For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? Mark 8:35-37

In the beginning was God. He created all things and through Him all things were created.  He was eternally and infinitely blessed with there being nothing that could ever add to His happiness (John 1).  Despite all of this, God made Himself nothing and gave His all to save the souls of man.  He came down from His throne in Heaven and forfeited His perfect communion with the Father as well as all the attributes of the Godhead to rescue sinners.  By taking on flesh He was able to die our death and give up His righteousness so that our penalty could be His and we can have an inheritance greater than the whole world (2 Corinthians 5).

Although He was God, He took on the form of a helpless baby. His was a lowly status so that He could serve all mankind, to return to us the soul’s that we lost at the fall when sin and death took Adam’s helpless race into bondage.  Jesus embodied humility and this is evident by His life of obedience and submission to His Father’s will (Philippians 2).  He counted the cost and bore the scorn and shame of the cross to save sinners.  The Son of God gave up His life on the tree so that we could have it to the full.

Therefore how should we live?  The Christmas story calls us to be ambassadors of Christ (2 Corinthians 5). Our lives should be joyous ones because we have been given good news of great joy (Luke 2:10).  Every step we should take should be one of liberation because one who was fully God and fully man has broken the head of satan who enslaved us to unrighteousness and sin (Genesis 3).  Jesus lost His life so that we can gain ours, therefore we need to find our life in Him and be a people defined by His redeeming work.  Our greatest profit is the reward of being reconciled to God.   Christ was born in a manger on Christmas day, died on the cross in our place, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so that we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

I have had minimal internet access since the infamous east coast blizzard of 2009 started.  I am just now getting caught up on reading about the senate health care bill and other pro-life news.  Below is an excerpt for one of the most amazing pro-life articles I have read in a while.

Health care reform is an issue of social justice. One of the primary issues, if not the primary issue of social justice, is the fundamental right to life. If you claim to be concerned with “social justice” you cannot, at the same time, be for the right to end the life of an unborn human being.

Social justice, if we listen to Senators Mikulski and Reid, concerns the whole of the human being—including his or her health care and access to that health care. Whole Life America recognizes and applauds the cry for human dignity that is inherent to the cry for social justice within the health care reform debate.

However, nothing could be further from social justice than an act which has robbed over 46 million Americans of their lives since 1973. If, as the senators would have us believe, this health care reform debate is in fact an issue of social justice then any part of it that sanctions stripping any member of our society of his or her fundamental rights—terminating someone’s life is such an act—cannot in good conscience be truthfully called social justice.

You can read the rest at: FOXNews.com – Abortion, Social Justice and Health Care Reform.

The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross.  It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard or will hear.

We talk glibly of the “Christmas Spirit,” rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis.  But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning.  It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas.  And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians – I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians – go through this world in the Spirit of the priest and Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and a perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side.  That is not the Christmas spirit.  Nor is it the spirit of those Christians – alas, they are many – whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob.  For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor – spending and being spent – to enrich their fellow  humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others – not just their own friends – in whatever way there seems need.

-J.I. Packer

Spurgeon was particularly on the fire with today’s reading from Morning and Evening.  I pray that one day I am half the writer he was.

“I am crucified with Christ.”

Galatians 2:20

The Lord Jesus Christ acted in what he did as a great public representative person, and his dying upon the cross was the virtual dying of all his people. Then all his saints rendered unto justice what was due, and made an expiation to divine vengeance for all their sins. The apostle of the Gentiles delighted to think that as one of Christ’s chosen people, he died upon the cross in Christ. He did more than believe this doctrinally, he accepted it confidently, resting his hope upon it. He believed that by virtue of Christ’s death, he had satisfied divine justice, and found reconciliation with God. Beloved, what a blessed thing it is when the soul can, as it were, stretch itself upon the cross of Christ, and feel, “I am dead; the law has slain me, and I am therefore free from its power, because in my Surety I have borne the curse, and in the person of my Substitute the whole that the law could do, by way of condemnation, has been executed upon me, for I am crucified with Christ.”

But Paul meant even more than this. He not only believed in Christ’s death, and trusted in it, but he actually felt its power in himself in causing the crucifixion of his old corrupt nature. When he saw the pleasures of sin, he said, “I cannot enjoy these: I am dead to them.” Such is the experience of every true Christian. Having received Christ, he is to this world as one who is utterly dead. Yet, while conscious of death to the world, he can, at the same time, exclaim with the apostle, “Nevertheless I live.” He is fully alive unto God. The Christian’s life is a matchless riddle. No worldling can comprehend it; even the believer himself cannot understand it. Dead, yet alive! crucified with Christ, and yet at the same time risen with Christ in newness of life! Union with the suffering, bleeding Saviour, and death to the world and sin, are soul-cheering things. O for more enjoyment of them!

