I’ve spent nearly 8 weeks post-surgery and focused in physical therapy. I can see light at the end of the tunnel just in time for Christmas carols, light festivals and all the contradictions of the season.

Ran into a woman in Whole Foods this afternoon who was wearing a bright red sweater emblazoned with a proclamation that reminded me many people have zero idea what Christmas is really all about.

The sweater read: “Santa, baby!”

Cute, but Nope!

Christmas is about “Jesus, the baby!” God made flesh. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Every human being living and yet to be born was dead in trespasses and sins with no way to help ourselves. Without divine intervention, we were toast!

“All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on Him the sins of us all.” Isaiah 53:6

Jesus became our sinless substitute. He is the One who willingly paid the death penalty for our sin, dying in our place so that we may live.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Christmas celebrates the arrival of a completely undeserved Gift. Everything else is a distraction.

Only in Christ are we delivered from sin. Notice that I did not say “sins.”

Sins are the outward manifestation of our inward condition apart from Christ. Through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, our original ancestors, every human being is separated from God by a sin nature that loves darkness rather than light. Sins simply reveal who we are on the inside. Sinners sin. And our pay for sin is death.

Christ is our only hope. In Him, we are made new.

No one will go to hell for being homosexual or trans, for having an abortion or for being a glutton or a liar, for that matter. It’s popular to pick a sin that we don’t like and to tell people who engage in it that this will send them to hell. That is simply not true.

What sends people to hell is rejecting Jesus whom God provided as our redeemer. Hell was never intended for people, by the way. The everlasting fires of hell were “prepared for the devil and his angels.” Being deceived into following the devil instead of Christ is what leads to hell.

I hope we all enjoy this Christmas. More importantly, I hope we don’t miss the whole point. Santa can’t save us. And neither can whatever gadget or trinket we’ll collect as a gift.

Jesus is the ultimate gift of Christmas. One writer describes Jesus as “a gift of divine grace to sinners.” He came to forgive sin and to reconnect us to the God who made us. Jesus is no longer a baby. He is the risen Savior who one day will come to claim His own, to judge the living and the dead and to rule as King eternal.

To those who receive Him as Savior, He is Emmanuel – God with us. With us through every situation and circumstance we will ever face both here and hereafter.

Receive the gift of “Jesus, baby!” The Gift that keeps on giving.