December 17, the greatest salvation imaginable.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah.

Jeremiah 31 31.

God is just and holy and separated from sinners like us. This is our main problem

at Christmas and every other season. How shall we get right with a just and holy God?

Nevertheless, God is merciful and has promised in Jeremiah 31,

500 years before Christ, that someday he would do something new.

He would replace shadows with the reality of the Messiah.

And he would powerfully move into our lives and write his will on our hearts

so that we are not constrained from outside, but are willing from inside,

to love him and trust him and follow him.

That would be the greatest salvation imaginable.

If God should offer us the greatest reality in the universe to enjoy,

and then move in us to know that reality in such a way that we could enjoy it

with the greatest freedom and the greatest

pleasure possible, that would be a Christmas gift worth singing about.

That is in fact what he promised in the new covenant, but there was a huge obstacle, our sin, our separation from God because of our

unrighteousness. How shall a holy and just God treat us sinners with so much kindness

as to give us the greatest reality in the universe, his son, to enjoy with the greatest

possible joy. The answer is that God put our sins on his son and judged them there so that he

could put them out of his mind and deal with us mercifully

...