Matthew 1:21
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Mary, a young woman, probably around 14-16 years old, becomes pregnant without ever having sex. She had been visited by an angel of God (Luke 1:26-38) telling her that she would be the mother of God incarnate (God in flesh). She was told that she would serve a great purpose for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom. She was destined by God to be the mother of His Son, the savior of the world. However I will address this in more detail in Luke. I want to focus on the second half of this passage stating that He (Jesus) would save His people from their sins. Immediately as I read this, I asked myself, “have I completely accepted this freedom from my sin? Have I turned from it and given it all over to Him and taken that passion that I had for sin and turned it into passion for Him? Have I given it up?” I think that these questions need to be asked in our lives frequently, especially for our generation. Our world raises us up to be impulsive, passionate, and ill-informed people. We give into our desires the second that they arise often. We get hungry and immediately search for a fast food joint. We want something and we seek how we can get it and the faster the better. We have the ability to find any information we want, but don’t access hardly any of it. Our greatest master has become our misplaced passion. We have a desire for Facebook, for food, for drink, for meaning, for acceptance, for ignorance of who we are at times, for love, for intimacy, for money, for maintaining a busy lifestyle. However, most of these are not inherently wrong. Facebook can be a great tool for Christians to spread the word of God and to be representatives of Him, however when we take time away from devotions and prayer in order to check our statuses and Facebook stalk people is when it becomes an idol. Nothing is wrong with being physically hungry, nor is there anything wrong with eating, but do we do it for God’s glory first of all, and has our hunger for physical food brought us more pain than our spiritual hunger that we continually ignore? We seek meaning, but where better to find meaning than the One who made us with a purpose? Why would a pencil ask another item that has no idea what it is, what the pencil’s purpose is? We do the same thing. We seek meaning from people that often don’t even know their own meaning in life. God created us with a purpose that we are to live out, but do we are we willing to give ourselves up in order to find it in Him? The list for these things goes on, but the purpose of it all is to say “what do you live for more, God or anyone or anything else?” If you live for God, you will cling to the freedom from sin because you will be freed from sin. I could not imagine what God’s reaction to people will be that rejected Him but I know He will be frank with them. I can picture that He will look at them in the eyes and say that He gave His beloved son for them, but to them, that was not good enough and now they should depart from Him. That would be devastating to hear. I pray no one reading this hears that in the final day. I pray that none of us hear that we did not seek to embrace the forgiveness that God made avail to us because we were unwilling to give up our sin. A lightbulb cannot be partly darkness and partly lit (yes, I know there are dimmers, but a basic switch is my reference here) it is either lit or not. Which are you? We are called to be a light on a hill, demonstrating God and His love to the world (Matt 6:14). It starts with embracing His forgiveness.
May we take off our clothes of sinfulness and evil and heinous acts towards God and replace them with His grace each and every day. May we take our plans and wills and lay them aside for His. May we be His people.
-Ryan
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