Christmas will be here in a couple of days, and this is the season when I'm reminded of

a powerful line from John Dunn, the 17th century poet and pastor, in his Christmas day sermon

way back in 1626. He said this, quote,

Christ's birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his good Friday

are but the evening and morning of one and the same day." There's a sobriety about Bethlehem.

Even there within the text with the slaughter of the innocence, all the early signals tell us

that the birth of Jesus is not all glee and joy, but it will be a story tanged from the very

beginning with sacrifice and bloodshed. In fact, the meaning of Christ's birth will not make sense

unless we see how deeply the incarnation is embedded within a grand storyline of atonement

and sacrifice in the Bible story from Genesis to Revelation. So on occasional Fridays, I call

Dr. Dunn Carson. Carson is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition, and he's also the

editor of the NIV's Underven Study Bible, and then he takes up a theme and biblical theology for us

on those occasional Fridays, and it just so happens that today in the shadow of Christmas,

we are talking about sacrifice. Here's Dr. Carson to explain.

One might think that in Western secular thought, the notion of sacrifice and especially blood sacrifice

sounds primitive and obsolete, something that doesn't make any sense anymore. But the notion of

sacrifice is enduring in every culture in one fashion or another. We admire the sacrifices, for

example, of our soldiers who perhaps sacrificed themselves in order to save a batch of their mates.

For that, we give the Medal of Honor posthumously and honor their sacrifice. I remember when I was

a high school student reading a story, I was brought up in French and was by a French writer called

Guidimopasson. Concerning this couple, a childless, deeply, deeply in love, long married, she had

gorgeous, gorgeous, long hair. They were dirt poor. She would have really liked a certain silver

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