Today’s Christmas Devotion

December 10, 2024

Bible Reading: Isaiah 9:4-5, Romans 6:6-7 & Romans 5:1 

Two other accompanying consequences to the Prophet Isaiah’s predicted coming Light were freedom and peace. How especially welcomed both would be in Galilee, a land long subjected to its enemies and often ravaged by war. 

The freedom predicted would prove to be liberation from the world’s most cruel taskmaster—sin. Though the Jews mistook it for the breaking of the yoke of the Gentiles, in particularly the yoke of the Romans during the days of Christ, the Light of the World would actually come to liberate men from sin.

Christ came to liberate us from both the penalty and power of sin. His liberating of us from sin’s penalty is called justification and His liberating of us from sin’s power is called sanctification. When He comes again, Christ will complete His work of salvation in us by finally freeing us from the very presence of sin (Philippians 1:6). This final and future aspect of our salvation is called glorification.

Like its accompanying freedom, the Light’s accompanying peace was also misunderstood. The Jews interpreted it as a peace resulting from their conquest of Gentile nations. However, the peace that Christ brought was peace with God. Thanks to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, you and I can be reconciled to God. Through faith in Christ, we can know peace with God and peace within, in spite of being surrounded without by a Christ-rejecting, war-torn world.

The Bible teaches us that our sin has put us at enmity with God. Throughout history, all great conflicts have ended with the surrender of one side to the other. The end of our conflict with God is precipitated by our surrender to Christ. Not only is our conflict with God ended the moment we surrender our will to His and ourselves to Him, but in that same instant we come to know a peace that is beyond human understanding (Philippians 4:7).

KNOW JESUS, KNOW PEACE; NO JESUS, NO PEACE!