There are times when sinners seem to get away with their sins. For example, the Wall Street Journal tells us about the scourge of airline passengers claiming disabilities so they can board in wheelchairs and skip the lines. If no wheelchairs are available when they arrive, they are miraculously “healed” and disembark under their own power.

Skeptical observers call this the work of “Jetway Jesus.”

Then there are times when “private” sin becomes public overnight. For example, the New York Times is profiling the woman who was “shamed” at a Coldplay concert last July when she was caught on camera in the arms of her boss. When news broke that both were married to other people, the story caused an international furor. Both resigned from their positions; she has received death threats.

There are mistakes and failures in my past that I am glad were not broadcast to the world; I’m sure you can say the same. Here’s the practical question: What shortcomings in your life would you most like to improve today?

Do you struggle with what the Puritans called “besetting sins,” perennial temptations and failures? Are there things you wish you could do or stop doing if you only had the strength? Defeats you wish you could repair? Victories you wish you could claim?

The answer to all of the above is found in Christmas.

What was your favorite Christmas gift?

What was your favorite Christmas gift as a child? For me, it was the Mattel Stallion Bicycle (like this one) I received in elementary school.

Someone at my school had one and parked it where I passed by it each day. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. My parents, however, gave me no assurance that I would receive one. I was a “challenging” child (to put it mildly), constantly bringing home conduct slips generated by boredom at school and my belief that I should be able to amuse myself however I wished.

I did nothing to deserve that Stallion bike and had no reason to expect it, which made (and makes) the Christmas morning I found it beside our Christmas tree near-miraculous to my mind.

Of course, of all the gifts we did not deserve, the one for which Christmas exists stands above them all.

Jesus was not “born” when he was born at Christmas: before time began, he was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). It is therefore unsurprising that three chapters in Matthew, three in Mark, three in Luke, and six in John focus on the last twenty-four hours of his earthly life.

The reason is simple: he was born to die for us.

A second- or third-century work called The Letter to Diognetus notes that in response to our sins,

[Our Father] gave his own Son as the price of our redemption, the holy one to redeem the wicked, the sinless one to redeem sinners, the just one to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible one to redeem the corruptible, the immortal one to redeem mortals. For what else could have covered our sins but his sinlessness?

Across this Christmas week, I invite you to remember each day the greatest gift you have ever received.

The truest measure of our sincerity

How should we respond?

We often hear the question, What can you give the person who has everything? In Jesus’ case, it is literally true (Colossians 1:15–17). Ministers typically respond by encouraging us to give Jesus ourselves. This is good theology: our omnipotent Lord has chosen to honor the free will with which he made us in his image, so he stands at the door of our heart and knocks to gain admittance through our free choice (cf. Revelation 3:20).

The harder it is to open this door of obedience to him, the deeper the love we demonstrate when we do.

When God’s will obviously benefits us, we can respond as an employee who chooses to do what their employer asks in the transactional expectation of reward as a result. The price that obedience costs us is the degree to which we demonstrate the sincerity of our love for him.

I don’t know about you, but this is not entirely good news for me.

I’m as obedient as I want to be

I once heard the president of a once-Christian university say, “At our school, you can be as religious as you choose to be.” I’ll confess that the same often applies to me: I am as obedient to Jesus as I want to be. If my next step into serving him were easy or obviously beneficial to me, I would have already taken it. What remains in my journey to surrender and sanctification seems to cost more than it pays.

Perhaps you know what I mean. Perhaps you are also being called to do something you’re not doing or stop doing something you are doing. In fact, I would imagine that every Christian on the path to holiness faces such a step today.

As Oswald Chambers noted in today’s My Utmost for His Highest reading, “Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp.”

Here’s the good news: the Christ who lives within us will empower us to fulfill the purpose of Christ for us.

In recent days, we have focused on the incarnational miracle that “Christ in you” is our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The One who came to live in our world at Christmas now lives in believers by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). Paul’s testimony is therefore true of every Christian: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Now the living Lord Jesus stands ready to help us step into the holistic obedience that is our best response to his holistic sacrifice for us.

If we ask, we will receive (Matthew 7:7).

“Majesty in the midst of mundane”

If you doubt that Jesus can work such a transforming miracle in your life today, think back to the transforming miracle by which he was born into our fallen world. Max Lucado describes the first Christmas:

Majesty in the midst of mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter. God came near. And as Luke 1:33 says, “His kingdom will never end.”

In what new way will you make him your king today?

Quote for the day:

“People don’t resist change—they resist being changed.” —Peter Senge

Our latest website resources:

• What does Christmas say about God?
• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

Denison Forum

Last Saturday afternoon, a gunman entered the School of Engineering at Brown University and killed two students, wounding nine others. Two days later, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Nuno Gomes Loureiro was shot multiple times outside his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, and later died from his injuries.

