1 Corinthians 13:1 “And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

The Holy Spirit gave some of the people in Corinth the ability to speak in different languages. This “speaking in tongues” was miraculous, not natural. It became a coveted gift on which many of the Corinthians put a higher value than was warranted.

When some of these people used this ability in their worship services, it drew attention to them. It set them apart. Though many could not understand what they were saying, all understand that God had given them a miraculous gift. Those who could do it were proud of their ability. Those who could not envied them.

We face similar temptations when someone is gifted with an unusually beautiful singing voice, or an unusually eloquent way of speaking. They are a pleasure to listen to. Not everyone can do these things. When those who can use their gifts, it draws attention.

Paul did not tell these people to stop using their gift. But living the Christian life is more than the miracle of speaking in tongues. Love, he says is the most excellent way. Without it, we have a problem. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” The gift is valuable only if love is driving it.

In this same chapter Paul defines love for us. Those are the words from 1 Corinthians 13 we know best. They have been read and preached at a million weddings: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud,” and so on. Without looking at each word in detail, we might summarize this way: “Love is not concerned with self. Questions like ‘What about me?’ or ‘What about my rights?’ or ‘Don’t I matter?’ or ‘How come I can’t have what I want?’ don’t even occur to love. Love has one thing in mind: “What will serve others? What will do the most good?” That’s not the same thing as “What will make them happy? How can I give them what they want?” Love is concerned with what benefits the people around me, even if that makes them stop liking me.

This kind of love is best illustrated by Jesus’ saving love for us. Jesus’ tongue had miracle-working powers. His words once called the universe into existence. They called the dead back to life. They tamed storms and drove out demons and healed diseases.  Jesus’ miracles often brought him attention from the crowds. But our Savior was no publicity hound. He did not covet large crowds to admire him for his special abilities. He downplayed the miracles. He told people to stop talking about them. At times he avoided the crowds who kept coming to see another miracle.

Jesus loved them, as he loves us. His interest in doing miracles was only to end their suffering, and open up the door for people to see that he could do something much greater for them. So he took the blame for the great crimes and petty sins we have committed. He shouldered the guilt for the sins of the world. He allowed the misguided authorities of his day to deprive him of his freedom, his dignity, justice, and, ultimately, his life on the cross. There was no “What about me or my rights? Don’t I matter?” Why? He loved us, and this was the only way to secure forgiveness for our sins and save us from hell. John later writes, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

When that kind of love was combined with the miraculous ability to speak in other languages by the people of Corinth, when it is still combined with a voice that sings sweetly or speaks eloquently, God’s people are served. One who can speak in another language uses it to evangelize those who speak it naturally. Those who sing do so to glorify God, not themselves. The gospel, the saving Word of God, is delivered to hearts and minds in a way people can understand and will remember. Jesus becomes greater. We, the messengers, become less. Faith grows. Salvation spreads. More than miracles, love is the most excellent way.

But when I have not love? “I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” When all I do is draw attention to myself, it’s just noise. No one is served. Silence would be preferable. Love, the most excellent way, makes all the difference.

Luke 12:32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”

Jesus calls us a little flock. That suggests we suffer from a certain poverty. Jesus’ little group of disciples and followers seemed like an insignificant number of people compared to the vast world population. Do we feel the same? Even where churches are growing Christians are in the minority.

Nor are sheep the most powerful or assertive animals in the world. They aren’t the roaring lions or crafty foxes of the animal kingdom. They are vulnerable, dependent, and defenseless. As Jesus’ little flock of sheep, we perceive the same weaknesses in ourselves. We are vulnerable. Perhaps the year just past has exposed more of our personal vulnerabilities than we care to think about: health concerns, family struggles, financial worries. We are at the mercy of the changing world around us. Political uncertainties upset us. Uncontrollable forces of nature threaten us.

Our status as Jesus’ little flock, his command that we not be afraid, suggest that there is an issue of trust with which we must struggle. In the context Jesus was speaking these words to his disciples. He knew that it was easy for them to worry about their earthly supply. He had taught them that God considered them incomparably more dear than the rest of his creation, things like birds or flowers. Despite this knowledge, they still found it difficult to be certain he would take care of them.

Our sin-sickened senses share the same fears. We withhold our trust. We base our conclusions on what we can see with our eyes instead of what God promises to our hearts. We may object that our fears are defensible, even sensible, but our lack of trust still calls for repentance.

