I love this season of the year. I love living in a place where we actually do have a winter wonderland and usually have a white Christmas rather than merely dreaming about it.

The season beginning with our celebration of giving thanks to God for his wonderful, innumerable blessings at Thanksgiving through the time of our celebrating the incarnation of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and our celebrating of the New Year’s unknown opportunities is my favorite stretch on the calendar.

Christmas is the magnificent celebration of God’s wonderful provision for us as sinful humans. It is the beginning step of the fulfillment of God the Father’s redemptive plan for those who were created by him, for him and in his image. It is the marking of a time in eternity when Yahweh, Jehovah, became known as Jesus because he would “save his people from their sins.” This is clearly stated by Jesus in John 8:49-59.

It is when Jesus as God began a series of sacrifices in order to make a way of salvation possible for sinful men starting with the sacrifice of his eternal majesty to be born as a helpless baby human in a humble manger. It is when the King of Glory became the son of man to become our serving sacrifice to pay the debt of our sin.

Jesus sacrificed eternity for time. He sacrificed his eternal form for a human body. He sacrificed no limits on his deity to accept the limitations of being clothed in time and in a human existence.

He who had never needed anything now needed foods, fluids, rest and a host of other necessities to exist in a human body for the first time in all of eternity.

The sacrifice of Jesus did not begin in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed for the will of the Father to be done.

Nor did it start when he was wounded for our transgressions in the beating he received at the hands of Roman soldiers. Nor did it commence when he was nailed to and hung up on the old rugged cross of Golgotha.

It did not initiate with his descent into the lower parts of the earth and his preaching to the souls in captivity, Ephesians 4:8-10 and I Peter 3:18-19.

No, friends, it all started when “God was manifest in the flesh” as stated in I Timothy 3:16. It began when “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” as stated in John 1:14.

Franklin Humber is pastor of the Summerville Baptist Church.