“And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” –Luke 1:17
The prepared heart is absolutely essential to the plan of salvation. As the birth, life, death, resurrection, and giving of the Holy Spirit is interconnected and interdependent. So we find that repentance is as needful as sanctification and sanctification is as needful as repentance if one wishes to have a full relation with God that Father and make it to a home in heaven.
God wants each and every one of us to have a spiritual Christmas story within our hearts. Now, what on earth does that mean? To accurately understand the spiritual Christmas story we must first grasp the physical Christmas story (for lack of a better term). Thankfully, the account of which has been taken down for us in the book of Matthew and the book of Luke. The gospel of Luke (as well as other places in the Bible) tells us that John the Baptist was to go before Jesus. He was to be the forerunner, preaching the gospel of repentance, witnessing to the Christ, and preparing the way for the coming of the Savior. If you read through Luke chapter one and two, you find that John’s birth was a miraculous one and he proceeded Christ in concept by six months. John was sent preaching a gospel of preparation, not one of total salvation. He continuously pointed to another, one who would come after himself, one that would be greater than he and bring a gospel greater than his own. John physically proceeded Christ in coming into this world and preached a gospel that would prepare the people for the coming of Christ. The story of Christmas is the birth of Christ. The coming of our savior into this world. He is the main character so to speak and John is part of the supporting cast. John’s roll was to prepare: he was born before, he went before, and he preached before so as to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus into this world. So, to sum up, we have John physically born with a mission to preach repentance and prepare for Christ. Jesus Christ who six months later is born to a virgin, and he is to be the Savior of the world. John is first into this world, and Christ is after. Now, keeping the physical occurrences of the Christmas story in mind; let us now consider the spiritual. It is in the spiritual that the birth of Christ becomes personal.
Before Jesus, came into the world, the world was lost in the darkness of sin with no chance of deliverance. Before Jesus comes into your heart and before he came into mine we were lost in the darkness of sin. However, before Jesus can come we first need to be prepared. We need to repent, turn away, ask God for forgiveness and determine to never go back to our sinning ways. God will forgive and forget, but we don’t stop there because He did not stop there. There is full deliverance that is offered and a spiritual coming of Christ into your heart that needs to be requested and welcomed by faith. You are not saved at forgiveness you are prepared for the coming of the Savior. The coming is not physical but spiritual; the spirit of the Holy Christ (the comforter) is birthed in you and you thereby are reborn, sanctified, and made holy. It is by faith and in faith, just as the birth of our Savior was by faith and in faith; the faith of Mary, the faith of Joseph. With God, the impossible is possible through faith.
When Jesus comes into your heart he saves you totally and completely from all sin and pulls you out of the darkness into light; that’s what he came into this world to do, to save us from our sins. It is what is doing even now, whenever you resolve to be saved (sanctified) you can be. You can have a spiritual Christmas.