Then Jesus leads us to look in the right direction to build that trust up again. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” Look at what we have! Even before we look at the gift, look at the Giver! We have a Father who is pleased to give us things. It makes him happy to see us open his gifts. At Christmas you watched as your child or friend opened a gift you know they wanted. You saw their surprise and joy, their gasp or squeal, and it gave you a deep feeling of satisfaction.

The difference is that our Father is pleased to give us his gifts even when we look inside the box and we don’t get it right away. We may react with a disappointed, “oh.” That doesn’t stop him. He keeps on giving generously. He keeps on being happy to do so.

Then there is the obvious difference in value. One Christmas a brand new car appeared in my neighbor’s yard with a great big bow attached to the top, just like you see on TV. That is a worthless trinket compared to the gifts our Father gives. He is God, and his gifts literally cost him everything. God gives us himself, and the Lord of Lords and King of Kings becomes our Servant. God gives us his Son. He sacrifices the most precious life to save us from sin, and he doesn’t resent the cost. He is only happy to give it.

That leads to the gift Jesus promises here. He says our Father has been pleased to give you and me the kingdom! Now don’t we look silly worrying about something to eat or something to wear or how we are going to pay for things. We worry about plastic beads when all this time we have been holding gold and diamonds in our hands.

Remember the musical “Little Orphan Annie?” It’s a bit schmaltzy, but it plays like a modern day fairy-tale: poor little orphan gets adopted by lonely, rich industrialist and they live happily ever after. Our real story is more amazing. It is more than rags to riches. The Lord of the universe has snatched us from death, cleansed us from sin, adopted us and made us the children of God. He has given us his kingdom as our very own. What, then, is left for us to fear?

1 Peter 1:23 “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

God has some important things for us to understand when he illustrates our coming to faith as being born again. It illustrates our helplessness. You have known people whose pregnancies were filled with uncertainty about the baby’s health. Think of how weak, how frail, and how dependent that little baby is before it is born. It didn’t produce its own life. It simply received life from its parents. It doesn’t choose the day of its birth. When the time is right, mom’s body gives it birth.

There are many parallels with our spiritual life. Because of sin, we are helpless on our own, totally dependent on God. We have no spiritual life until we receive it from our heavenly Father. Before that we are a dead thing. People without Christ are not just spiritually confused or spiritually weak. They are spiritually dead. That was true of each of us. It still is true of our own sinful natures. Since we must be born again, we are utterly dependent on God. He alone can give us spiritual life.

But the really important thing to appreciate is that he does give us spiritual life. We have been born again. Peter reminds us just a few verses earlier, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as gold or silver that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” We live life with faith in forgiveness. God has made our hearts the Holy Spirit’s home. God gives us a new life, a life producing love.

Peter tells us that God has given us this new life through the living and enduring word of God. This word of God is a living word. It has a life of its own. Though you don’t detect a literal heartbeat, though you can’t hear it breathing, the word is alive and active and accomplishes great things. Its heartbeat is the overwhelming love God has given us in Jesus’ life lived and given for us. Its breath is the breath of the Holy Spirit himself. Like a good germ this message of love invades our souls and transforms our minds with the Holy Spirit’s power. It drives out doubt and despair. It teaches us to trust God and know he will take care of us. It overpowers sin and creates a heart that enjoys doing what is good. It is more fully alive than anything else we will ever know.

This word of God is also an enduring word. Peter illustrates this in the words of Isaiah, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” We are all like grass and flowers. We are flimsy and frail. Our health fades with each passing year.

Like grass and flowers, our glory is fading and shallow. Flowers look nice for a while, but their beauty doesn’t really change anything. Then they die. No one will remember our accomplishments a generation from now. How we looked and what we did last year is already a mere memory. The Apostle James once summed it up: “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

But the word of the Lord stands forever. Long before our time the word of God was there, the same word we know today. Long after we are gone, the word will still stand unchanging. It will still be comforting, supporting, empowering. It will give birth to new life in new generations.

Our new birth is no more our own accomplishment than the first one was. God’s word is the womb in which he has given new life to our souls.

Matthew 2:1-2 “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.’”

