The living room was silent, with all eyes fixed on the screen. MS Dhoni and India were four runs away from World Cup glory. In a flash, he struck the ball clean over the boundary, and Ravi Shastri’s jubilant voice boomed, “India lifts the World Cup!” The house erupted with joy, echoed by celebrations in the streets. I felt triumphant.
I have always been a sports enthusiast. Concerned, my father would often remark. “You spend hours watching strangers play. They don’t know you, yet they earn lakhs. Who’s truly missing out?” As a passionate fan, I could not ignore the question: “Why do I dedicate so much to the achievements of people I don’t know?”
What is the Human Condition?
The reason we support a sports team or cheer for a Bollywood star is because they have become our representatives.
A representative is someone with whom we have a shared identity—nationality, language, culture, or values. We find self-esteem and satisfaction in their performances as if their accomplishments are ours. This reveals the nature of the human condition.
The desire to be exceptional paralyses us.
We often fall short of achieving the self-induced glory for which we strive. The desire to be exceptional paralyses us. In hopelessness, we long to transfer the burden of glory to someone independent of ourselves. It unveils our desperate longing to bask in reflected glory. Humanity yearns to find liberation through this shared experience of triumph.
We seek a representative, a champion.
The Bible acknowledges the deep longing of humanity to reclaim the glory lost in the Garden of Eden (Ps. 8:5). Through Adam’s sin, we lost our original righteousness and perfect communion with God. Humanity is now broken, seeking restoration from a state of sin and misery (Rom 3:23).
The only way back is perfect obedience to God’s law. But to keep the Ten Commandments perfectly is as futile as trying to pull an Air India Airbus with a bicycle.
Christmas celebrates the divine resolution of this problem.
What is the Gospel?
Recognising our inability to reach him, the Triune God took the initiative to rescue glory-starved humanity from its helpless state. In his infinite grace, God sent his Son—Jesus, fully God and fully man—to become our representative.
A Bollywood star represents their fans by sharing a common language, culture, or identity. In the same way, God sent Jesus to share in our humanity and truly represent us.
What is done to Jesus is treated as though it were done to those he represents.
For God’s divine justice to find satisfaction, the very human nature that sinned against him has to bear the penalty for it.
To qualify as a representative, Christ had to take the same nature in which we sinned. So as humanity’s representative, what is done to Jesus is treated as though it were done to those he represents.
When Christ absorbed God’s wrath on the cross, it is as though we bore it. When he paid the debt for sin, it is as if we paid it in full. By partaking in the same flesh and blood, Christ frees us from the judgment we rightfully deserve (Heb. 2:14).
Where we failed to keep the law, he succeeded. The Lawmaker humbled himself, coming under the very law he established. He upheld it perfectly, despite experiencing weariness, hunger, loneliness, sorrow, and other human frailties. For our salvation, he lived in flawless obedience as a true human.
What is Our Reason to Rejoice?
Jesus Christ ran the race of perfect obedience, won the gold medal, and placed it around the neck of all who put their trust in him. Jesus’s victory becomes our victory.
However, unlike Dhoni’s glorious swing of the bat or the heroic entrance of Shah Rukh Khan, Christ our representative, secured victory through humiliation.
When Jesus was born, he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, tightly bound in strips of cloth (Luke 2:12). This was to protect an infant from reflexive movements and suffocation. This small act was the beginning and the symbol of Christ’s life of humility.
Christ came to represent us, to be our champion.
The limitless God humbled himself to the point of being confined by cloth. The Saviour, who commands legions of angels, now lies wrapped in rags. The King of kings came to win glory for sinful humanity through the path of great humiliation.
Christ dons the jersey of human flesh, bearing our names on his back, and steps onto the field of time and space to face death, sin, and Satan head-on. He triumphs to the resounding cheers of angels and cherubim, with the Father vindicating his victory through the resurrection.
Christ came to represent us, to be our champion, and to take our place on that silent night in Bethlehem. As a result, we too will be resurrected with glorious bodies, rule over angels, co-reign with Christ, and inherit an eternal reward (Col 3:4, 1 Cor 6:2).
Christmas is the good news that by basking in the reflected glory of Jesus Christ by faith, we become truly human.
