THINK TOGETHER
What’s your favorite thing about Christmas? (Help your kids think about the true meaning of Christmas – Christ’s birth).
READ TOGETHER
Most religions are pretty simple. There’s God and there’s us, and if we are good and obey God then he will let us into heaven. The end.
But Christianity is a bit different. Christianity asks us to believe some things that can be hard to understand. That’s why Christianity isn’t just about being good, it’s about faith. It’s about believing God. It’s about trusting that God has a plan to save us, instead of God asking us to save ourselves by being good.
One of the important things that God wants us to believe that can be pretty confusing is that God is a Trinity. He is ONE God in THREE PERSONS – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But remember, without God being a Trinity we can’t be saved (see day 111).
And another thing that God wants us to believe that can be confusing is that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man. Here’s how John’s gospel puts it:
John 1:14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
The Word – Jesus up in heaven living as God the Son with God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit.
Became flesh – Jesus became a human being like you and like me. That’s what we celebrate at Christmastime when we think about Jesus being born as a baby in a manger.
The truth that Jesus is 100% God who became 100% man is called the incarnation. Can you say incarnation? Incarnation just means “in the flesh.”
But why is the incarnation so important? Why does it matter that Jesus become a person like one of us?
First, because it shows us how much God loves us and wants to live with us. God wants us all to be together in the same place, walking, and talking, and playing, and singing together forever – people and God living together in perfect love.
Second, without the incarnation we could never be saved from our sin. Our sin demands a payment or a punishment. The Bible says that the penalty for sin is death. But God didn’t want us all to die, so instead he incarnated so that Jesus could be our sacrifice for sins. Jesus the person could be our substitute. Jesus our God could be our PERFECT substitute.
And third, Jesus became like us so that now we can become like him. And that’s what’s happening to us every day when we trust in him. He is making us more and more like himself. More kind. More loving. More respectful. More gracious. More obedient. Yes, we have our ups and downs, and yes we still sin all the time, but when we trust in Jesus, God will be faithful to change us, over time, into all he wants us to be – like Jesus.
Because of Jesus we have a way to be saved from our sin by his sacrificial death for us on the cross.
With Jesus we can become more and more like him, because he became like us.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Celebrate Christmas in April! Find a nativity or a picture of one and talk about what it means that God became a little baby like us. Why would God do this? How does this show his love for us?
Don’t forget to sing some of your favorite Christmas carols.
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
In love you became human so that we can become the loving humans God wants us to be. Teach us to be like you knowing that when we fail you have already taken our sin away.
Amen.
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