Our mission, WorldVenture, has produced a package of daily Christmas devotionals, meant to help during times of pandemic. It’s a free download. One of them is mine, for Day 17. Please download and enjoy!
Where, O Death, is Your Sting DAY 17
My favorite Christmas book was written in the early 300s. No holly, ivy or mistletoe but this Christian author traced out the incarnation of the Son of God from eternity past to our own future. Christmas means the defeat of death, including the defeat of cancer, heart disease, and every deadly virus:
“You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because he dwells in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to trouble it…[Since the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son], death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; tied hand and foot the passers-by sneer at Death, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the King who has conquered him.”
—Athanasius, On the Incarnation 9.3-4, 27.4. Read the whole book HERE.
Athanasius summed up Christ’s victory by quoting 1 Corinthians 15:55 NIV: “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where O Death, is your sting?”
The “sting” here in the original language is not a mere bee-sting, but the deadly pang of a scorpion! But in Christ’s kingdom, even COVID-19 is tied up hand and foot; and although the virus plays at being king, we need not fear his rage! For we serve the legitimate monarch, the true King, who conquered death itself.
Gary Shogren serves in Latin America. Learn more at worldventure.com/shogren
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 