This New Life

“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).

A manger? A barnyard feeding trough? Seriously? Is that where they set the baby Jesus right after his birth? A place where snorting animals just nuzzled their feed and insects are still foraging for food? What a crude cradle for such a lofty child. The old carol asks, “Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding?”

Whatever the answer to that question, it set the shepherds in motion that night with a message they couldn’t keep to themselves. The swaddled Christ was a dynamic sign to them, so much so that it catapulted them into heralding the good news of his birth to everyone they could find (Luke 2:17). What did they see that we might be missing?

The temple was the center of worship in Israel. Two lambs a day were offered there, along with additional ones on feast days. Where did all those lambs come from? They were bred in the fields of Bethlehem, five miles south of Jerusalem. According to the Torah, sacrificial lambs had to be perfect. They had to be spotless and without blemish, or they couldn’t be offered.

The most vulnerable time of a lamb’s life is right after its birth. Like many animals, they’re unsteady on their feet, and they can slip and fall quite easily. Consequently, ancient shepherds had a custom to prevent injury. Right after the birth of a lamb, they would wrap it tightly in strips of cloth, placing it in mounds of hay so it wouldn’t bruise itself. If it did, it couldn’t be used in worship.

But these weren’t just any old cloths that encased the new lambs. The shepherds got the material from Jerusalem. They were the old white linen robes worn by priests during the daily ritual at the temple. After regular use, the priestly garments got so covered in blood, sweat, and filth, they had to be swapped out for new ones.

Normally, the priests didn’t throw out their old garments. They were semi-sacred, so there was a protocol for decommissioning them—much like our country’s old flags. The military doesn’t throw them away; they remove them from circulation with ceremonies for honorable disposal. The same was true for the old priestly garments. The Levites decommissioned them and sent them to Bethlehem so the shepherds could swaddle their newborn lambs with them.

“This will be a sign to you,” the shepherds were told (Luke 2:12). Later that night they saw a human lamb wrapped in faded blood-stained garments. To the Bethlehem shepherds, such a sight would have been loaded with significance. “Here’s the Lamb of God who will put an end to all your sacrifices and take away the sins of the world. He will be the bloodied and unblemished priest who will purchase your salvation. That’s how much you are treasured by the Lord.”

God was speaking the shepherds’ language. He was saying, “Here’s your sign,” and they understood it. Later theological reflection in the New Testament would take up this theme of Jesus as the Lamb of God, but the shepherds saw it first. Deep down, they knew God had just shown them their own value by giving them the most valuable thing he could give—his own Son.

Christmas, then, is God bankrupting heaven to put a price tag on earth. No wonder Paul wrote, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

Yes, Jesus came to “save his people from their sin” (Matt 1:21), but that’s because a marred masterpiece is still a masterpiece. Indeed, three times in the Gospels Jesus called his people “valuable” (Matt 6:26; 10:29-31; 12:11-12). Moreover, he said we could never trade our souls for the whole world without us somehow being cheated in the transaction (Mark 8:36).

To the God who made us, we are worth the price of restoration. That’s why Paul calls us God’s “workmanship” or “poetic artistry” (Eph 2:10). God is restoring his people to the original beauty and goodness we had from the beginning.

On that first Christmas, the Master Artist painted himself into our canvas, landing by design in a manger and subjecting himself to all the cruelties we humans brought into the picture. And now he restores us from the inside out—in more ways than one.

May your own soul feel its incredible worth this holiday season. Indeed, there’s no other way to be truly merry at Christmas.

Do you feel valuable? Significant? Important? Not in the sense of an over inflated ego or an attitude of superiority toward others—but in the sense that you matter, that your presence here on Earth is significant, that when you make a footprint in the sand it means something?

We meet people on a regular basis who are down on themselves, down on hope, and down on life. And, really, all of us have some regrets, disappointments, failures, and wrong turns that we’ve made in our day. Consequently, as life unfolds, we sometimes feel used, abused, abandoned, and confused. We feel cheapened. Sometimes we even feel worthless.

Life has a way of leaving its skid marks on our soul. It has a way of drawing its map on our face, and those lines cut deeply—not only into the skin, but into the heart. Sometimes it’s because other people have been cruel to us. Sometimes it’s because life has simply dealt us an unfair hand. Sometimes it’s because we ourselves have made poor choices.

We get involved in worthless pursuits, and over time we feel worthless ourselves. As it says in verse 1 of “O Holy Night,” “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.” Sometimes it gets so bad for us personally, we don’t even feel valuable to God any more, the one who made us. We say things like…

“God could never love me.”
“God could never be pleased with me.”
“After what I’ve done, God could never consider me valuable.”

Such thoughts are understandable, but they’re also wrong. Three times in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus states that human beings are “valuable” (Matt 6:26, 10:29-31, 12:11-12). Moreover, the value of something is determined by what somebody is willing to pay for it. I first learned that lesson on eBay about 10 years ago. I was trying to get a few things from my childhood Christmas—silly decorations, like ShinyBrite Christmas ornaments, little red pixie dolls, Santa pins with noses that light up when you pull the string. I kept getting outbid, so I wound up going to my maximum bid right away. I refused to be outbid by anybody!

Now, all of those objects were old, dirty, and defective, and probably meaningless to most people—but I was willing to pay top dollar for them. Why? Because I wanted them. They were valuable to me. If the value of something is determined by what somebody is willing to pay for it, then look at what God himself was willing to pay for us. When we begin to do that, we quickly realize that God could not have paid a higher price for us than he did.

God the Father bankrupted heaven for us on that first Christmas. That’s why Christmas happened in the first place. God wanted so much for us to become part of his family that he became part of ours. We can all be glad the song doesn’t end with, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.” It goes on to say, “Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Take a listen to this message, and dare to believe that your soul can feel its worth, too!