We could spend a long time discussing s what this star really was. It has become one of the chief symbols of Christmas. Some believe God made use of a natural occurrence in the sky: a comet, a supernova, or a conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter in 7 B.C. Some believe the description of the star’s movement so defies anything we see in the heavens that God must have provided some other kind of light in the sky miraculously. I strongly lean that way myself. But even if we were able to settle the debate definitively, what would we do with the information?

This much we can say without debate: God was at work behind the things the wise men saw and experienced. He was even using it to guide them in a certain direction. But the things they saw and experienced in life could only get them so far. They could not lead them all the way to Christ. For that they needed something more.

It is the same for us. The last two times my family and I moved, we looked at lots of houses. Neither time did we get the house that was our first choice. I’m not saying that what we got was worse. In each case it was far better. But why? Why didn’t we get the home we wanted first? We have a sense that God is guiding these kinds of things. When my friend had her car break down several years ago, she ended up in a car dealership sitting next to a member of my congregation in Dallas. When her car broke down, she could not have known God would use it to get her back into church. But just meeting the man from our church didn’t bring her back to Jesus all by itself.

My point is this: We trust that God is guiding and directing the story of our lives. The things we see and experience come from him. Sometimes we have an idea of where he is leading. But we are never certain what he is doing based on experience alone. We can’t fill in all the blanks. By itself, “Life” never leads us all the way to Christ.

None of us would be worshiping Jesus as our King if it weren’t for our true guide: “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: But you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’”

The star could tell the Magi a king had been born among the Jews. God’s own word, revealed through the prophet Micah, could tell them who and what he was, and where he would be born. The prophecy promises a King from Bethlehem, a good ruler who would take care of God’s people like a Good Shepherd. A Shepherd doesn’t just rule the sheep and tell them what to do. He takes care of them. He feeds them. He even lays his life down to protect them. A little further into the prophecy than Matthew takes us, we learn that this King, has origins before time. In other words, he is no ordinary human being. He is timeless. He is your God.

Micah’s words, then, guide the Magi to know the King himself. God’s Word is still the true guide leading us to Jesus. The Apostle Paul once wrote, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming.” Do you want to find Jesus? You don’t have to haul him out of heaven or dig up his grave (you know that’s empty anyway). Just listen to the Word of God that is preached to you, because that’s where Jesus still promises to be found.

And what do we find when we come looking? He is more than an interesting historical character to study. He provides more than wholesome entertainment to distract. Finding him isn’t primarily about finding healing or inspiration, or saving our marriage, or getting control of our drinking problem, though he can do all those things for us, too.

But when God’s word is our guide we find the one who forgives our sins, who came to save us from sin and death. That is why we also come to worship him.

Luke 2:36-38 “There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then she was a widow until she was eighty four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them (Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus) at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Israel”

Anna was a senior citizen. The Bible considers long life a blessing, but old age brings its own set of burdens. Years of wear and tear on the body take their toll. I remember my grandfather going to the doctor because of joint pain when he was in his 70’s. The doctor told him: “Marvin, you’ve worked hard all your life. You are simply worn out at the seams.” At some point in time you start to realize that the other members of your generation are disappearing. Loneliness becomes more common.

We don’t know how Anna felt about her age. We do know that more serious hardships were a feature of her youth. She was widowed after only seven years of marriage. She may have buried her first and only husband in her twenties. Did she see herself a widow so soon? Was this what she expected her family life to be?

For Anna, widowhood brought another struggle. There was no regular employment for women living in First-Century Israel. The law of Moses provided some kind of welfare for widows and orphans, but having enough to eat could be a daily struggle.

We see nothing to criticize about Anna as she fought through life’s hardships. But for ourselves, we need to understand the temptations that go along with a life that falls far short of our hopes and expectations. These can be spiritually deadening.

A cultivated sense of bitterness can make us very unpleasant people to be around. Worse yet, it flies in the face of God’s word: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). It is hard to place trust in God, or feel love for him, while we are busy being bitter about our burdens.

Another dangerous trap is self-pity. It is a waste of our time and energy to spend them in endless reruns of how hard our life has become. Like bitterness, focusing on self erodes our faith, chokes our love for others, and opens the door to other sins.

Anna didn’t spend her long years of widowhood sulking. She spent them in worship. Every day found her at the temple until as late in the evening as they would let her stay.

