12 Days of Christmas Day 2

The 12 Days of Christmas Day 2
knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 1 Peter 1:8-9

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two turtle doves. Two turtle doves were what Joseph and Mary brought to the temple to sacrifice to the Lord for Mary’s cleansing as required by the law. There was a sacrifice for people of means which involved a lamb and there was a sacrifice for people of even less means which involved a sacrifice of flour. Their sacrifice revealed their poverty, but it also revealed God’s passion that ALL people might be able come to Him. And this sacrifice wasn’t for Jesus but for Mary who was ceremonially unclean and who would be restored to her walk and worship with God after the sacrifice had been made.

The whole event gives us a picture of how an all-loving God made a way for a broke and broken people to be in a real and rewarding relationship with Him. Sin had separated man from God. We are all born with a sinful nature, passed down to us from our parents. Adam & Eve’s sin had sold us out to our enemy, but God made a way for us to be forgiven and freed from that relationship to be in a relationship with Him. The turtle doves, a symbol of love, friendship and covenant, we’re brought to sacrifice to God, expressing the person’s will to be in a right relationship with God. It was all a picture of how God would bring the ultimate sacrifice which we could not bring for ourselves and shed His blood for us on that cross to be in a loving relationship with us.

A price had to be paid, blood had to by spilled, to cover the cost of this sinful decision of man to turn away from trusting God only to become slaves of the enemy. But Jesus would not purchase that relationship with anything temporary or perishable but with His own precious blood so that we could forever live in a loving relationship with Him.

God wants to be in a relationship with us and share his love and life with us forever. Maybe if we never forget the cost we will never forfeit the consequences of his sacrifice for us.