No Time for Neutrality!

Yet I hold this against you, You have forsaken the love you had at first. Revelation 2:4

I know . . . that you are neither cold nor hot. Revelation 3:15

Christmas isn't a time for neutrality. No one looks forward to a low-key, gray-toned Christmas. We want color and excitement, music and laughter. We are anything but neutral about Christmas.

Besides, neutrality doesn't ask much. Neutrality means neither for nor against. It is a ho-hum response. If you're neutral, you're still thinking.

Neutral is good as a paint color, maybe. Everywhere else, a neither-nor limbo is like the sun decides to stay halfway gone and steals night from us.

But there is no neutral in Christianity. Jesus made that clear. It is an all-in call. Think about it. Fishermen left a boat full of fish to follow Jesus. Matthew left a job of skimming money for personal wealth to follow Jesus.

Christmas reminds us that God isn't neutral about us, either. He voted unreservedly for us when He sent us Jesus. He showed us what it looks like when God lives in flesh and blood.

Jesus came into our world to challenge lukewarm commitment. “You are neither cold nor hot,” God cried with a broken heart about the church of Laodicea, and I fear He cries the same about so many of our churches.

God did not send Jesus into our world to be a people-pleaser. God set the whole of His Divine character into flesh and blood. He risked everything with this vote. He risked our misunderstanding. He risked our rejection. He risked that His All-in vote wouldn’t budge our self-centered unraveling with any more success than the prophets had experienced.

God sent Jesus anyway because Love, pure selfless Love, always votes with the heart.

Our God of Christmas despises neutrality for good reason; it robs His loved children of their inheritance.

There is only one way to welcome Jesus this Christmas: with confession and repentance. When we agree that God’s vote for us is our only hope in this broken world (confession), and turn away from anything that would keep us neutral about God’s vote (repentance), we leave the lie of neutrality to experience the unfailing love of God.

Christmas is God’s vote for us. All He wants for Christmas is our life given back to Him without one taint of neutrality about it.