Coffee with PJ - Christmas Eve Edition

As I sit here drinking my coffee this Christmas Eve morning (hmm ... is this my third or fourth cup?), I want to give you, my readers, some insightful words that will help enrich your Christmas celebration. These words come from the excellent book, Knowing God, written in 1973 by J.I. Packer (this evening I am sharing The Watchman's Tale about a night watchman in the town of Bethlehem - it was while a night watchman as a college student that I first read Packer's book!). I hope Packer's words encourage you in your worship of the Christ child this Christmas season. 

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9).

"We see now what it meant for the Son of God to . . . become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony—spiritual even more than physical—that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. (See Luke 12:50 and the Gethsemane story.) It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.


Rejoice in this indescribable gift of God! And repent of your sin and believe the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ! 

Merry Christmas! 

PJ