He Didn't Spare His Son

Several months ago, a news story out of Texas caught the attention of the nation in a unique way. Our heartstrings were wrenched as we heard the distressing news that a little two year old girl named Jessica McLure had fallen down a well. She was trapped, alive down there, all alone, cold and frightened and beyond the reach of her frantic parents. The whole country stopped to watch with fascination and concern as heroic rescue efforts were mounted to save that poor little girl. As she recited nursery rhymes and sang precious little childlike songs heard faintly over a microphone lowered into the hole, multi-million dollar drilling equipment thundered overhead to dig a separate shaft to reach her.

Up to the minute bulletins informed us of their progress in a frantic race against time. Jessica was dehydrating and suffering from exposure to the cold and damp. Would they reach her in time? we wondered. The whole nation prayed that they would, and thank God they did.

There was something about that story that brought out the parent in all of us. We wanted to save little Jessica from her living grave, to protect her, to wrap her in the arms of love and security. And we shuddered as we imagined ourselves in a similar situation had she been our child.

I’d like us to think of the Christmas story in those terms this morning. In spite of the warm, family traditions that have grown up around Christmas, we need to remember that the original Christmas was a harrowing event, a story that is actually stark and terrifying. Like the story of Jessica McLure, Christmas is a story about a child in danger, about a child going down to a place where there was no protection, no security, no shelter. But unlike the story of Jessica, there was no rescue for the child. And unlike the story of Jessica, where a little girl blunders innocently into danger, the Christmas story has a terrible deliberateness about it. For you see, in the Christmas story, the child’s father actually sent him there.

There is a verse of Scripture in the book of Romans which, though not usually associated with the Christmas story, actually tells it very well. It is found in

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

That verse appears in a place where Paul is talking about the tremendous love and provision of God for the Christian. He says, in an argument that theologians call the argument from the greater to the lesser, that if God didn’t spare for our sakes’ the thing that meant most to Him - His Son - then He will obviously provide for us in every other way as well.

Now sometimes when we read that verse, we skip lightly over the first part of it to get to the good part - the part where God is going to give us all things. I’d like us today to pause and consider the first part, because the first part is about Christmas, and what Christmas cost God.

That verse tells us three things:

1. that God did not spare His own Son

2. that God gave Him up

3. that God gave Him up for us all.

Think of the typical Christmas card for a moment. On the front is a manger scene. Mary and Joseph, richly dressed in flowing robes are looking into the cradle with that look that only parents can give. The cradle itself is overflowing with yellow hay and a little baby nestles comfortably in his white receiving blanket. One or two Jersey cows, cast as extras, look on in the background, contentedly chewing their cud. The stable itself is made of rough hewn wood beams. It looks like something you’d expect to find in a barn in Vermont. The whole scene is backlit with a kind of golden glow that communicates warmth, and coziness, security and peace.

And that isn’t what the original Christmas was like at all. We’ve taken a rude Palestinian stable and made a Norman Rockwell painting of it. T.S. Elliot, in his poem “Journey of the Magi”, has the wise men saying “…a cold coming we had of it.” I’d like to suggest that that is a good way to understand the reception that Jesus got when he came to earth. A cold coming he had of it. There was nothing warm about that first Christmas.

That little baby was born into a frighteningly cruel world, where expectant mothers were forced to give birth in filthy caves miles from home, where power-crazy kings ordered the slaughter of newborn infants. Let’s not romanticize it. Let’s not look at Christmas through rose-colored glasses. This was the world into which God sent His Son. He didn’t spare Him. He didn’t shelter Him from any of it. And He didn’t protect Him from ultimately going to the cross. In fact, that is why He came: He came to suffer, He came to die. There is a terrible verse about this in Isaiah 53 which runs counter to all the protective, sheltering love we feel as parents for our children.

Isaiah 53:10 … it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer

We don’t like that. It seems to make God out to be a child abuser on the level of a cosmic Joel Steinberg. But of course, we have missed the point. The point is that God gave His Son up for a reason. He gave Him up for us.

There is a very strange story in Genesis 22. It is about Abraham and his son Isaac. Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his only son. Isaac is to be offered up a sacrifice for sin. Abraham doesn’t understand what to make of this, but he obeys God. And just as he is about to plunge the knife into the body of the son he loves, God stops him. And God provides a substitute - a ram caught in a thicket nearby.

That story was meant to foreshadow what God would do with His only Son Jesus Christ. Except that in the case of Jesus, no substitute was found. He went to the cross and died there as the sacrifice for our sin.

Recently, the US space program got off the ground again with the flight of the Shuttle Discovery. After the Challenger disaster, the shuttle had been grounded for two and a half years while improvements were made. While in flight, the Discovery astronauts wanted to honor their seven comrades who had lost their lives in the Challenger explosion. They read this statement:

“Dear friends we have resumed the journey that we promised to continue for you. Your loss has meant that we could confidently begin anew.”

The Discovery crew wanted to honor the Challenger astronauts not because they had achieved anything special, but simply because they had died. And they hadn’t even died willingly; they had hoped to return to earth safely. But their death did accomplish something - it contributed to the success and safety of the ensuing shuttle missions. So they deserved to be honored.

That is why Jesus Christ deserves to be honored. Because His death accomplished something for us. He opened up the way to God for us. He atoned for our sins. That is why God did not spare His Son, but gave Him up for us all. God gave Him up to die, because it was only His death that could accomplish those things. The old Bible scholar Octavius Winslow, writing over a century ago, puts it this way:

“Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; - but the Father, for love.”

And by dying, Jesus made it possible for all who believe in Him to live.

Romans 4:25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

A little boy and his father were walking through their New England village one cold wintry night. It was during the time of the Second World War. Families who had sent sons into the service would commemorate that fact by displaying a star for each son in the front window of their homes. The boy counted the stars in the windows as they walked along. “Oh father, they gave one. Look over there, they gave two.” When they reached the end of the street, he and his father entered a clearing. As they looked up into the clear winter sky, one star shone with particular brilliance. And the boy said slowly and softly, “Look father, there’s even a star in God’s window. God gave His Son.”

John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

But in coming not to condemn the world, the Son was Himself condemned to die.

1 John 2:2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

To save us, God sacrificed His Son. To rescue us, He rejected Him. This is the story of Christmas. It is a frightening story… an awesome story… a story of a love that gaves up everything.

Now before we conclude that it was God the Father who did all the giving and that Christ was merely the victim, let me remind you that the Bible says that Christ, being God, did all this willingly Himself. In Gal.2:20 we read:

the Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me.

It cost him everything to come to earth to die for us. It cost him his home in heaven. It cost him his rights and prerogatives. It cost him his dignity. And ultimately, as he hung dying on the Cross as our sin substitute, it cost him his fellowship with his Father. It cost Him His life.

C.S. Lewis describes what Christ did in the beautiful metaphor of a pearl-diver in his book “Miracles”. (read p.115-116)

We can try and try again to understand how God could become a man. It is a mystery - the greatest riddle of the ages. It is awesome, it is troubling, it is even frightening. It is the miracle of Christmas. I hope and pray that you will think of Christmas in these terms this year. For if you do, then Christmas will not be trivial to you.