“Tis the season to celebrate. Everybody knows that this is a season for festivity and merriment, but not everybody knows why. Most people know that Christmas involves the arrival of an infant born to peasants and laid in a feeding trough, but do we really know why that’s so significant?

We sing songs about the coming of Jesus to Bethlehem as a baby boy, but do we really know why he came?

Jesus didn’t come to tell us, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” I think that each of us can honestly admit deep down that we are deeply flawed, as evidenced by broken homes, broken relationships, and broken lives. We have to confess at some point that we can’t fix ourselves and that we need someone to step in and do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

Jesus didn’t come to make us better people. To borrow something a friend said, Jesus didn’t come to build a better me. He didn’t come to make good people better. Or even bad people good.

Jesus came to make dead people alive. He came for the nobodies to make them somebodies. He came to the lost to find them. He came to the worthless to make them priceless. He came to the hopeless to give them hope.

Jesus didn’t come as an example of a better way to live or with a new philosophy to follow. He didn’t come to show us the way, but to be the way, the truth and the life.

It’s not about Jesus helping me to be the best Greg Johnson I can be. That’s not it at all.

Jesus Christ came to totally transform me into his own likeness. Not an improvement, but a new creation.

Remember that when you see the festive lights and decorations everywhere you go. Remember that of all the gifts you and I receive, the one we celebrate most is the gift of Jesus himself. The gift of life.