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The Gospel is God's
The Sunday After Nativity (Matt. 2:13-23)
December 30, 2001

As we gather this morning, we're still in the thick of the "holiday season." We've celebrated the nativity of Christ; his Circumcision and Theophany are just around the corner. The New Year and its celebrations - (semi-pagan and otherwise) is almost upon us.

Christmas, however, and the feasts that follow it, are not about the achievements and activities of man. They're about the acts of God. God sparked new life in the womb of the Virgin. Jesus was not born as a result of an act of man; His birth was the result of a direct act of God. The only human act involved was the "yes" of the Virgin to the word of the angel.

In our epistle today, we see that the Apostle Paul says the same of his preaching of the Gospel. "Brethren, I would have you know that the Gospel preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from man, neither was I taught it, but it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ."

This has two important applications for us to consider, based on the fact that the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are not ours, but God's. They did not originate with us, but with God. They do not describe our accomplishments, but God's. They are not our possession; they belong to God.

What's the point? So often we unconsciously begin to treat our Christianity, our Orthodox Faith as our own possession.
For example, we think we own it because of our ethnic heritage: "I'm Greek, therefore I'm Orthodox." For the same reason, many -people that meet me and learn my last name can't believe I'm not Roman Catholic. Many of you know that if you say you are an Arab, people automatically conclude you are a Muslim.

But how did the Apostle Paul become a Christian and an Apostle? Not just because he was a Jew. He says it quite clearly in our epistle today: "It pleased God to reveal his Son to me." His faith was the result of divine grace and nothing less. In our epistle today, he tells us what he was doing before God revealed himself to him: persecuting the church. In other words, he had no "natural right" to his faith and the knowledge of God.

You can see this by the fact that after his conversion, he ended up spending much of his ministry trying to separate faith in Jesus Christ from its ethnic origins. What do you find him arguing over and over again in his epistles? You don't have to become a Jew to be a Christian. Faith makes you a Christian; and faith only comes by the grace of God. No one is born a Christian; Christians are made, not born.

What this means for you and me is this: We cannot hold our Orthodox Christian faith as our own possession and birthright against others who do not have it. There is no room for "pride of ownership" here. We know Jesus Christ as the Son of God; we are not made better than anyone else for by that fact. Orthodoxy may be the true Church; that does not set us above those who are not in it. We do not divide humanity into two camps as did the ancient Greeks (Greeks and barbarians) and as do Jews (Jews and Gentiles) with the implicit assumption that those who are not in our camp are inferior to us. Because it is a gift from God, our faith ought to fill us with grateful humility rather than swelling us with pride. In other words: confession of the true faith is no excuse for arrogance or intolerance. This is God's, not ours; give God the credit, not yourself.

The second application relies on the same basic truth.

Do we really consider what we mean when we celebrate Christmas? Have the words grown so familiar to us that they lose their impact?

We are saying that God, by his own will and initiative, took on our flesh and became man. This is what Christmas is all about.
Again, this is something that God has done. He did once, and once and for all, at a specific time in a specific place. The infinite and eternal Creator of all the worlds literally became an infant and was suckled at the breast of his mother.

This is what we believe and confess: Jesus Christ is absolutely unique and decisive for every human being that has ever lived. He is God in the flesh, God's act for the salvation of the world.

How then can some Christians, even our own Orthodox people, say that it really doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you are a "good person?" In this way of thinking, you might be a Jew or a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu, and deny everything I just said about Jesus Christ, but as long as you are sincere and devoted to your religion, that's what counts. It doesn't really matter whom you pray to, as long as you pray. Or following the same logic even further, you may be an atheist or agnostic, but as long as you are nice to your neighbors, you will still go to heaven.

Now I for one, will never accept the notion that a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu has no knowledge of God or experience of God. But there is more to it than that.

What about "Jesus was conceived by an act of God?"
What about "Jesus is God in the flesh?"
What about "Jesus died for the sins of the whole world?"
What about "Jesus rose bodily from the dead?"

If these are God's acts, then they are important. And all the good acts and good intentions of others notwithstanding, they are so important that they are non-negotiable. In other words, confession of the true faith has no room for RELATIVISM - the idea that there really is no one truth. This faith is God's, not ours - not ours to compromise, water down, or explain away.

Let us listen again to the opening words of our epistle:
"Brethren, I would have you know that the Gospel preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from man, neither was I taught it, but it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ."

If this gospel, this faith, is God's, then let us treat it as such.
Let's avoid the pitfall of arrogance and intolerance - using our faith to belittle others - even as we avoid the pitfall of relativism - compromising and corrupting the faith God has given us.

Only by avoiding both of these will we be found worthy of that most awesome name: Christian.

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