Laughter and songs of joy
The one thing the angel told Joseph was that he (JESUS) would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). So, what a time Christmas should be! Saved from our sins! Forgiven, redeemed! What glad-hearted relief!

James 5:13 says, ‘Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise’ (NIV). The word isn’t adequately translated by “happy”. It means more than that - cheerful, joyful, in good spirits. The King James Version is nearer. ‘Is any merry? let him sing psalms.’ “Merry” – joyful – is what God-forgiven people feel. Then sing psalms!

One appropriate psalm to sing is Psalm 126: “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.” The Christian experience of forgiveness is surely more than an equal cause of laughter and songs of joy. Jesus said, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20) and even said, “Leap for joy!” (Luke 6:23). Jump for joy! Be physical about it! Let nobody dare suggest our light-hearted Christmas festivities can possibly be improper. They are very proper! Are they festive enough? “Worship” in the Bible always indicated physical expression. “You turned my wailing into dancing.” (Psalm 30:11)

No one in the entire world, including Israel, had ever imagined that someone born on earth could save people from their sins. The angel’s declaration introduced a breathtaking, revolutionary dispensation.

The Psalmist had said, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all your iniquities.” “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered, whose sin the Lord does not count against him.” (Psalm 103:3, 32:1). The Old Testament people did not fully delight in such a possibility. Yet in Psalm 30:8-12 the writer says, “To you, O Lord, I cried for mercy. You turned my wailing into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.”
The Jewish people had those Scriptures, but Paul had to stand in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch and announce, “My brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you” (Acts 13:38).

“Crazy givers”
When Jesus forgives you, you know it. Everyone who is forgiven has the Christmas spirit –permanently!

We give gifts at Christmas. When Jesus forgave Zacchaeus his shrunken little heart expanded and he pulled his wallet out, unzipped his purse, and wanted to give his money away.

At Christmas we are welcoming. When Jesus forgave a paralysed man on a stretcher he jumped up cured and went home – what a party they had! When Jesus forgave a woman of the streets, she came in, her face washed with tears of thankfulness and she wept with love over the very feet of Christ. That’s true forgiveness, and Jesus said so.

Christmas means friends, and getting together. A Samaritan woman, whose reputation in the town was that she had had six different man-friends, met Jesus. She rushed off to bring her current man – and every other man she could – to meet “the Saviour of the world”, Jesus. That’s forgiveness!

Jesus forgives and saves! He does not just send a remedy. He IS the remedy. There are ways to make a better world, but somehow the world never applies them and lacks the will to put them into practice. Jesus has come to save the world, not to show us the way to save ourselves. We need him to save us, apply the remedy. His hand saves. He changes our will and disposition. Revenge festers in the world, but his blood washes it away.

Jesus, as Saviour, stands alone. When Peter said, “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), it was a categorical statement of undeniable fact, not a contentious assertion.
 
Christmas is different
The “politically correct” fanatics object to the Christian proclamation that Jesus is the only way to God. But it is simply true. When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), he was talking about a God that no one else knew. God was a Father never before imagined. No one knows about God except Jesus who alone reveals him. When we say that the way to God is through Jesus, it is to his Father, not the limited deities and human conceptions others introduce, but that wonderful God revealed by Jesus.

Christmas is different, a festival like no other. No other religion has such a time as Christmas. What it celebrates is not a doctrine, an obligatory observance or traditional ritual. It is a spontaneous burst of hilarious joy coming from a revelation of the wonderful, glorious God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What a God he is, “the God and Father of Jesus”!
And what a Son he is! What a Saviour!

Be glad in the Lord and rejoice!