What do we mean when we talk about the \u201cfavor of God?\u201d<\/p>\n
The house you\u2019ve always wanted goes into foreclosure and you buy it for a steal. Your kids bring their report cards home and it\u2019s straight A\u2019s. You find out that a long lost relative left you a tidy sum of money.<\/p>\n
Many people may think that God\u2019s favor is something like that. When life seems to break your way, it\u2019s easy to think, \u201cGod is really smiling down on me now. He must really love me.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we turn to the New Testament, though, we get a splash of cold water. The favor of God doesn\u2019t always line up with great circumstances. Case in point: Mary.<\/p>\n
When the angel Gabriel shows up to announce the first Christmas to Mary in Luke 1, he tells her twice that she has God\u2019s favor. But her situation sure doesn\u2019t look like it.<\/p>\n
Gabriel has just told her she is going to be pregnant out of wedlock in a culture where this isn\u2019t just frowned upon but could have been punishable by death. The man she loves, Joseph, is probably not going to understand the situation or believe her bizarre explanation and might leave her. She\u2019s already poor, and if Joseph rejects her, she\u2019ll be destitute. She might have to beg for a living.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s Mary — financially insolvent, with a ruined reputation, her most important relationship in tatters.<\/p>\n
Maybe you can relate if you sense no joy or good cheer this Christmas season, but dread. Your life doesn\u2019t look like one \u201cblessed and highly favored.\u201d For you, Christmas only reminds you of all the good you don\u2019t have in your life.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s you, then Mary\u2019s circumstances are particularly relevant, because she supposedly has the favor of God in the midst of all her mess. How?<\/p>\n
Because a Son is being born to her — a Son, the angel says, whose name will be \u201cJesus,\u201d meaning that He will save His people from their sins. Like all of us, Mary\u2019s main problem was a severed relationship with God. Jesus was coming to restore that.<\/p>\n
But Jesus was coming to do more than merely save from sin. Gabriel points out that He\u2019ll also rule from the throne of David (Luke 1:32). It\u2019s easy to miss how big that promise is. David\u2019s throne symbolized the restoration of worldwide peace and blessing — a condition called shalom.<\/p>\n
Think of the promise in Joel where the prophet says, \u201cI will restore the years that the swarming locusts have eaten.\u201d Not just forgive, but restore. Bodies destroyed by disease will leap and run in perfect health. Reputations that have been ruined will be exonerated. Relationships torn apart by death will be mended, as we see, in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s words, \u201call the sad things come untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n
We know that God will do this because He did this with Jesus. At the cross, Jesus went through pain that looked like a defeat. But the Father used that pain for our good. He reversed it and turned the devil\u2019s strongest attack into an opportunity to redeem us and restore the world.<\/p>\n
Mary isn\u2019t the only one with a miraculous birth in Luke 1. Her relative Elizabeth also gets a visit from Gabriel, and even though she\u2019s barren, she is promised a child. Barrenness has never been easy, but in those days it would have been devastating, the biggest disappointment a woman could imagine. The lead-up to Jesus\u2019 birth includes an elderly, barren woman getting pregnant because the birth of Jesus is God\u2019s promise to erase our deepest disappointments.<\/p>\n
What that means is we don\u2019t have to be frantic if we don\u2019t get to everything on our \u201cbucket list.\u201d Many of us live with such an urgency to experience everything that life becomes worthless if we don\u2019t. It\u2019s not the glib stuff, like not seeing the Grand Canyon, that really leads us to disappointment. It\u2019s not getting married or having children, or being financially comfortable, or overcoming an illness. What we need to see is that in the resurrection, under the reign of the Son of David, every disappointment will be fulfilled.<\/p>\n
We have pain; He will reverse it. We have disappointment; He will erase it. We yearn for justice; He will restore it. When we go through seasons of racial strife in our country, many people start to ask, \u201cWill there ever be justice?\u201d Or maybe the yearning for justice is more personal: You\u2019ve been wronged and just can\u2019t get past it. You want to cry out like the psalmist, \u201cWill the wicked go unpunished?\u201d<\/p>\n
Unless we look to God\u2019s perfect justice — instead of our judicial system or our own efforts — we\u2019ll always be bitter. Perfect justice will be restored but only when Jesus rules from David\u2019s throne. That truth gives us the hope to continue working for justice now while enduring the injustice in the world.<\/p>\n
In the end, that\u2019s what God\u2019s favor is all about. It\u2019s what Christmas is all about — hope. God\u2019s favor isn\u2019t always easy. Sometimes, as with Mary, it brings with it a lot of difficulties. But it\u2019s always good because it brings us a hope in God\u2019s promises and an assurance that His presence will be with us.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
J.D. Greear is president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What do we mean when we talk about the \u201cfavor of God?\u201d The house you\u2019ve always wanted goes into foreclosure and you buy it for a steal. Your kids bring their report cards home and it\u2019s straight A\u2019s. You find out that a long lost relative left you a tidy sum of money. Many people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1259,258,1258,278,268,182,259],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035"}],"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=8035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}