Merry Christmas

From Knowing God by J. I. Packer

He Became Poor

We now see what it meant for the Son of God to empty Himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony - spiritual even more than physical - that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. (See Luke 12:50 and the Gethsemane story) It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through His poverty might become rich. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.