Advent – Day 23: Unto Us

Advent – Day 23: Unto Us

Isaiah 9.6 6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. NASB

Like many, I have been shocked, dismayed, and deeply saddened by the events of what has transpired in Newtown, Connecticut. Aside from the recent (historically speaking) shootings that have maddened and saddened our social landscape, this one is particularly troubling in that 20 school children – ages 5 and 6 – were mowed down in a brutal killing that has captured our attention. There are those in our nation who are very sick and need help.

But there have been ‘sickies’ for centuries and as long as man continues to walk upon this earth, the sickies will be alongside us. Sickies are people who have problems and cannot help themselves. They need the rest of us to stop long enough to care about them. If there is one thing a sick person needs, it’s someone to help them in their sickness.

Sickness (in its various forms and functions) is as old as mankind. Sickness is what infected our first parents who chose to ignore God’s command and ate of the fruit of which He forbade to eat. Why? Why God would you create a fruit that was so deadly and so abundant and tell Your first children: don’t eat it? Didn’t You know they’d be tempted? Didn’t You know they’d see it and desire it and do the big nasty? C’mon God! What were You thinking!?

One thing that God has always done is respect man’s free will. We are creatures, despite all of our fallings and failings, who have free will. Why God!? Why did You endow us with choice, preference, and the ability to freely choose what we want? C’mon God! What could You have been thinking!? Didn’t You know we’d abuse it? Didn’t You know we’d try to take advantage of You?

Despite what was originally done (and lost) God – for whatever reason – decided to create a race of beings who would freely love Him. Before mankind there has (to our knowledge) never been another race of beings created in the likeness and image of God and called to love Him freely. Maybe there has been in some universe somewhere but we aren’t aware of it. God created and called us to be His friends: freely.

And so because of that freedom, God has given Himself to us that we may experience the marvel and majesty of all of Who He is and has. Maybe He’ll let us see the outcome of that experience in some other universe somewhere; but in order to do that, we must freely give ourselves to Him. Such is the height of God’s majesty: His grace – and such is the depth of man’s depravity: our sin.

It is for freedom that God has made the effort to set us free. Free to enjoy Him and we’ve not even scratched the surface of all that will be – we won’t even scratch it throughout all eternity. And what holds us in bondage: our freewill because it is marred with sin. Our freewill was smeared with the foulest putrescence the day our parents freely disobeyed God and chose to snub His command. Sinful freewill is what holds us back. And what sets us free is love.

But love must be empowered; love must be genuine; love must be free. Our sin holds our freewill in bondage and in turn our love is held in check by that tainted freewill. So God said, I will empower them to accept My love and to understand my love – then perhaps they will freely chose My love. All God asks of us is to choose Him – freely. Our love cannot be freed without the power to free it; and that power only comes from God and the only way to receive that love is to believe in it – freely. It’s called faith. And faith is found by the one who freely believes that what God has said and done is true.

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9.6) The Son came to pay the price for our sin that we might be set free. The Son came to secure our faith in His Father by giving on our behalf, what we could not give: our lives. The Son met the terms of the Father by living a sinless life and dying a perfect atoning sinless death. Only sinlessness secures a spotless freewill.

Whether he was sick or in sin, the murderer of those innocent children last week’s brutal killing acted freely. His actions only betray what is alive in every human heart – at least in potential. And the only way to stop such potential is with holy freedom to love freely and that only comes from the Son born unto us.

The Son is God: to us, in us and through us. The only way to be free is to freely love Him. Christmas this year is saddened by a mass-murder that might’ve been avoided. But the deep and mournful thought this Christmas is: but for the grace of God, there go I. I need a Son Whose name will be called,Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.