Christmas in Hebrews
Tucked away in the heart of an "Easter" kind of message about sacrifices and salvation comes this little Christmas gem: " Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings your were not pleased. Then I said, Here I am–it is written about me in the scroll–I have come to do your will, O God' " –Hebrews 10:5-7, NIV. The writer imagines the heavenly conversation; Jesus assuring his Father that their wills were in perfect harmony, that he was about to take on a baby's soft and vulnerable skin to set aside the old system of continual and ineffectual sacrifices in favour of what is described just a few words later as: " And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all " –Hebrews 10:10, NIV. God prepared the body of that child. Jesus put aside the rights and privileges of the ...