This week we continue the season of Advent, which is the Christian season of preparation for Christmas.  Our theme this year is “Hope of the Nations,” and we are thinking on the world-wide hope found in Jesus Christ.  We’re meditating on the ideas of light, life, liberty, love, and Lord.

Our focus this week is life.  We read in Romans 6:23:

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Reflection

This week we light the CANDLE OF LIFE.  God created us perfect and pure with only life before us, but the great cosmic tragedy of Adam’s sinful fall in the Garden of Eden brought down a curse upon all of creation, which meant that life was no longer before us, only death—physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death.

Adam as the federal head—the representative head—of all humanity earned death for all of humanity when he sinned against God, and as a result we are all born guilty, born with a sin nature ready to sin as Adam sinned as soon as we are developmentally capable, and born into a world that encourages us to sin.  As a result, death is surely what awaits all of humanity.

But praise be to God!  He didn’t see fit for His special creation in humanity to suffer death.  Therefore, He, as a free gift, gave His son Jesus to live righteously for humanity and to die horribly for humanity.  On the third day after Jesus’ death, Jesus rose victoriously over death to live forevermore.  Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God can say to the world, The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  He can also say that whosoever believes on Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life.

Friends, every one of us has death and life before us.  In this Advent season, may you and the entire world choose life by trusting in Jesus, the giver of life, as Savior and Lord!  There is life in no other.