Every year, we celebrate Holy Week—Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter—months prior to Christmas. It’s just how the calendar works out, but it is kind of backwards. We observe the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry before we ever commemorate his birth! But this hindsight view of Christmas-after-Easter gives us an interesting and illuminating perspective on the coming of Jesus Christ into our world. It allows us to notice signposts in the Christmas account; events pointing ahead to the new reality that Jesus would usher into the world through his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. We start to feel the first ripples of coming revolution that would change the world forever. When we filter the events of Christmas through the lens of Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom of God at Easter, the story of Christmas becomes more wonderful than we could ever imagine.

From the moment that Jesus was born, he associated with the meek, the outcasts, and the forgotten. He associated with sinners—like us. And He still does to this day. Jesus has shown us what God is really like, and He isn’t a God unaccustomed with our struggles, but an intimate God who carries our sin and shame himself—and replaces them with life and hope!