a battle for the souls of His people. God foretold of this battle in the first mention of Jesus: Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; he [Jesus] will crush your head, and you [Satan] will strike his heel.” God is speaking directly to Satan in this verse, and God makes it clear…you, Satan, will lose the battle with my Son. He will crush you.
The darkness of sinfulness is evident for every person, but Jesus was born as the light of the world to battle the darkness of sin, death, and the devil to remove the darkness of sin through the gracious forgiveness of sins. Yes, there was and is a battle between light and dark: John 1:5: “The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Once again, it is clear that Satan loses!
So if Satan loses in this battle for our souls, who wins? Of course, God wins as Jesus completed the task of salvation in his death and resurrection. However, do not forget that you and I win too (Luke 19:9). We win the battle over sin, not because of what we’ve done (Ephesians 2:8-9), but because of everything Jesus came to do to grant us forgiveness of our sin and secure our salvation! That is certainly reason to celebrate!!
Merry Christmas!
Julian Petzold, Ph.D.
Executive Director