Come, Let Us Adore Him: An Advent Reading Plan by Paul David TrippSample

The incarnation of Jesus Christ pointedly preaches our inescapable need for radical, personal, and moral rescue and forgiveness. 

It is humbling to accept that God came, in the person of Jesus, to live the way that we were created to live, but would never live, to die the death that each one of us deserves to die,
and to rise out of the tomb, defeating sin and death because there was simply no other way. We had no power whatsoever to help ourselves out of our desperate state. 

God knew that something lurks inside all of us that twists every thought, that diverts every desire, that shapes the direction of every choice, and that controls every word and action. And he knew that because this thing was inside us and not outside us, we would never be able to conquer it on our own. For all the beauty of his law, he knew the law could expose us, it could guide us, and it could indict us, but it would never be able to rescue us. So the only hope for messed up and desperate people like us was the sending of the ultimate rescuer, his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Confessing our brokenness is the only way we will ever fully understand and celebrate the
birth of the Messiah, Jesus. Because of sin we exist in a from-birth state of separation from God, for whose glory we were created and in whose fellowship we were meant to live.

Sin also places us under his judgment. Because we have rebelled against him and demanded our own way, we have again and again broken his law. Sin leaves us hopeless. The apostle Paul describes our lives apart from the amazing grace of the birth of Jesus as “having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

The beautiful news of the Christmas season is that God wasn’t willing to leave us in this tragic and desperate state. At Christmas we celebrate a God who is glorious in his abundant love and patient mercy. The glory of the birth of Jesus becomes even more glorious when it is seen through the humbling lens of the desperate condition that was the reason for his coming. Accept the very bad news of Christmas today, so that you can celebrate even more joyfully it's wonderfully good news.