He Shall Save His People From Their Sins

Many people have difficulty celebrating Christmas because of their pain and heartache. But for the Christian, the Lord often uses pain and sorrow to move us into a more profound celebration because we realize that the Child we are celebrating is our ultimate redemption from all pain and heartache. The following profound thought by G. Campbell Morgan tells us why.

The terms of the promise of the advent were, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” From hell? Certainly, but I pray you remember, only by saving them from their sins. He saves us not only from the punishment of sin but, more importantly, from sin itself. That was the great word, “He shall save his people from their sins.” When the shepherds heard the angels’ song, what did they say? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” The promise of advent was that the coming One would take away sins.

During the probation of the long years, this person was meeting all the forces of human temptation and overcoming them. I think we may accurately and reverently speak of the long years of probation as testing years, years in which the fact of the sinlessness of the Son of God was worked out into human visibility.

What were the words of Jesus during his life and ministry? Words revealing the meaning of sin. Words calculated to rebuke sin and to bring men away from sin. What were the works of Jesus? By works I mean miracles and signs and wonders. They were chiefly works overtaking the results of sin. You tell me that the miracles of Jesus were supernatural. I tell you, they were always restorations of the unnatural to natural positions. When he cured disease, it was but the restoration of man’s normal physical condition. He was taking away the results of sin. So, all along the line of his miracles of healing and his calling back out of death, he manifested his power. I see him in the contest with sin, showing men tentatively, not yet finally, how he had the power to take away sins.

Once, in the course of a miraculous revelation of that wonderful power, he said to a man, “Your sins are forgiven.” And he was immediately criticized. What was his answer to the criticism? “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that they may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then said to the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your bed.” You will sadly have misread that story if you think he did some piece of jugglery in the physical realm merely to convince them of his power in the moral realm. There is a most intimate connection between the man’s palsy and his sin, and Jesus demonstrated his ability to take away sin by setting the man free from the result of sin and sending him on his way despite the men who had heard him. These men who criticized had no more to say. They criticized him for pretending to forgive sins, but when they saw the man raised, they had enough simple mental intelligence to see the connection between the thing said and the thing done.

If someone declares that God might have worked our salvation without suffering, our answer is that the man who says so knows nothing about sin. Sin and suffering are coexistent. The moment there is sin, there is suffering.

-G. Campbell Morgan (Updated for Today’s Reader)

Christ came to take away sin by suffering for us, and by taking away our sin he will ultimately take away our suffering as well. We have every reason to rejoice.