Christmas Is An Adoption Story

By: Matt Hollingworth

WHAT IS CHRISTMAS?

Christmas is an adoption story. It is yet another example of how God has sovereignly used adoption to accomplish His will. But most importantly, the purpose of Christmas is adoption.

Now, you might know an awful lot about Christmas, and this is the first time you’re hearing these things, but let me assure you, they’re all true.

Let me take you back about 2,000 years. This was a very dark and hopeless time. Israel had been occupied by a whole series of foreign oppressors. One of these oppressors, a man named Antiochus Epiphanes, had actually rededicated the Temple to Zeus and desecrated it by sacrificing a pig on the altar in the Holy of Holies.

But amidst all this darkness, God was still at work. Through adoption, God raised up yet another oppressor. It was this adopted man of war, Caesar Augustus, who issued a decree that all the world should be taxed. In what must have seemed at the time like humiliation upon humiliation, amidst all the whisperers, Joseph of Nazareth took his espoused wife Mary, who was very pregnant, to Bethlehem. When they arrived, there was no room for them, so they stayed in a stable. While they were there, Joseph’s adopted son—the Son of God—was born, and they laid Him in a manger. The 700-year-old prophecy of Micah that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem, had been fulfilled. And with the birth of Christ, a sliver of hope had slipped into this hopeless world.

When the Magi visited and King Herod learned of the birth of the Christ, he conspired to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem. It was the adopted father of Jesus, Joseph, that fled with the Christ child, saving Him from Herod’s slaughter.

A little over 33 years after that first Christmas, the Son of God, this adopted son of a man, the Messiah who had lived a perfect life, paid the redemptive cost on the cross so that by adoption, all men might call God Father. Christmas truly came through adoption. Christmas came by adoption. And Christmas came for adoption.

Today, we live in a world with millions of orphans. Are you an adopted son or daughter of God? Do you worship the adopted Messiah, Jesus? If so, if you’re a Christian, you have been called to care for the orphan.

This Christmas, why not trade away materialistic insignificance for doing something bigger than yourself? This Christmas, as you ponder the birth and the adoption of your Savior, as you consider your own adoption by God the Father, realize this—you can do for the orphan what God did for you. You can bring hope to the hopeless through adoption.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” –John 14:18

This article was transcribed (with permission) from a video written by Steve Eimers. Steve and his wife Melissa have adopted six children. The video was edited and published by their oldest daughter, Hannah Eimers, who passed away in 2016. She is dearly loved and missed by all who knew her.