Who really benefits when we spend time in God’s service at worship? Does the Lord need anything from us? He is not, as Phil Donahue once suggested, “An egomaniac who constantly needs to be adored.” Worship benefits us. It keeps us in touch with what matters: We have a God who loves us so much he made himself our Savior. He let himself be tortured to death to free us from sin and deliver us from death. Our lives are meaningful because Jesus considered them meaningful enough to redeem them for himself.

There is another place in God’s service that Jesus makes our life meaningful. That is in our life of witness. “Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Israel.” Redemption is one of those loaded words we hardly think about. It speaks about a price paid to set us free. Anna recognized Jesus as our Redeemer–the one who would pay the price, the Lamb of Sacrifice who sets us free from sin’s guilt and power. Straight from her heart Anna gave her little witness to all who would listen. This baby is redemption sent from God. He pays the price to take our sins away.

What would make your life meaningful? Inventing a cure for cancer? Making a billion dollars? Feeding people in a third world country? What about sharing the love of Jesus with your own children? What about helping a friend to know Jesus as his Savior? What about being part of an effort to send missionaries to people who haven’t heard the gospel before? When we serve God by spreading the good news of redemption to others, we are making an eternal difference in their lives. And our own words about Christ and cross and sins forgiven come back to feed our own faith as well.

Your life is meaningful, child of God. Jesus makes it that way.

John 1:16-17 “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Grace is God’s gift love, his undeserved love. John the Apostle, the writer of this gospel, wants us to understand what a source of blessings God’s grace is. It is an inexhaustible source. Jesus brings us God’s grace from his fullness: the full supply of the eternal and unlimited God whose resources know no bounds.

It is hard to find anything else in our experience for comparison. We worry about running out of so many things in our world–exhausting our resources. How much longer will the world’s oil reserves last? Some places worry about running out of drinking water. There are no such worries with grace. Even the world’s most plentiful substances, like sand or sea water, could be used up, I suppose. Scientists believe our sun has between 4.5 and 5 billion years left before it burns out and sunshine becomes impossible to find. Long after all these things are long gone, the supply of grace will be no less than it is today.

This grace, this gift love, is God’s greatest gift, the true heart and center of Christian faith. When John contrasts it with the law given through Moses, he is not saying that there was something wrong with the law. Jesus preached the law during his ministry. The law can bring us many good things, too–a happy family, a safe and secure community, the honor and respect of our neighbors, a content and fulfilling life, even God’s own approval–if we can keep it.

That’s the catch. The law is not the gift that keeps on giving. It is the gift that keeps on demanding. And what it demands, every honest person knows he cannot fulfill.

But the grace of God has no catch, just because it is undeserved. It is the special blessing Jesus brings. Others talked about it before him. But he embodies grace, he is grace–God’s gift of love, with every facet of his existence. His love for confused parents, disgusting lepers, arrogant Pharisees, unsteady disciples, and lowly sinners isn’t just lovely to look at. It is a gift God hands to us and says, “Here, it is yours. Be covered in it and filled with it–the beautiful new face and appearance you wear as a child I have claimed for myself by faith.”

The gory and upsetting details he has told us about the injuries Jesus endured at his trial, the agony of his crucifixion, and the indignity of his death are not gratuitous displays of violence. Nor are they a guilt-trip meant to manipulate us into better behavior. They are the pinnacle of God’s grace, the gift to be able to peer into God’s heart and see, “This is how much he loves us. This is the suffering he is willing to endure to save us and claim us for himself.”

These give the gift of certainty: to know that forgiveness is no empty promise. It is bought and paid for by the blood of God’s own Son. He left no sin unaccounted for. He offers us this gift with no strings attached. The news of Jesus’ resurrection isn’t some freakish intervention in the laws of nature meant to stimulate our curiosity. It is the gift that sets us free from all fear. It fills our lives with hope. It raises us above every painful experience and dark hour because it means that someday Jesus will raise our lifeless bodies to share his life and victory.

These gifts, this grace, comes through Jesus Christ not so much like individual objects being given to us in a parade or succession, once following the other, like a child who has a never-ending pile of gifts to open on Christmas day. He opens one, and then the next, and then the next. But they come all together in an unending flood, like a person standing in a river that never stops flowing over and around him. No blessing surpasses the understanding of grace that Jesus brings us.

John 1:3-5 “All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.”

