Advent and the Christ Who Is for You

The Objective Comfort of Advent

I know that December typically puts us all in our feels, but Advent is not first an invitation to feel; rather, it is a declaration to believe. It does not ask us to stir within ourselves a fitting sentiment for the season, but to receive with faith the great objective fact upon which all Christian comfort rests.

God has acted. God has come. God has given His Son for us.

Too often, the weeks leading up to Christmas Day are treated as a prelude to sentiment, a quiet warming of the heart before Christmas joy may rightly begin. Scripture, however, will not allow us to linger there. Advent is an announcement. It proclaims that the eternal Son of God entered history, not as a possibility for the earnest nor as an example for the willing, but as a Savior for sinners. The glory of Advent lies not in our anticipation of Christ, but in Christ’s advent to us.

The child lying in Bethlehem’s manger did not come to make salvation conceivable. He came to accomplish it. From the first moment of His humiliation, He stood in the place of His people. He took our nature that He might bear our sin. He assumed our flesh that He might obey where we had rebelled, suffer where we had incurred wrath, and die the death that justice required of us.

This is where Advent must be firmly anchored if it is to comfort weary consciences rather than burden busy ones. Christ did not come merely to show us what God is like. He came to do something for us that we could never do for ourselves. The gospel does not say, God has come near, therefore draw near to Him. It says, God has come near in His Son, therefore you are reconciled.

This is where the modern tendency falters. Like everything else, we are prone to turn Advent inward. We measure our readiness. We assess our longing, or at least our Christmas spirit. We speak often of preparing our hearts, as though the efficacy of Christ’s coming rested in part upon the posture of our souls. The New Testament speaks differently. It directs us outward and upward, to the finished and sufficient work of Christ who comes for the ungodly.

Advent, rightly understood, is not about Christ made available. It is about Christ given. Not Christ waiting to be received, but Christ already bestowed, as the angel announced, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.” Advent meets us not in our strength, but in our weakness. It does not ask whether we have done enough, felt enough, or hoped enough. It announces that God has done enough. The Son of God has come for you, not some imagined future version of yourself, more attentive, more devout, or more resolved. For you as you are, a sinner in need of grace.

The church waits during Advent, but she waits as one who already possesses what she longs for. She waits not in uncertainty, but in confidence. The first coming of Christ guarantees the second. His humiliation secures His exaltation. Those for whom He came will surely be those with whom He will return in glory.

Thus Advent trains us in a peculiar kind of hope. It is not the hope of possibility, but of promise. We look back to the Christ who has come and forward to the Christ who will come again, resting in the assurance that between these two comings stands the unshakable reality of redemption accomplished.

Let Advent, then, be rescued from sentimentality and allowed to proclaim again the mighty truth upon which all Christian confidence depends.

The Son of God has come in the flesh. He has come for sinners. He has come for you. And because He has come, you may wait in peace.