Nearly everyone will celebrate Christmas in some fashion. Most religious people will acknowledge during the Christmas season the birth of a baby named Jesus. Very rarely will you hear of someone arguing the birth of Jesus.
Many will recognise Jesus on the cross. The cross, with Jesus portrayed on it or not, receives recognition in much of the world and certainly it permeates the West. For the most part people accept the death of Jesus.
The vaguely religious have little invested if they simply accept the birth and death of the man Jesus.
Where the religious/superstitious forever part ways with those of true faith occurs at the tomb.
True believers see not just the birth of a baby at Christmas, but the incarnation of God Himself.
True believers see not just the death of a man on the cruel, Roman tool of the cross, but they see the vicarious suffering and death of the Messiah on behalf of His creation.
And at the tomb true believers see not a missing body, or imagine the abducted body of a substitute, but we find the bodily resurrection of Jesus by the action and power of our Triune God.
Celebrate Christmas with me if you will. Acknowledge Jesus Christ on the cross. But if you would be my brother or sister in Christ, if you would journey with me to the presence of God, if you would be a true believer and know the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, then meet me at the empty tomb and worship our risen Saviour.
“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
– 1 Corinthians 15:12-22
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