A church where key Christmas truths will be emphasized sits quaintly in the snow.

Key Truths to Emphasize During Christmastime

The Christmas season represents an opportunity for pastors to teach on and emphasize a wide range of important doctrines. In the birth and infancy narratives as well as Scripture’s subsequent reflection on their meanings, we see a number of truths that are essential to the gospel message that we believe and preach. As you think through Christmas at your church, here are five doctrines (though there are certainly many more) that you might want to touch upon:

Born Without Sin

The conception of the Lord Jesus “of the Holy Spirit” means that he is born without Adam’s corrupt sin nature. In Luke 1:35, the angel Gabriel responds to Mary’s question (“How will this be, since I am a virgin?”) by telling her that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The result is that “the child to be born will be called holy.” When Adam sinned, he doomed his descendants not merely to committing discrete acts of sin, but to a nature infected by sinfulness (Romans 5:12). But through the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary’s child was not born into the catastrophic spiritual lineage of Adam—instead, he is holy.

For Jesus to save us, he had to be born free from our first father’s pollution; in the words of Peter, he is like a “lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19). This freedom from Adam’s corruption is on display in the temptation narrative (Luke 4:1-13), as the temptations of the evil one find no welcome, no place to tether into Jesus’ soul. If he had been born into Adam’s guilt, then his death would have been the just sentence for his sin.

But since he had no sin of his own for which to pay, he could bear and put away the sin of his people on the cross. And because he was perfectly obedient to his heavenly Father throughout his life, he has a righteousness of his own to give us in exchange for our sin. As the apostle Paul wrote: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Fully Divine, Fully Human

The conception of the Lord Jesus “of the Holy Spirit” and his birth “of the Virgin Mary” (to use the language of the Apostles’ Creed) means that he is fully divine and fully human, and thus a suitable savior. We are touching on a great mystery here, but it is clear that the involvement of both Mary and the Holy Spirit in the conception of Jesus results in his having both a divine and a human nature. He is the son of David and Abraham (Matthew 1:1) and also the Son of God (Luke 1:35). This hypostatic union (not a phrase I’d be likely to use with my congregation—but certainly a concept they need to understand) is perhaps best formulated by the Athanasian Creed:

He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time; and he is human from the essence of his mother, born in time; completely God, completely human, with a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity. Although he is God and human, yet Christ is not two, but one. He is one, however, not by his divinity being turned into flesh, but by God’s taking humanity to himself. He is one, certainly not by the blending of his essence, but by the unity of his person. For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh, so too the one Christ is both God and human. While there is much that we don’t understand about the dual natures of Christ, it is a truth that we cannot live without.

The gospel hinges on this truth, for if Christ is not fully divine, he would lack the infinite power and worth needed to bear and atone for our infinite guilt. And if he is not fully human, sharing in our nature, he would be unable to obey in our place, die in our place, and rise from the dead in our place.

The Foolish Way of Salvation

The circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth are consistent with God’s “foolish” way of salvation. The manner of Jesus’ birth hints at the nature of his ministry and salvation; very little will be done the way we would expect. When God’s counter-intuitive salvation arrives, with its blessing for the meek and mourning, it comes in a manner that defies earthly categories of power and glory. Born in the time of the great Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1), the King sent by God was born to a poor family in an obscure town—in a manger no less!

It turns out that God would save his people, not by displays of power and glory, but by the humility, weakness, suffering, and sacrifice of the Messiah. The glorious Son of Man came not to be served (as we would expect), but to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). This “foolish” way of doing things was God’s judgment of the pretensions of human “wisdom,” with its love of strength and honor (1 Corinthians 1:20-21). Christians are required to follow the Lord on this road to death if we would see glory (John 12:24-26). These surprising themes are all woven into the Christmas narrative.

The Father’s Love

The birth of Jesus has its origin in the love of God the Father. There are ways of teaching the Bible that give the impression that God the Father is full of wrath and justice, while God the Son is gentle and tender. Besides pitting the persons of the Trinity against each other (never a good idea), this error robs believers of the joy of living in light of the Father’s great love for them. In addition, such an idea does not do justice to the many Scriptures that teach us that the Son was sent to save us by our loving heavenly Father. Two passages make this particularly clear (and would thus be wonderful for our congregations to meditate upon at Christmastime):

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (1 John 4:14)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

We Need to Be Saved

The birth of Jesus shows that human beings need to be saved. Our world has an uncomfortable relationship with the concept of sin. We see it clearly in others—those with different political or cultural positions than ours. But we are often slow to recognize that we are also guilty before God and in need of salvation. The Christmas narrative, however, reminds us that we are not the hero of the story; we are the ones in need of rescue. The infant Jesus is God’s salvation (Luke 2:30), but his is not primarily a deliverance from political oppression or the personal problems that plague us. Instead, “he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21) and he appeared “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

All of this shows us the truth that our greatest problem is our sin. God did not send his Son to be an economist or a general or a politician; he sent Jesus to reveal his character (John 14:9) and to make atonement for our sins (Romans 3:23-25). That is a good indication that the greatest threat to our eternal joy does not exist in the realm of finances or government but in the corruption of our hearts. At Christmas, we have the joy of reminding our churches that God sent his Son to make a way for us to have eternal life.

©2023 Michael McKinley. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

About The Author

Michael McKinley
Michael McKinley

Mike McKinley is the Lead Pastor at Sterling Park Baptist Church, near Washington, DC. In addition to his pastoral duties, Miked has authored roughly a dozen books.

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