The Messiah’s first appearance in history is called “good news”, have you ever wondered why? If you don’t know why it’s the absolute best news you’ve ever heard, then you don’t know Jack, erm, Jesus. Picture a fallen world filled with millions of people all of whom are eternal beings undergoing a temporary, physical experience. Every one of these immortal beings were “fallen”, meaning that the fleeting physical life they try to enjoy is the precursor of an unending judgment by fire. There was absolutely no action humankind could take to change their fate.

Add to the storyline an ingenious enemy, one of Heaven’s brightest and most powerful beings that flipped a switch and became the darkest and most evil being creation had ever witnessed. He lead humanity astray and he owned them, body and soul. He was responsible for their damnation, and wasn’t interested in any being saved from their fate. His hatred of the people of earth was second only to his hatred of God. His plan worked only too well, turning the people God loved so much into objects of God’s wrath.

As a people, we were without God, without forgiveness and without hope. That is, until God came to humanity with a plan to redeem them, so they could spend eternity in the holy state they were created with and in the company of the One who loved them most. He didn’t reveal the plan at that time, but asked that any who wished to be spared damnation put their hope and trust in him. Thousands of years later, that plan came to fruition.

The Father inserted the Son deep behind enemy lines in the greatest disguise of all, a frail human baby. This child would grow up in poverty, experience every hardship and temptation that we do, live to his mid-thirties without ever once sinning against God all so that he could surrender to the enemy and be killed at their hands. The enemy chalked it up as a major victory; having killed the third member of the Trinity they felt that God himself was weakened, presenting an opportunity for further victory. Then, three days later, the mission concluded not in a disgraceful failure, but a miraculous and ingenious victory.

The covert mission that started with the birth of Jesus ended 3 days after his death when God raised him from the dead. All those who had trusted God to find a way to save them were vindicated at last. And all those who put their trust in God today with the full knowledge of the mission can also be rescued from certain eternal punishment and ushered into a life of wondrous love with the God who died for them. If that isn’t the greatest news in all history, then I’d like to know what is.

Perhaps this is the first Christmas you have ever heard the truth behind the holiday. Perhaps you have always celebrated the “baby Jesus” without ever knowing the mission that child was sent to accomplish. If so, revel in the knowledge you have attained of a plot that surpasses anything in this year’s hot video games Halo or Black Ops, or this year’s movies like American Sniper. Jesus was the central operative in a mission to save the world, and he did so in a way that not even Ian Fleming could imagine.

This is what prompted the apostle Paul to pen, “For people everywhere report how you… wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath.”