Did you know that your brother is a king? Congratulations! That makes you royalty. Jesus, your sovereign Redeemer, is not ashamed to be called your brother (Hebrews 2:11).
We all love a pauper-to-prince story. The Bible has the most significant one because it has to do specifically with you. Joseph’s rags-to-riches saga is one of the most well-known narratives of the Scriptures. But it may not be as well-known that in it, we see foreshadowings of the greatest story of redemption and forgiveness. For example, when Joseph revealed his true identity to his brothers in Egypt, and while their jaws were still gaping in stunned silence, Joseph reported, “God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). A brother, sent to endure suffering, then rise to prominence in order that his brothers might live. Sound familiar?
There is another foreshadowing in the story where Judah, the forefather of Messiah, offered himself as a substitute for his brother, Benjamin. “For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life’” (Genesis 44:32). Jesus was our substitute in payment of a debt so that we could be brought back to the Father.
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory,
should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.”
Hebrews 2:10
”For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”
1 Peter 3:18
That is why, writes the author of Hebrews, Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). There is a necessity to the Christmas story – he had to be made like his brothers. Without Christ coming to us in human form there is no redemption or forgiveness – we are doomed in hopeless despair. But…
“God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy!”
Contemplate the sovereign grace of your Creator/Redeemer this Christmas season.
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