Christmas is All About Easter

The title of this article may seem a little confusing. After all, why combine or confuse two distinct holidays? Granted, Christmas and Easter are similar in that they are both religious holidays and that it could be said of both that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”. But isn’t it really too much to say that Christmas is all about Easter? I would submit to you that it isn’t too much to say that. In fact, just as it is obvious that Easter would not be possible without Christmas, it is just as true that Christmas would have no meaning without Easter. Let me explain.
Now, in writing this, I am not denying that Christmas has a wonderful quality all its own, without regard to other holidays. What could be more miraculous and breathtaking than the Christmas story? We rightly celebrate, with awe-filled hearts, the fact that God became man and dwelt among us, that He left His throne in heaven to become a human, vulnerable to all the flaws, weaknesses, and sorrows (yet without sin) that we all experience. And not only did God become man, but He first became a helpless baby, born to the most humble of families, in the most humble of circumstances, in a stable of all places and not a palace (the greatest of which in this entire world would have been an unimaginable act of self-humiliation for the Almighty Creator of the universe!).
There are even more amazing Christmas miracles – the birth of the Son of God from the womb of a virgin (thus avoiding Adam’s sin-filled lineage), the star that stood over Bethlehem, the angels who appeared bearing the wonderful news to, of all the people in the world, a few lowly shepherds in Israel. That the Almighty would choose to dwell among men as one of them is perhaps the most wonderful story of all!
I say “perhaps”, because there is an even more wonderful story than that. There must be, if Christmas is to have any meaning. Of course, if the Christmas story ended right at this point, it would be enough. We humans, undeserving of God’s very attention, would be forced to humbly bow at God’s mighty act of self-revelation to the world. But what purpose would that ultimately serve? Would it have changed anything?
No, it wouldn’t have. You see, we still would have been lost in our sins, even though Jesus grew to be a mighty Worker of miracles and a great Teacher of the truth. The reason is that we are unable to please God in our sinful condition, and as such deserve His just punishment, which is death (Romans 6:23). If Jesus, God in the flesh, only came to make an awesome but brief appearance on earth, we would all still have been doomed.
But Jesus didn’t come just to be a mighty Worker of Miracles and a great Teacher of the truth. The jarring reality of the situation is that that baby in the manger came to die – and not just because death is a common human destiny. Jesus Himself said of His life, “No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18).
Jesus’ very purpose on this earth was to die, not for Himself, but for you and me. If we are to be saved from our sin that separates us from a right relationship with God, we must have a Savior. We cannot save ourselves, but neither can God gloss over our sin and let us into His kingdom anyway. Our sin has to be paid for, and God was not content to simply see us pay for it – and so He sent His Son to pay for it. He did so by dying a cruel, violent death by execution on a Roman cross – not for anything wrong that He had done, but for everything wrong that you and I have ever done. Jesus became our Substitute, and all the wrath the God should have poured out on us He instead poured out on His only Son. Thus our sin was transferred to Jesus’ account so that His perfect righteousness could be transferred to the account of those who trust in Him.
And so you might say, “Ah, I see – then Christmas is all about Good Friday, not Easter.” However, even that is not entirely true. You see, in light of Jesus’ many remarkable claims – that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life; that He is able to give eternal life to as many as believe on Him; and that He would rise again the third day after His death, just to name three – His death cannot be the end of the story, for that would make Him a liar, and His death (though pitifully unjust) just another death like all the other ones. It would prove that Jesus was just another person – and also, most horribly, that we are still doomed in our sins.
But that was NOT the end of the story, for three days later, Jesus rose from the dead! And this is the Event of all events, the one we celebrate every year on Easter (and hopefully every other day as well!). The Resurrection of Jesus proved that God accepted the sacrifice of His Son on behalf of sinful man and validated Jesus’ life and ministry, all the remarkable claims He made, and the statement He made just before He died – “It is finished! – which signified that His redemptive work was complete, and not to be added to or subtracted from.
This is why Christmas is all about Easter. On Christmas we celebrate the great Coming of the Savior of the world. But it is a Coming that derives its very meaning from what happened three decades or so after that lowly birth – the death and resurrection of Jesus. Easter is what makes Christmas worth celebrating and saves it from being a story full of miraculous wonder that nonetheless rings hollow and falls short of ultimate meaning in the end. Praise God that He came to earth as a baby and grew up to pay for yours and my sin!
Even so, that is not where the story ends – or at least, it is not where it has to end. Jesus bids all of us who hear His words – and you are reading of them even now – to come to Him in faith, to realize that our sin has hopelessly cut us off from our Creator, and to place all of our hope and trust in the finished work that He accomplished for our salvation. This is the only way to a right relationship with God and to eternal life with Him.
Jesus is bidding you to come to Him even now, but at the same time He forces no one to come to Him. You must make a decision to trust what the Lord has done for you, and I pray you would do so now, and not waste a minute. After all, as it is written in the book of James, our life is but a vapor, and we do not know what will be tomorrow. We all have a meeting with death someday, and after this comes a meeting with Almighty God, who will be our Judge. He will judge us on the basis of what we have done with His Son – did we trust in Him alone for our salvation, or did we count His death and resurrection as worthless when it comes to our eternal destiny? We must make that choice now, because then it will be too late. And don’t forget – the One that came as a baby 2,000 years ago will one day come again to this earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Will you be ready?