Are any of us self-made men and women? We may be proud of who we are, what we have accomplished, or what we can do. In many cases we may have filled up a genuinely impressive tote bag of diplomas, honors, and achievements. But does any of us believe that he or she created oneself? Could even an atheistic evolutionist believe that?

At Christmas time, the light shining from the manger reveals where we come from. “All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” As incredible as it may seem, this little baby, this helpless little infant who can do little more than eat, sleep, cry, and wiggle is the Mighty Maker of us all! The Creator has become a creature. Jesus is the one who has given life and existence to us all.

But there is a far more important life he gives to you and me. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” The life that gives us light is not our creation. It’s not our physical life. It is the life with God that Jesus gives back to us. Jesus shines on us with spiritual life, eternal life. Jesus himself lived a life that revealed the spiritual life working in him. He lived a selfless life, a perfectly loving life, in keeping all that God demands of us. Then he absorbed all the darkness of human sin and death into himself. He took it with him to the cross where he died and disposed of the sin that divided us from God. He rose from the dead, he took his life back again, and in all of this he has restored our relationship with God and given us life that never ends.

This new life can be found only in the child in the manger. This news, this amazing, happy, wonderful news, shines like a light. It exposes sin. It chases the darkness of despair and unbelief out of our hearts and minds. It makes it possible for us to see and understand God’s grace. It fills our hearts with faith. It firmly plants the new life that Jesus has won for us inside of us, and it makes us spiritually alive again. This life that Jesus gives us is light. In fact, by leading us to faith, it has overcome us with its light.

That Light overcomes us, but the light cannot be overcome, because Jesus won’t be overcome. “That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.”

Have you ever felt threatened by dangerous surroundings? I remember an incident in high school when some friends and I were walking to get a pizza. Suddenly we were surrounded by a larger group of bigger guys. They stopped us and tried to bait us into saying something or doing something that might start a fight. We kept our cool, and eventually we were allowed to pass.

Does it sometimes feel that way to be a Christian today? We are surrounded by a larger world that opposes almost everything we hold dear. It’s not just that they think we are mistaken. They think we are the enemy. Truths such as “God is the Creator of the world,” “Jesus is the only way to heaven,” “The Bible is God’s Word, his unique revelation of himself,” “Salvation is one hundred percent God’s grace, zero percent our good works,” and a host of Christian moral beliefs aren’t just rejected. They are condemned as evil. We are accused of stirring up trouble and standing in the way of progress. As the darkness of this world presses in around us, we may wonder how much longer we will be allowed to pass.

Was the world which Jesus entered any different? His own people had no tolerance for the things he did and taught. “He breaks our laws and heals on the Sabbath.” “He is a friend of sinners.” “He claims to be the Christ, a king.” “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

The light shines in the darkness. But the darkness has not overcome it. Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus rules from his Father’s right hand in heaven. Jesus will return to take us to heaven. Even if at times the Christian faith resembles a flashlight whose batteries are weakening, and the light seems to grow dimmer and dimmer, the gospel continues to go out into the world. The light of Jesus is shining in the hearts of more and more people. His kingdom keeps moving forward. Jesus’ won’t be overcome. Until the end of the world, his light will continue to drive back and overcome the darkness.

Genesis 3:15b “He (Jesus, the seed of the woman) will crush your head, and you (the devil) will strike his heel.”

The devil is no one for you or me to trifle with. You know the story of Job.  When God gave the devil permission, in a single day he was able to move two desert tribes to raid Job’s possessions and to send a fire storm and a windstorm to destroy his flocks and his family. Within a few hours tens of thousands of animals and dozens of people were gone.

More impressive still, when the only two people who lived on this planet were still pure and perfect, with no inner desire to sin, his temptations got them to fall. Alone against a hostile tempter, you and I would not stand a chance.

But one of our relatives had the power to crush him. It is worth noting that Jesus is described as the offspring of the woman. There is no mention of the man. Although this doesn’t explicitly teach the virgin birth, there are already hints of it in this very first gospel promise. As the human Son of Mary, but the divine Son of God, Jesus was fully prepared the win the battle our first parents had lost so quickly.

