Today’s 333 Devotional: “Focus on Christmas’s Purpose”

It’s time to get ready for Christmas, so how do we ready ourselves for this holy day? It all starts by getting our focus back where it belongs, and that is the purpose behind Jesus’s coming.

Our society sees Christmas as a time to give and receive gifts. It’s where we can get a couple of days off work. And it’s a time where people get drunk and party, breaking just about every one of God’s Ten Commandments.

And as we can all guess, this is the furthest thing from what the real purpose of Christmas is all about.

The purpose is to remember that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

Therefore, Christmas is to remember that Jesus left His heavenly estate and came down to earth as a baby for this very purpose, and that is to be one of us so that He could become that perfect sinless sacrifice for our sin so we can have an eternity in God’s presence.

Jesus was born to be the sacrificial Lamb of God.

This was initially promised through Abraham as he was about to offer his son, Isaac. The Lord said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:8)

I really find the wording interesting and revealing. God would provide Himself as the lamb, that is, God would be the Lamb.

And so, Jesus came just as John the Baptist declared, saying, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

Therefore, to focus on the purpose of Christmas is to focus on Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead who came to earth to provide Himself as that sacrificial Lamb in order to die for our sins so that we can have eternal life with Him in heaven.