Christmas 2025: GOD ON A CROSS
This time of year always draws our eyes back to Bethlehem, back to a manger too small to hold the glory it carried, back to a Child who slept beneath a sky He Himself had once spoken into being. We say, “Jesus became human,” and we nod, as though such a sentence could ever be simple. But hidden inside that truth is the heartbeat of the gospel—more staggering than stars, more humbling than dust.
For if He became human, and if He is divine—and the Scriptures speak of this with unembarrassed clarity—then what happened at Calvary can only be described in one way: God on a cross.
Not a messenger.
Not an angel.
Not a created spirit clothed in borrowed flesh.
But God Himself, stooping so low that nails could fasten Him to wood He once designed.
The mind trembles to hold such a truth. Yet the soul is steadied by it.
We remember that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). We recall that in Him “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). We hear the angel call Him “Immanuel”—God with us (Matthew 1:23). And then we stand beneath the shadow of Golgotha and realize: if the One walking toward that hill is truly who the Scriptures say He is, then the cross is not merely the death of a righteous man—it is the self-giving love of God poured out in human form.
God on a cross—that is the essence of everything we preach. For a distant deity does not save; a theoretical Christ does not redeem. But the God who writes Himself into our story, who steps into our skin and carries our griefs, who tastes death for every one of us—that God can lift the world out of its ruin. And He has.
If He had only come as a teacher, our hearts would have admired Him.
If He had only come as a prophet, our minds would have listened to Him.
But because He came as God incarnate, our souls must worship Him.
The wonder of Christmas is not merely that a Child was born—it is that a cross already cast its long shadow over the manger. The One who nursed at Mary’s side came to bear the sins Mary herself could not carry. The hands that clung to Joseph’s finger came to be stretched wide in redeeming love. The cry that broke the silence of Bethlehem would, in time, break the power of death itself.
This is why simple faith feels so deep during this season. We are caught up in something eternal. We behold the humility of God, and we try to absorb the impossible truth that love became flesh—and then allowed that flesh to be broken. The gospel is not a set of doctrines lined neatly on a shelf. The gospel is the shocking announcement that the Creator entered His creation, walked its dusty roads, and died at the hands of the very ones He came to redeem.
And when the hammer struck the nails—and when the sky grew dark—and when the earth trembled beneath the weight of His surrender—the universe bore witness to the greatest mystery of all: God on a cross, giving Himself for us (2 Corinthians 5:19).
So as we think of Christ’s birth, let that truth steady your heart. Let it lift your worship. Let it quiet your fears. The infinite has come near. The holy has stepped into the ordinary. And the God who lay in a manger is the same God who hung upon a cross—because love could not stay distant.
And today, because of Him, neither must we.
BDD