In doing so, Jesus crushes Satan’s head. John tells us in his first letter, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” During his forty days battling the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus successfully resisted every one. Just days before his trials and crucifixion Jesus predicted, “Now the prince of this world will be driven out.” On that cross, at his weakest, by his own death, Jesus finally crushed the all the devil’s power. He administered a death blow. That does not mean the devil just curls up and dies. But like a bad actor in a B movie, he dies a slow, dramatic death that spans the ages. During that time the power of the gospel is dismantling his kingdom person by person as it calls hearts to faith in God and frees them from Satan’s hold. In the end, Satan will be condemned and bound to hell eternally, crushed in utter defeat.

Yet you know that this did not take place without a dear price being extracted from our Savior. “You (Satan) will strike his heel.” The suffering Jesus endured to save us is astounding. Many people find it difficult to watch Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion because the violence Jesus suffers is so graphic. Still, Jesus’ spiritual suffering was far worse. He received the penalty for every sin of every sinner throughout time hanging on the cross. The devil’s dirty work required him to suffer agony we cannot imagine.

But a blow to the heel doesn’t kill the way a blow to the head does. Jesus lives while Satan goes down in defeat.

Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.”

We like to see a villain get what he deserves. I recently watched the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark again. At the end of the movie you not only want to see Indiana Jones get the Ark of the Covenant. You also want to see the Nazi villains get what they deserve. When the news reports that someone has been caught red-handed in some heinous crime–molesting children, stealing from someone who can just barely get by as it is–we want the justice system to throw the book at him. Give him what he deserves. This doesn’t always come from a sinful desire to see someone suffer. Our sense of justice affirms that it is right to give such people what they deserve.

God promises that the arch-villain, the prince of all fiends, is going to get what he deserves. The devil had made some new friends in the Garden of Eden, but God promised to change that. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.” Enmity, hostility between Satan and Eve, required a change at this point in time. By giving into temptation and eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve had become the devil’s friends. They joined his rebellion against God. That is a big offense–high treason and utter contempt for all the goodness the Lord had shown them so far.

Today, it still requires a change to establish hostility between the devil and the citizens of planet earth. God’s promised that this hostility would also exist between “your (the devil’s) offspring and hers.” By physical birth, all of Eve’s children are the offspring of the devil. They share his rebellion and unbelief. They are his friends. That is why Jesus told Nicodemus we must be born again, spiritually, to enter into the kingdom of God.

This is not something we like to hear. A number of years ago I made a visit to a family that was inquiring about having their baby baptized. As I explained baptism’s promises to them, I emphasized that God was claiming this child as his own in baptism. In effect he was saying, “This one belongs to me now, and if Satan wants him back, he is going to have to fight me for him.” The baby’s father took offense at that idea. “What do you mean, ‘if he wants him back’?” If we don’t like to see ourselves as the devil’s friends, we certainly don’t like to think of our children that way.

But this is not a hard truth to establish, by Scripture or by experience. 1 John 3:8 tells us, “He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” Do you like any sins? Do your children? Do you find some of them hard to give up? Why is that? God’s friends don’t like sins–not any at all. They find them appalling. Even after God has changed us into his friends and the devil’s enemies, the rebel still lives in our sinful nature. We may find that part of ourselves appalling, but it still wants to dethrone God and take over.

For as much as we are inclined to see the devil as a friend, no one has ever hurt us more. His corrupting work led to every unpleasant experience we ever suffer, infected us with death, and drove a wedge between us and God. He deserves our hostility, but only God can make that happen. “I will put enmity between you and the woman…”

What turns us against the devil and back towards God? God gave us Jesus for that. Jesus gave up everything to give us everything. At Christmas we celebrate him giving up heaven for a cold, smelly stable and a bed of straw. He gave up unlimited use of his almighty power to become a weak little infant, unable to walk or talk or feed himself, needing to be burped and changed and carried around. Later he gave up his life and, for a few hours, his own Father’s love, for a criminal’s death on a cross and sinner’s taste of hell. He gave it all up so that he could give us forgiveness and an unending feast of his Father’s love.

That gift gives us the faith that establishes our friendship with God, and hostility toward the devil. Already in Eden God was anticipating Jesus’ sacrifice when he didn’t destroy Adam and Eve. He came to them. He sought them. He called them to repentance. He forgave their treason. Already in Eden he did what neither Adam nor Eve could do on their own. He put enmity between the devil and the woman, he made them enemies. That hostility is exactly what the devil deserves.