Today, I share another convicting quote from J.I. Packer on Christmas. This time he speaks of the poverty as the heart of the Christmas spirit.

“We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory . . . . a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony . . . . It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich.”

“We talk glibly of the ‘Christmas spirit,’ rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas.”

“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians – I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians – go through this world in the spirit of the priest and Levite in our Lord’s parable, see human needs all around them, but . . . . averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit.”

“The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor – spending and being spent – to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others – and not just to their own friends – in whatever way there seems need.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 63-64.

In a culture and season of spending, many Christians fail to realize that poverty is at the heart Christmas.