The UK Christmas retreat closed gracefully on Sunday with a sermon from Romans 8:1-4 on the salvation accomplished by God for all mankind through the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, to this world.

The sermon was preached by Pastor Andrew Clark, who explained that this passage gets to the crux of Christmas – a pivotal moment in history when God changed everything, making a way for fallen man to become children and sons once again.

We can make the mistake of thinking that we are ‘good people’ or only have ‘a few sins’, but the reality is that we were completely fallen and stood in the place of condemnation before God. We were completely and utterly sinners, cut off from God and deserving of only judgement and condemnation.

There was no way we could save ourselves. There was no law we could keep, or deed we could do that could free us from that condemnation. The Law could only show us right and wrong, but it could never save us. This was our hopeless situation before the coming of Christ.

But the message of Christmas is ‘only Jesus Christ’. It is only because Jesus Christ came to this world and shed His own blood for us that we could be saved. This was a completely one-sided gift given by God for sinners.

It was not that the condemnation simply disappeared. But rather the condemnation that was supposed to fall on us was transferred to Christ through the shedding of His blood.

We should have been abandoned by God, but instead God came to us by sending His own Son to be a sin offering. He condemned the sin in the flesh and took the condemnation off us and put it on His Son instead.

This is why Paul proclaims that there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It is a truly remarkable proclamation. Our status has changed, and we are now the children of God, no longer of the world but adopted into God’s family. We have a new identity and a new inheritance. This is amazing grace.

As a symbol of this changed status, God gave His Spirit to us so that we too could cry out to Him as “Abba, Father”. This is the intimate relationship with God that has been established through Christ.

The cry of “Abba, Father” is a cry of dependence that says ‘I put my trust completely in You’. Jesus, in his darkest moment, cried “Abba, Father”. It is the cry of sonship, and it has been placed in our hearts by the Spirit of God.

Christmas is the time when we meditate on and celebrate the Son of God coming to earth, taking away all of our condemnation, and giving us His own Spirit so that we too could cry out to God as sons for our every need. May we remember and rejoice in this Good News this Christmas, giving thanks to God for this unspeakable gift of grace, love and mercy.