{"id":7059,"date":"2019-09-30T04:18:35","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/the-way-up-is-down-a-theology-of-christmas\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:18:35","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:18:35","slug":"the-way-up-is-down-a-theology-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/the-way-up-is-down-a-theology-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Way Up Is Down: A Theology of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas tells us much about Christian theology.  Philippians 2:5-11 gives<br \/>\na practical view of the implications.<\/p>\n<p>  1. Christmas tells what God is like.<br \/>\n  2. Christmas tells what Man is like.<br \/>\n  3. Christmas tells what the Christian Life is like.<br \/>\n      a. Not self-debasement.<br \/>\n      b. Not loss of selfhood.<br \/>\n      c. Not asceticism.<br \/>\n      d. Not legalism.<br \/>\n      e. But not license.<br \/>\n      f. Not imitation of Christ.<br \/>\n  4. Conclusion.<br \/>\n      &#8220;This passage in Philippians brings us face to face with the paradox so<br \/>\n       utterly devastating to those who spend their lives in relentless<br \/>\n       hedonism.  He who selfishly seeks his own good all his life never<br \/>\n       arrives at the greatest of human satisfactions.  Yet, he who loses his<br \/>\n       life will save it.  Christ showed this to us, for with the joy of<br \/>\n       anticipating our salvation, he gave himself to die in our behalf.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas tells us much about Christian theology. Philippians 2:5-11 gives a practical view of the implications. 1. Christmas tells what God is like. 2. Christmas tells what Man is like. 3. Christmas tells what the Christian Life is like. a. Not self-debasement. b. Not loss of selfhood. c. Not asceticism. d. Not legalism. e. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[258,4415,752,263],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}