We tend to celebrate Christmas as this removed holiday, this event in time that happened in a sort of disconnected way; but Christmas can only exist in it’s connection with past, present and future. The events of Christmas–the birth of Jesus Christ–were necessary because of what took place at the beginning of humanity; that moment of falling from grace, when Adam and Eve exchanged the glory of the living God for a misplaced hope in themselves, in that moment, the birth of Jesus, his life of perfection, his substitutionary crucifixion, and his defeat of death by resurrection; became necessary. When Christmas arrives we remember not only the birth of our Savior, but why we needed a Savior in the first place. The reason Christmas is such incredible news is because of our depravity. We all do as Adam and Eve did, we all put ourselves as the god of our lives, replacing God’s perfect leading with our depraved understanding of “good”. We, the creation, in our absurd pride, think that we are equal to the Creator. Because of our ludicrous arrogance our world is hopeless, one need only read our history, or watch our present to know our future. We destroy ourselves and one another, we murder, rape, betray and cruelly humiliate. Thankfully, our God did not leave us to ourselves, he sent his son to become one of us, he lived the life that we never could, died in our place, and conquered death so that we could have the hope of a future with God. We have been pulled from death into life. Only when we grasp the nature of our depravity can we really celebrate the real hope that Christmas brings: we, the depraved have new life in Christ, we can be raised out of the death of sin and into the life of his righteousness. That is the good news that brings great joy.