“Jesus did not come to create a holiday. He came to die for sinners,” prolific preacher, Steve Lawson, stated.

That crucial truth sprung up recently in a conversation with a friend of mine.

Always keeping me on my toes, this wit-filled fun-loving friend asked, “Pastor Mel, are you my brother from another mother?”

“No,” I said, “but we can be bothers because of God the Father through God the Son.” He replied, “I don’t want a middle-man. I want go direct to God.”

On the one hand, he was right in picking up on what I was saying about Jesus indeed being the middle-man in God’s plan to save man. On the other hand, many are like my friend. In fact, all religions (except Christianity) are like my friend. They think that they way to God is direct. They all practically fall into the same trap of the “False Religion of the Good Enough: I’m good enough to get to heaven myself.” That kind of religion cancels out the indispensable middle-man.

If you don’t want a middle man, you miss the whole point of Christmas. Jesus came to be one. From conception to adulthood, the Son of God became human to be our sinless mediator, a go-between and one who stands in the gap for us. “Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of [the devil] who holds the power of death… For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest (middle-man) in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people,” says Hebrews 2: 14-17.

Jesus’ mission was unmistakable: He was born to die with a purpose. The purpose of his coming was to die for our sin. Without his death, how would He have been able to fulfill the mission disclosed in his very name? “He shall save his people from their sins.” This life-saving gospel is amazingly discovered even in a children’s revised rendition of Jingle Bells expressing the sin-erasing power of our Middle-man:

Gospel Bells, Gospel Bells

Ring them all the days.

Ring them while you’re at your work

and while you’re at your play, Hey!

Gospel Bells, Gospel Bells

Ring them all the days.

Ring out the news that

Jesus came to take our sins away!

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.