God’s Greatest Gift of LOVE
December is upon us – time to “deck the hall with boughs of holly”! December is certainly a month of joy, as we look ahead to our celebration of Jesus’ birth, the great opening step in God’s amazing rescue plan for all people. As believers, we focus on Jesus at Christmas, but most of the world focuses on Santa Claus and presents! We do find presents at Christmas in the Bible (see Matthew 2:11) but not good old Santa Claus! However, the man who gives Santa his name, and even the tradition of giving gifts, was Nicolas, a devout Christian man living in what is today southern Turkey, about 1700 years ago.
Nicolas was born into a wealthy family. He lost his parents at a young age and poured his life into devotion to Jesus and the church. In those days, there was still great persecution; as a church leader, Nicolas ended up in jail. God turned the heart of Constantine, the Roman emperor, towards Christianity and Nicolas was set free. A few years later, Nicolas got to participate in an empire-wide church council that the emperor called together, to sort out a very important question – was Jesus truly God or not?!?
Believe it or not, the meeting got rowdy! A man named Arius of Alexandria was arguing before the assembly, denying that Jesus was truly God. Intensely frustrated by this false teaching, Nicolas leaped up from his seat, went over, and punched Arius in the face! Emperor Constantine sent angry Nic back to jail, but released him when he asked forgiveness for his violent action. The Bible does not allow us to personally act in condemnation and physical violence, even towards false teachers.
For the rest of his life, Nicolas served the churches in his area with great generosity, especially in giving gifts to children. Travelers and traders who moved in and out of Nicholas’s hometown carried the stories far and wide of Nicholas the generous, whom people one day began calling Saint Nicholas. His name, and the tradition of giving gifts (especially to children) persisted down through the generations, until today Saint Nicholas is another way of saying Santa Clause. (Saint = Santa and niCOLAS = Claus!)
Many years later, Martin Luther connected the tradition of Nicolas’s generous gift giving with God’s infinite generosity, giving us the greatest gift of all time, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. As Luther once preached, “Give thanks to God, who so loved you that He gave you a Savior who is yours. And for a sign He sent the angel from heaven to proclaim him, in order that nothing else should be preached except that this child is the Savior! (Luke 2:11)
May our days truly be both merry and bright, always filled with joy over God’s greatest gift of love!
Pastor Jamie
