The Meaning of Christmas

God entered history as a Jewish child born to a distant decendent of King David with a mission.  That mission had been foretold  by prophet after prophet.  It was to save mankind from the sin of the world by dying on a cross.  Jesus would live the sinless life that men were supposed to have lived, but were unable to do. But it was by dying on that cross that he did what no man could have done.  In the process, he changed men's and women's lives, and they in turn changed the world.  Scott S. Powell provides a few of the details in a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Advent of Christ Changed the World Forever.

The fact is that Christ affected history with such impact that He split time in two, dividing all human activities and events into happening before His coming (called B.C.) or after His coming (called A.D.). No one else in all of human history did this. Christ had to have had a supernatural impact on the world for that to be accepted.

History shows that Christianity and its Church have brought about more changes for the advancement and benefit of people than any other force or movement in history by an immeasurable factor. What is particularly surprising are the myriad achievements made by committed Christians, which nonbelieving secular-minded people also applaud.

Before Christ, human life was cheap and expendable all over the world. In the Americas, the Near East, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Babies, particularly females -- who were considered inferior -- were regularly abandoned. Author George Grant points out: “Before the explosive and penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure were a normal part of everyday life.” That changed in the West with the 6th century Christian Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian whose Law Code declared child abandonment and abortion a crime.

Please go read the entire article.  But what Powell writes about is a small portion of the effects Christ has had on the world.  We often think that the world has always been this way, but it has not.  As Powell points out, before Christ, life was cheap.  And everywhere that Christ is excluded, it still is.

Christ accomplished the mission for which he came into the world. It may not seem like it when we look around every day. It may seem like Satan is winning, but Satan just doesn't recognize that he has already lost. We need to remain faithful, by asking Him each day what we are to do next.

Suffice it to say that life both at home and around the world would no doubt be qualitatively worse today if Christ had never been born and Christianity had not become the greatest spiritual force ever to inspire creative beauty and advance the care and development of people. Indeed, there is reason to sing “Joy to the World.”