This morning, shortly before sitting down to write this, I read that a critical care nurse in New York named Sandra Lindsay became one of the first outside of clinical trials to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. It struck me that a life-saving vaccine arriving just in time for Christmas is a great metaphor for Advent and the birth of Jesus.
The deadliest “infection” since Adam has been sin.
“Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses…” (Romans 5:12–14)
Unlike COVID-19, all mankind is infected by sin from birth. It has spread to each and every one of us born in the line of Adam. The story of the Old Testament is in one sense, the long wait for a cure. As we sing in the carol:
Long lay the world in sin and error pining…
And if there’s one thing God’s law has made perfectly clear to us is that “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.” The law commands us and condemns us as law breakers, but it can never remove that condemnation because sin’s infection runs deep, leaving us weak and powerless. We are desperate for a cure that we could never have provided for ourselves.
But the good news of Christmas is that God has provided that cure. It has already arrived in the birth of Jesus.
“God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4)
The most amazing gift arrived in the form of an infant wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger. Through weakness, God has done what we have all been weak and powerless to do for ourselves.
Join us this Sunday. Come and see what God has done. Kenny Clark will be preaching from Romans 8:1-4 and Luke 2:11-12 and Jeffrey Hubbard is back in town for the holidays and will be leading us in sung worship. Would you pray for each as we prepare? And would you pray that some of the many visitors we had at our Tree Lighting event would return this Sunday to consider the true message of Christmas?
See you Sunday, Grace. Come hungry!
Song Link of the Week
Noel by Chris Tomlin feat. Lauren Daigle
Son of God and Son of man
There before the world began
Born to suffer, born to save
Born to raise us from the grave
Christ the everlasting Lord
He shall reign forevermore
Noel, Noel
Come and see what God has done
Noel, Noel
The story of amazing love!
The light of the world, given for us
Noel