Christmas: A Perfect Portrayal Of God's Love & Sacrifice

Christians commemorate three major historical events surrounding the Lord Jesus: Christmas (birth), Good Friday (death) and Easter (resurrection). Although Jesus is the central figure, God's love and sacrifice is the common denominator of these three events.

But Christians often tend to overlook God's love and sacrifice while celebrating Christmas. The reason behind Christ's birth - Christ was born to die, so to save mankind from their sins - is usually the chief focus during Christmas celebrations.

God's Love Led To Christ's Birth Christ was born because of God's love for mankind. For God so loved the world that HE initiated and fulfilled the program of salvation through Christ - to save man from sins. Since love gains perfection with sacrifice, God sent the second person of the blessed Trinity, the Lord Jesus, to die, resurrect and ascend into heaven (thereby those who believe in Christ would be saved from their sins).

God's love for mankind could be best remembered and accentuated if we consider the Historic Christian doctrine of salvation in comparison with the competing doctrines. God's love for mankind is best displayed in the doctrine of salvation of the Historic Christian worldview.

The competing doctrines of salvation fail to display God's love for mankind. God can only be a loving being. If any doctrine portrays God as not a loving being, then that doctrine cannot be true.

For instance, God cannot be a loving being, if he mandates man to do good works to attain salvation. Similarly, God cannot be a loving being, if HE would eventually save all of mankind, irrespective of their belief or disbelief in HIM.

Salvation By Works: Cannot Be A Loving God's Salvific Program It is well within God's perfect and infinite knowledge and power to devise other means of salvation (other than the death of Christ on the cross of Calvary) to save man from his sins. For instance, God could have mandated man to do good works to be saved.

But God would have passed the buck to man had HE mandated man to do good works to attain salvation. God, who creates man, should own the sole or the primary responsibility to save the man. But if God's mandate was for man to do good works to be saved, the responsibility of being saved would have shifted from the domain of God to the domain of man.

Only an unloving and an unjust God could have executed the salvific program of the man doing good works to be saved. No one is perfect in doing good works, for we can never be immune to sin or imperfections. Man is always prone to sin. Hence, doing good works to utter perfection is impossible for man. Every good deed that we perform will always be tarnished by our bad deeds.

But an argument predicated on the grading system in pedagogy could be posited. God could save man based on his performance of doing good works in life. In other words, those who 'Fail' in God's salvific scrutiny would not be saved, whereas those who 'Pass' (by exceeding God's expectations) would be saved.

Even then, had God instituted a plan of salvation-by-works, HE could be blamed endlessly. Had God not created man with an innate inclination towards imperfection, it may be plausible to not blame God. But man is not perfect; he has a natural propensity to imperfection (sin). Hence God could be blamed. Every good work that man performs could be questioned and every good work could be improved upon.

This problem is compounded by the fact that God does not create people uniformly (physical, mental, emotional etc.). For instance, not all people are created with the same IQ.

In order to be saved, the man ought to adequately comprehend God's plan for salvation so that he can consistently perform good works. But a man with an average or a low IQ would naturally struggle to assimilate God and HIS plan to save him, thereby this man can come up short while performing good deeds. If this is the case, how could God not be blamed, for man is HIS creation?