Patriarch Elijah’s message on the feast of the Nativity of Christ 2014
At Christmas, we commemorate the coming of our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ into this world as a defenceless child. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) God gave us the most precious Gift – His Only Begotten Son. Jesus died for our sake. He, the Son of God, rose from the dead, that we should not perish but have eternal life. But there is one condition: saving faith. Only he who believes in Him and receives Him by this personal faith has eternal life and is a child of God. Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart this Christmas and wants you to open to Him and to receive Him. “As many as received Him, to them He gave power to become children of God.” (Jn 1:12) Receive Jesus by repenting sincerely, break with the spirit of lies and the spirit of antichrist. Stand in defence of the laws of God and protect Jesus in defenceless children even at the cost of martyrdom. On the Day of Judgment you will hear the words: “Whatever you did for the least of My brethren, you did it for Me.” (Mt 25:40)
What a crisis mankind and the Church are undergoing today! Repentance and conversion are needed more than ever before.
We do know that Jesus is true God, that we need Him, that He came to this world to deliver us and cleanse us from our sins. However, knowledge is not enough. Our faith would remain just intellectual. But there is a faith of the heart, which is expressed in the word RECEIVE. Receive Jesus and live your life with Him. So that Jesus may dwell in your hearts through faith. And this is associated with the words: “I lose my soul for Your sake and the Gospel’s”. It is not possible without it. This is also the fulfilment of the First Commandment: you shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. Christianity requires that you live in communion with Jesus. It means that you must deny yourself and lose your soul time and time again. And this is the essence of love. This is also the root of deliverance because if we surrender our will, our plans and our all to Jesus – even in little things, He can, little by little, change our behaviour, our character and all that we cannot change ourselves. He is almighty! But He can do so only if we give our all to Him, and especially if we surrender ourselves to Him, if we learn to give Him power in our life – not just once but again and again so that it may become the nature of our life. And this is in fact a life in the presence of God – if you rely on God even in little things. If you are attacked by various thoughts or temptations, or if you go through trials, you need to walk in the truth, in the truth of God and in the presence of God. This is the most important point of whole Christianity.
Jesus was born – how much we need to receive Him when He comes, to receive Him as a living God. Not as a Christ of history, who is an object of theological speculation, but as our personal Saviour and Lord. If we give Jesus the first place and if he is born in our hearts, we are thus set free from all other masters, from sin and its bondage.
When the Magi came to Bethlehem, the Gospel reads: “When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshipped Him, and they presented gifts to Him.” (Mt 2:10-11) They worshipped Him as God. Similarly, we should receive Jesus by faith as the One who is almighty, as the One whom we give power in our life, as the One whom we surrender our will and all our heart. In other words – we love God with all our heart and with all our soul. To love Jesus with all our soul means that we are ready to lose our self, which is the centre of our reason and emotions, or the life of our soul, for His sake and the Gospel’s, so that He may live in us. Otherwise Christ is paralyzed, crucified and powerless in us. But if we give Him power, He can act in our life and reign in our heart instead of lies and sin. Then it is really true in our life: Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!
Download: Patriarch Elijah’s message on the feast of the Nativity of Christ 2014
