Sunday message · The Season of Grace series
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Message Summary
Opening The Season of Grace, a Christmas series, Pastor Phillip Santillan notes that the average American is predicted to spend $902 on Christmas gifts this year, some of it out of obligation or worse motives. Yet everyone recognizes a true gift: given out of love, with no strings attached and no expectation of repayment. Phil believes Scripture tells the greatest story of that kind of giving, God giving us what we deserve least and need most. That is grace, and its story starts at the beginning.
What do Adam and Eve have to do with Christmas? In Romans 5:16, Paul contrasts the condemnation that came through Adam’s sin with God’s free gift, which makes us right with God even though we are guilty of many sins. In Genesis 3:1–6, the serpent asks, “Did God really say…?” Satan tempts us to trade the truth that God can be trusted for the lie that he cannot. Eve even claims God forbade touching the fruit, which he never said (Genesis 2:17). When we doubt God, Phil says, we too build an illusion of who he is and use it to justify disobedience.
Believing the lie, Eve saw the fruit as beautiful and delicious, and she and her husband ate. They believed God was holding out on them and that what they did would define who they were, though they were already made in his image. They became rebels separated from God, and humanity has lived for its own glory ever since. That, Phil says, explains the brokenness of creation, the systemic evils of our world and, most terrifying, the evil in our own hearts. Rather than blame a fall guy, he admits the brokenness bothers him most in his own life.
Paul spells out the bad news in Ephesians 2:1–3: we were dead in our disobedience and subject to God’s anger. “Good news isn’t good news until you know the bad news,” Phil says. He grants skeptics that this takes a lot of faith, but asks who would not want a solution to the world’s brokenness. The good news comes in verse 4: God, rich in mercy, gave us life with Christ. Salvation comes by grace, not as a reward for the good things we have done (verses 8–9). God gives what we deserve least, his love and forgiveness through Jesus’ death, and what we need most: not an upgraded life but a transformed one. Paul calls us God’s masterpiece, created anew in Christ Jesus for the good things he planned long ago.
When the carols proclaim a Savior’s birth this Christmas, Phil hopes that each of us, skeptics included, could say, “Christ is my Savior.” That takes the humility to admit we cannot save ourselves. As Tim Keller notes, the gospel divides the world not into good and bad people but into the humble and the proud. He prays that everyone would take one step toward repentance and one toward faith in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, so that a season of grace becomes a life filled with hope, joy and peace.