Late last night, police announced that the suspect in both shootings had been found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.

They identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national. According to Brown University President Christina Paxson, Valente was enrolled at the Ivy League school from the autumn of 2000 to the following spring, studying for a PhD in physics. He had “no current active affiliation” with the university, she said.

Officials said they also believe Valente killed Prof. Loureiro. Both he and the suspect had studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s, police said.

Initial findings indicated that Valente died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police were unable to comment on how long he might have been inside the storage unit. No motive in the shootings has been revealed at this writing.

“His answer was faith in faith”

Frederick Buechner taught at Harvard Divinity School one semester, where he met a student who “said once that what he believed in was faith, and when I asked him faith in what, his answer was faith in faith.”

Buechner responded:

I don’t mean to disparage him—he was doing the best he could—but it struck me that having faith in faith was as barren as being in love with love or having money that you spend only on the accumulation of more money.

At the same time, I think I understand the student’s perspective.

Having “faith in faith” brings significant benefits to those who embrace it. They are able to connect in a way with transcendence beyond themselves. They are likely to engage in religious activities proven to enhance mental health, economic well-being, self-esteem, and empathy. They may be part of a community of like-minded individuals with whom they can share the challenges and joys of life.

And yet, when tragedies such as the shootings we’re discussing occur, they are untroubled by the painful questions such suffering inevitably poses for those who hold faith in Jesus.

A suffering child anywhere in the universe

Christians say their God is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful—claims which pain and grief threaten every time they strike. If you knew these shootings would happen before they did and had the power to stop them, of course you would. Any moral person would do the same.

And yet the God of Christianity did not.

Atheism is a typical response to innocent suffering. As Sam Harris stated, a suffering child anywhere in the universe calls into question the existence of God.

But if you don’t want to go so far as to claim rather audaciously that God cannot exist, you can focus your faith on faith itself. You can believe in belief and practice religion to the degree that such practices meet your needs without needing to understand how the object of your faith could allow or cause the suffering and grief of our daily lives.

In fact, this is precisely what you might be doing right now.

An article I didn’t want to write

I intended to write a very different article this morning before news regarding the Brown shooting broke overnight. I didn’t want to have to think about this tragedy and did not want to talk about it with you so close to Christmas. I wanted to focus on something more uplifting and encouraging. And the compassion fatigue resulting from so much bad news in the news made it hard to want to focus yet again on the connection and collision of tragedy and biblical faith.

If you’re like me, you would rather not try to understand how to hold onto belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God in the face of innocent suffering. It’s not that you reject such faith. You would not go as far as Buechner’s student in claiming a mere “faith in faith.”

But you would like to leave the difficult questions regarding your faith to others and focus on the positives. You would rather I talk about the joys and traditions of Christmas, the inspirational and encouraging aspects of our shared religion. So would I.

However, this is only because I happen not to be facing such questions at the moment. The next time suffering and grief find me, I will once again echo the visceral cry of our Savior, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, quoting Psalm 22:1).

“The suffering and the love are one”

So, today is not a day to ignore the hard question of innocent suffering. It is not a day to subconsciously embrace a “faith in faith” that leaves the heartbreaking perplexities of life to the side.

It is rather a day to admit that our finite minds cannot by definition understand the mind of an infinite Supreme Being (Isaiah 55:9). It is a day to be honest about our questions and struggles but then take them to the God who urges us to “argue together” with him (a literal translation of Isaiah 1:18).

It is a day to recognize that the greater our pain, the greater our need for a Great Physician. And it is a day to remember that faith in God, like all relationships, requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. In other words, the more we trust God when we do not understand him, the more we will eventually (and eternally) come to understand the God we trust (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Above all, it is a day to do the things faith in the God of Scripture calls us to do: Pray for the victims of these horrific shootings and all affected by them (cf. 1 Timothy 2:1). Trust tragedy when it strikes to the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). And believe that he redeems all he allows and look for ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus in serving the suffering with practical compassion (cf. Romans 8:28; 1 Corinthians 12:27).

Such responses do not explain the unexplainable. But they offer something far better: the personal help and transcendent hope of a Savior who was born into our suffering at Christmas and has never left us.

To close with another reflection from Frederick Buechner:

“When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God’s love for us.”

Why do you need this reminder today?

Quote for the day:

“Because of Christ, our suffering is not useless. It is part of the total plan of God, who has chosen to redeem the world through the pathway of suffering.” —R. C. Sproul

Our latest website resources:

• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• Are you SAD? How to fight against the winter blues
• The real story of Christmas: The baby who was “from the beginning”

Denison Forum

Jason Bradley DeFord is known professionally as Jelly Roll. His song “Son of a Sinner” won three Country Music Television awards in 2023. The same year, he won the award for New Artist at the Country Music Association Awards. He has also made news for his weight loss of nearly three hundred pounds and was recently inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.