Read it at Morning and Evening: Daily Readings | Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

“And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well.” Mark 7:37

Let us remember it as we look forward to the days yet to come.  We know what they may be, bright or dark, may or few.  But we know that we are in the hands of Him who “doeth all things well.  He will not err in any of  His dealings with us.  He will take away and give – He will afflict and bereave – He will move and He will settle, with perfect wisdom, at the right time, in the right way.  The great Shepherd of the sheep makes no mistakes.  He leaves every lamb of  His flock by the right way to the city of habitation.

We shall never see the full beauty of these words till the resurrection morning.  We shall then look back over our lives, and know the meaning of everything that happened from first to last.  We shall remember all the way by which we were led, and confess that all was “well done.”  The why and the wherefore, the causes and the reasons of everything which now perplexes, will be clear and plain as the sun at noon-day.

-J.C. Ryle

Mark Driscoll has 16 tips for dad to help us represent Christ to our families.  I’d highly recommend all the dads reading this to check it out.

“’Tis the season for Dad to drop the holiday ball, stress out as the money is being spent for presents, and miss yet another providential opportunity to lovingly lead his family. So, this blog is intended to help dads not fall into the same old rut of holiday humdrum, sitting on the couch watching football and eating carbs, but rather intentionally plan out the upcoming holiday season. Our children grow quickly and if we miss the sacred moments God opens up for us to connect with and bless our families, everyone suffers and we set in motion generations of missed opportunity.”

Read the rest at The Mars Hill Blog | Blog Archive » 16 Daddy Christmas Tips.

he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, – 1 Timothy 6:15

Q. 7. What is God?
A. God is a Spirit,in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, everywhere present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.

For God to be blessed means that He is infinitely happy. He is sovereign and all that He purposes is accomplished (Isaiah 46:9-10).  All that God does is for His pleasure and delight (Psalm 115:3).  Even if something He ordains does not seem like it would please Him we have to remember we only have a limited perspective and the  ultimate end that He has in mind will glorify Him.  God does not need you or I for Him to blessed, we are not a blessing to God, He has all He needs in the Godhead to be supremely happy for all eternity (Isaiah 42:1).

We call God blessedness because He is the greatest blessing that we have.  The greatest joy that we can have is to be found in God, no other joy compares to knowing Him.  He is our great reward and His love is better than life (Psalm 63:1).  There is no human being that has lived who was happier than Jesus.  Jesus gave us the description of happiness in the beatitudes when he said who the blessed are and only He has perfectly lived out the beatitudes.

Only through Jesus can we have joy and have it to the full.  James Montgomery Boice once stated, “The blessing of God in an individual life begins with the forgiveness of sin.”  The Gospel is the good news that Christ has paid the penalty for our sins, there is no more striving or work that we must do to earn God’s blessing, but it is freely given to us  (Romans 9:16).  The Gospel opens our blinded eyes so that we can see God as the jewel of great worth (Matthew 13:45-46).  The greatest good and highest enjoyment we can have is knowing God and this is only possible through Christ death bringing us near to God by His blood (Ephesians 2:13).

Christianity Today has a great interview with Mike Huckabee that spans a wide range of topics from health care, Sarah Palin, foreign policy, Christmas and much more.  I voted for Huckabee in the primary and wish I could have voted for him as president.  He gave a great answer in the interview about health care reform which you can read below.

Would you vote for the health-care bill if the Stupak amendment [that bans funding for abortion] was retained in the final version?

Absolutely not. First of all, I don’t have any confidence that the Democrats in the House plan to honor that in the long term, and secondly, if abortion wasn’t even a part, it’s still going to create huge deficits. It’s a job-killing bill. It intrudes into an area of people’s responsibilities and rights as citizens. I think the bill on its face is unconstitutional, in that it requires the purchase of a product for a person to exercise his or her rights as a citizen. We already decided that’s unconstitutional when we outlawed the poll tax that required people to pay money in order to vote, because the Supreme Court declared that you can’t make people pay money in order to enjoy the rights and benefits of citizenship. That’s exactly what this bill does, and I think it’s an outrage and an insult to the Constitution and to the citizens of the United States.

You can read the rest here: Q & A: Mike Huckabee | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

C.J. Mahaney has a great reflection on Tiger Woods being hunted by the media and sin at the Sovereign Grace blog.

This is a big story with a big audience and it’s a story that will not disappear soon. Tiger Woods is being hunted by the media.

But let us make sure we do not join the hunt. A Christian’s response to this story should be distinctly different. We should not be entertained by the news. We should not have a morbid interest in all the details. We should be saddened and sobered. We should pray for this man and even more for his wife.

And we can be sure that in the coming days we will be in conversations with friends and family where this topic will emerge. And when it does, we can avoid simply listening to the latest details and speculations, and avoid speaking self-righteously, but instead we can humbly draw attention to the grace of God in the gospel.

You can read the rest here: Hunting Tiger Woods.

“We talk about the problems of ‘applying the Bible to our lives,’ which often means modifying the Bible somewhat adjectivally to fit the assumed ‘reality’ of the life we live ‘in the real world.’ What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality – the real story – to which we are called to conform ourselves?” – Chris Wright