Christmas arrives each year wrapped in lights, music, shopping lists, and full calendars. It is a season saturated with activity, yet often starved of meaning. We may even go to a church near us to satisfy an expectation. In our festive busyness, we rarely pause to ask the deeper question: Why does Christmas matter at all?
At its core, Christmas confronts the deepest longings of the human heart.
Beneath our traditions and distractions lies a persistent ache for something more than what human hands can accomplish. Humanity has always searched for answers to four fundamental questions: Where did we come from? Why are we here? How should we live? And where are we going? These questions of origin, purpose, morality, and destiny do not disappear with progress or prosperity. Christmas is a divine reminder that only Christ can give the most succinct and meaningful response to all of your questions.
Christmas is God becoming the answer. Christmas is not humanity reaching up toward God, but God stepping down into human history. It is not primarily about sentiment or nostalgia. So if I were to give you my best elevator pitch on Christmas, it is this: “The cross is the reason for Christmas.” It is about God with us, and God for us.
“The Cross Is The Reason For Christmas.”
It Is About God With Us And God For Us.
Let me explain with three words: Help, Humility, and Hope.
Christmas Is About Help
One of the hardest truths for modern people to accept is the need for help. Independence is celebrated, self-sufficiency is admired, and weakness is often hidden. Yet Christmas begins with an honest diagnosis of the human condition. We were in desperate need, and most of us did not even know it.
The Bible names the problem plainly. It calls it sin. Sin is not merely the accumulation of bad habits or moral mistakes. It is a condition of separation from God that affects our thinking, desires, relationships, and choices. It distorts our understanding of where we come from, leaving us confused about our origin. It blurs our sense of purpose, reducing life to survival or success. It fractures morality, making right and wrong negotiable. And it leaves our destiny uncertain.
Human beings instinctively try to fix this on their own. We work harder, try to be better, and search for meaning through achievement, religion, or pleasure. We attempt to create our own spiritual “get out of jail” card. Yet history and personal experience confirm the same reality. Self-salvation does not work.
Christmas Is Not About
Entertainment But Emmanuel.
Christmas reminds us that help had to come from outside of us.
“Emmanuel” means God with us. God did not shout instructions from a distance. He entered our world. Christmas, therefore, is more than shopping, snacking, and socializing. Billions of dollars are spent entertaining ourselves, but Christmas is about divine rescue.
Christmas Is About Humility
If help addresses our need, humility reveals God’s heart. Christmas centers on the incarnation, the astonishing truth that God took on human flesh and lived among us. This is not a minor theological detail. It is a claim without parallel.
Human religions and mythologies often portray gods who appear in human form, but are radically different from the incarnation of Christ at Christmas. Christ came not to destroy His enemies but to love them. Not to eliminate His enemies but to die for them. He is not Superman, who comes to rescue people from some alien threat and then disappears until the next tragedy unfolds.
God comes not to dominate but to dwell and indwell.
The humility of Christmas is staggering. God enters the world as a baby. He is laid in a feeding trough. He grows up in obscurity, works with His hands, and lives within the limits of human experience. Yet He remains holy and sinless. He lives the life humanity failed to live and then dies the death humanity deserved and thus offers forgiveness of God to undeserving mankind.
True forgiveness always requires payment. Justice demands that wrongs be addressed, not ignored. At the cross, God demonstrates that He is both just and loving. The payment is made, but it is made by God Himself.
Jesus summarizes His mission with words that redefine leadership, power, and greatness: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” A God who comes to serve is the ultimate picture of humility. And He serves everyone who will come to Him, even the lowly, downtrodden and broken.
Even the first witnesses of Christmas reinforce this theme. Shepherds, considered ceremonially unclean and socially insignificant, are the first to hear the announcement. Wise men from distant nations later arrive to worship, foreshadowing a global kingdom. Meanwhile, the religious elite will eventually reject Him. Christmas upends human expectations of worth and status.
Christmas Is About Hope
The final word is hope, and it is perhaps the most misunderstood. In everyday language, hope often means uncertainty. We hope things will turn out well, but we brace ourselves for disappointment. Biblical hope is entirely different. It is confidence rooted in promise.
Hope assumes something important. A perfect world would not need hope. Hope exists because something is broken and incomplete. When we say we have hope, we are admitting that this world is not enough and that something better is coming.
Worldly hope is fragile. It depends on circumstances, outcomes, and control. We protect ourselves by saying, “I don’t want to get my hopes up.” Christmas offers a hope that does not disappoint because it is anchored in a person, not a possibility.
Christmas declares that history is not random, suffering is not meaningless, and the future is not uncertain. Because Jesus entered our world, we can trust that God is at work in it and trust the invitation to enter His. Only the One who crossed the finish line can tell us where the finish line is. Christmas points past the cross to His eternal dwelling as the finish line.
Looking backward, we see evidence of that hope in transformed lives. John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, captured this reality with humility and gratitude.
“I am not what I might be,
I am not what I ought to be,
I am not what I wish to be,
I am not what I hope to be;
but I thank God I am not what I once was…
By the grace of God I am what I am.”
That is the quiet, steady work of Christmas hope.
Christmas Raises An Important Question.
If humanity was so broken, why did God choose to redeem rather than reset? Why not start over?
Love provides the answer. From a purely economic perspective, replacement is cheaper than restoration. If something is broken beyond repair, discarding it seems logical. But love does not operate on efficiency. Love absorbs cost. Love sacrifices. Love redeems.
When Scripture declares that God is love, it means He acts for our good rather than our destruction. Redemption brings Him glory. Christmas must be seen through this lens. God did not abandon humanity. He entered its brokenness to save it.
If Christmas could be summed up in one word, it would be love. Not sentimental or shallow love, but sacrificial, selfless, extravagant love.
A love that understands pain and enters it.
Lisa Harper in her book, Perfect Mess, explains Ps 139:5-8, “…if I make my bed in Sheol…” with a personal story. Her parents had divorced when she was young, and like many children, she quietly assumed the blame was hers. One evening, overwhelmed by grief she could not name or manage, she hid beneath her covers and wept. When she failed to come downstairs for dinner, her mother came looking for her. Seeing her daughter in tears, she did not offer explanations or advice. She simply slipped under the covers and shared the silence. That unspoken presence brought more comfort than words ever could.
Sometimes God feels silent. But Christmas assures us that He is not absent. If we make our bed in the depths, He is there. Emmanuel. God with us.
That is why Christmas is not ultimately about presents, but about His presence. The presence of God among His people.
That Is Why Christmas Is Not Ultimately
About Presents, But About His Presence.
Christmas answers our deepest questions.
Our origin is not accidental, but intentional.
Our purpose is not self-created, but God-given.
Our morality is not negotiable, but rooted in God’s character.
Our destiny is not uncertain, but secured in Christ.
This is what Christmas is. And it is far more than what it is not.
Have a meaningful Christmas this year. Amen!