But his life story is even more striking than his musical talent.

He was baptized at the age of fourteen, but says around that time he began “dabbling” in drugs and stopped attending church. From his teenage years into his twenties, he was arrested numerous times and spent time in jail for felonies. He returned to his faith when he was thirty-nine and his fourteen-year-old daughter expressed an interest in being baptized.

During his recent conversation on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Rogan said to him, “You’re a totally new human being.” He replied, “You know what’s crazy? I don’t want to get super spiritual out of the gate, but I will because I think God wants me to right now because [of] you saying that.”

The singer explained: “There’s a Scripture in the Bible that says in Christ all things are a new creation, which I thought was interesting because it didn’t talk about restoring the old. It says that in God we are a completely new creation. You know what I mean? I was looking at it at first like I’m restoring my heart. But then, when you’re saying that, I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t restore my heart. I got a whole new heart,’” he said. “This is a brand new heart, Joe. You know what I mean? It might be cloaked as the old one, but God touched it. It’s a whole new heart, baby. It’s a different heart.”

Our greatest challenge and greatest hope

When I began teaching apologetics forty years ago, the question was, “Is Christianity true?” I taught my seminary students to defend the faith using evidence for God’s existence, the veracity of Scripture, the deity of Jesus, and so on.

In today’s postmodern, post-truth culture, the question is, “Why should I make your truth my truth?” In a day when user reviews are the currency of commerce, where people want to know if a particular technology or truth worked for those who tried it, the evidence most needed today is changed lives.

Here is where Christianity faces its greatest challenge and offers its greatest hope.

Our challenge is that Christians are supposed to live like Christ. We are intended to manifest his character in our world (Galatians 5:22–23) and his light in our darkness (Matthew 5:14–16), to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:16). When we fail to live up to our truth claims, secular people understandably reject the relevance of our beliefs for their lives.

But this fact also leads to our greatest hope.

As Jelly Roll said, Jesus doesn’t restore your old heart—he gives you a new heart. He takes up residence in your life by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). As Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). It is “Christ in you” that is our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:16).

Other religions try to help us do better—Jesus empowers us to be better.

“Take every thought captive to obey Christ”

Today begins the “seven antiphons of Advent.”

From December 17^th to December 23^rd, Christians around the world will focus on seven proclamations about Jesus as the Messiah. This practice goes back at least to the eighth century and perhaps even earlier than the sixth. These antiphons (short responses sung or recited in church services) are also the basis for the beloved hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emanuel.”

The first, being recited today in worship services, prays in English:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

We are right to seek such Wisdom. Apart from Christ, our finite, fallen minds are “darkened in their understanding” (Ephesians 4:18). We can be taken “captive” by “empty deceit” (Colossians 2:8) and “led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3).

However, the good news is that you and I have “divine power to destroy strongholds” so that we can “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). But this “divine power” is not within our human capacity: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

Jesus promised that the Spirit “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). This is just one way he gives us a “new heart” as we are “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

Four steps to transforming wisdom

How does this work in practical terms?

One: Trust in Christ as your personal Savior and Lord (John 1:12). I never want to assume that people who do religious things such as reading (or writing) articles like this one are therefore “born again” as God’s children. If you’re not sure about your salvation experience, I encourage you to read my article, “Why Jesus?” and speak to a pastor or Christian friend about your relationship with Christ.

Two: Submit your mind and life every day to the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). This is a conscious decision to surrender your thoughts, motives, and plans to him. Then stay connected with the Spirit as you pray through your day, seeking his wisdom and direction as you walk in his presence.

Three: Name your decision or challenge and seek the Spirit’s guidance. Partner with him by consulting Scripture, speaking with Christian friends, and reading trusted literature. Know that God wants you to know his will even more than you do: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5).

Four: Share God’s word with your world (Romans 1:16). One of the best ways to learn is to teach. When we seek and speak biblical truth to the issues of our day, we grow in wisdom as instruments of wisdom.

The Scottish scientist and evangelist Henry Drummond observed:

“Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.”

How will Christ change your heart today?

Quote for the day:

“No mind, no wisdom; temporary mind, temporary wisdom; eternal mind, eternal wisdom.” —Adoniram Judson

Our latest website resources:

• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• Are you SAD? How to fight against the winter blues
• The real story of Christmas: The baby who was “from the beginning”
• Netflix vs. Paramount fight for Warner Bros., Hollywood’s future, Spotify wrapped and college football playoffs

Denison Forum