Santa truely satisfies

I heard a great soundbite by Nick Lannon the other day about the way we celebrate special holidays.  He said that at  Halloween everyone dresses up as evil beings and gets given candy! While at Christmas Santa is keeping a list and checking it twice. If you’ve been a naughty boy or girl Santa knows about it and no presents for you! Just a lump of coal. In this way Halloween is now more of a Christian festival than Christmas he said. This is because the God of the Bible is all about freely giving “candy” (forgiveness of sins) to evil people who don’t deserve it. We don’t get forgiveness from God because we have met some kind of standard (like Santa’s list) but because He wants to give it to us. And He has through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for us.

All this talk of Christmas and Santa got me thinking about Christmases when I was a kid. I wasn’t a very good child and if Santa had kept his word then I would have received a lump of coal every Christmas. But you know what? I never got one. I always received presents! 

So I must disagree with you Nick, Santa is a good picture of Christianity. All the naughty children out there are threatened with the law but it cannot change their behaviour. All it can do is show them how far they fall short of Santa’s standard. But on Christmas Eve, all their sins are forgiven because of Santa’s great mercy and they receive what they don’t deserve – presents!

“Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised. God gave his law through angels to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people. Now a mediator is helpful if more than one party must reach an agreement. But God, who is one, did not use a mediator when he gave his promise to Abraham.

Is there a conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises? Absolutely not! If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.” Galatians 3:19-22

Strike a pose there's nothing to it

One perk about working in the fashion industry is that occasionally I’m given a ticket to a show! The fun thing about a fashion show is "people watching." There is A LOT of posing to be seen there, and this year’s NZ Fashion Week was no different. It seems that a “cool” event brings out the worst of people’s self importance.,which led me to think: “Why are all these people acting like they deserve to be there in the front row when the only reason they are here is that they were invited?” No one earns their way into a fashion show; they are given the ticket at the discretion of the designer.

It can be easy to despise the Pharisees because they are a bunch of posers, parading their good works before Jesus. But are we any better than that? Just as I was thinking I was above (and definitely cooler than) all the posers at the fashion show because I wasn’t posing, it can be tempting for me to think I’m above all those weak Christians who think that their good works can earn them brownie points with God, because I’ve learned all about how our good works don’t earn us points before God. Man, what a theology snob!

Back to the fashion show; if you don’t have a ticket you’re not coming in. Same goes for Heaven; the self important and proud (like me) are only acceptable to God because He has given us our divine tickets for entry to eternal life with Him. We are saved from His rejection because Jesus earned our ticket for us.

In the immortal words of Lecrae “If heaven ain’t a gift then I ain’t getting’ in”.