1 John 5:9-13 “We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

The birth of Jesus Christ is a matter of life and death. I do not mean his own death, though one might wonder how long the infant Lord Jesus could survive in the harsh conditions into which he was born. Infant mortality rates were certainly much higher in his day than ours, and he was born without doctor, nurse, or midwife, or even the relatively sanitary conditions of a home.

I am not alluding to the human neglect and hostility he faced from the beginning. No doubt the residents of Bethlehem failed the test of hospitality and basic human compassion when Mary and Joseph arrived so close to labor and delivery and no one offered them decent shelter. No doubt wicked King Herod’s plot to kill the infant or toddler should have succeeded under ordinary circumstances. Only divine intervention kept him alive.

The birth of Jesus Christ is a matter of life and death for us. The Apostle John promises that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Can we believe that this helpless little baby is our Savior? Will we believe that the infant in the manger is the solution for death, that he is our passport to heaven?

That is why God has revealed these things, not just so that this little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay, will enrich our earthly lives, but so that one day he might bless us all as his dear children, and take us to heaven to live with him there.

For this Child gives us life.