Merry Christmas from The Owen’s

Merry Christmas 2012. We just returned from the Christmas Eve Service at the Lutheran Church of Guam, where we had a good time meditating on the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I was thinking that we have a tendency to make Jesus over into an image that fits what we like him to be instead of what he really is. The identity of the real Jesus is quite clear in the angelic announcement in Luke 2.11, “The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”

• He is the Savior who has come into the world to make things right. He would pay for sin at the cross and defeat it in his resurrection, ascension and return. He fixes what is wrong with the world as he “raises the lowly” and judges the oppressor. He heals His people and brings peace.
• He is the Messiah, King who will fulfill the promise to crush the head of evil and “rule the world in truth and grace.” Even now he rules from the right hand of the Father and waits the day when the “kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of God and of His Christ.”
• He is the LORD, God come in the flesh. Everything that makes us human was assumed and redeemed by the 2nd person of the Trinity and God entered into our world and into our lives. God is truly a God of love and relationship. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.

So let us be merry and announce the Gospel with our words and with our lives. The real Gospel: Jesus Christ is LORD!!