This time every year, there is an abundance of distractions to lure us away from the true meaning of Christmas. I do not have to list them as a reminder, for they are in full swing as we speak (or write). Yet, Christmas is a wonderful time of year. Somehow, all family feuds and arguments subside for a little while and everyone gathers around a tree covered in lights and ornaments to share the gifts they’ve bought for each other intentionally, with love and the other person in mind. 

But more than anything else, Christmas is about hope. Christmas brings us hope. Christmas reminds us of what (or who) hope is. Paul David Tripp, in his Advent devotional, observes for us that hope is a person. He writes,

“The One denied would come to rescue his deniers. The One rejected would move to save his rejecters. The One who had been rebelled against counteless times would come to redeem the rebels. The One who had been replaced in people’s hearts with an endless catalog of idols would invade the world he had made and rescue people from themselves.”

Paul David Tripp. Come Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 50.

You see, Christmas is all about redemption (Gal. 4:4-6). Jesus came, in the fullness of time (literally when the time was perfect) to do for sinful humanity what sinful humanity could not do for themselves – save themselves. Our sinful state is what Christ came to redeem. He came to save us from us. 

This Christmas season, never forget that Christ Jesus came to be your hope. He came to show you that you don’t have to do it on your own merit. He is your merit. He is your hope. He is your Savior. 

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6