Great Exchanges – by Greg Albrecht
Your first thought at this time of the year might be those frenzied crowds in shopping malls and department stores on the days immediately following Christmas. People exchanging and returning gifts they received that were the wrong size, wrong color—or just plain wrong!
But there’s another exchange we need to keep in mind. This great exchange is the reality of the cross of Christ. Jesus Christ took our sin and died for it, paying the debt that we could not pay. In exchange, God, because of his grace, gives us eternal life. Our sin for eternal life! The great spiritual exchange.
Great exchanges characterize the month of December for Christians —as gifts, greeting cards, worship, meals and social visits are exchanged and experienced in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. And while the cross was a great exchange, so was the manger in Bethlehem.
The miracle, mystery and majesty of Christmas is found in Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). God with us means that God is not distant, detached or disconnected. He didn’t consider himself immune from our suffering and pain. God, in the person of Jesus, came to be one of us that he might save us. The Creator of the cosmos became a creature of his creation in order to set right all that has gone wrong on our tiny little planet.
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
