Merry Christmas, friends. Today I’ve got an all-Christmas edition of A La Carte for you. Enjoy!
Today’s Kindle deals include a few excellent picks from Crossway themed around biblical theology and systematic theology.
(Yesterday on the blog: A Prayer for a Christian Husband and Wife To Pray Together)

It is good to consider on Christmas that God is with us. And that’s exactly what Blake does here. “What are you currently going through? Has a trial overtaken you? Did an unexpected event capsize your heart and cause you to despair of life? Have you been doubting the Lord because of the death of a loved one? Whatever the occasion, the statement is true: Jesus is with you.”

“When I was in the seventh or eighth grade I asked for a German Shepherd puppy for Christmas. I think I desired that gift more than any other I ever requested as a boy.Dad and Mom told me that I could have a dog if I earned enough ‘puppy points.’” Vance Christie explains what this has to do with the gospel.

“Have you ever noticed the relationship between your expectations and your contentment?” Casey McCall considers this question in light of Christmas.

“‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’  So said the angels to the shepherds at the first Christmas in a land that continues to suffer endless conflict.  ‘Peace in the Middle East’ is such a long-standing pressing need that it has become a cruel joke for a platform in beauty contest satires and other portrayals of impossible aspiration.”

Stephen makes an important point in this article. “Our post-religious age wants to make every day Christmas. Not to elevate all days to that deep, meaningful, purpose-filled day celebrating the greatest gift of all – the Incarnation – but to bring that day down to every other day. When every day is like Christmas then Christmas will be like every day.”

Abigail Rehmert writes about the longing that preceded the first Christmas and the longing that has happened since.

This article is meant especially for those who are overseas for Christmas (and/or for their loved ones).

On this day, I am pondering a lovely quote I found in one of De Witt Talmage’s sermons—a quote that calls us to not only be joyful at Christmas, but to see in Christmas proof that Christianity is a joyful faith. 

Look to Jesus this Christmas. Receive the reconciliation that he bought. Don’t put it on the shelf unopened. And don’t open it and then make it a means to all your other pleasures. Open it and enjoy the gift. Rejoice in him.
—John Piper

Today’s post is sponsored by BJU Seminary and written by Stuart Scott, professor of biblical counseling and ACBC Fellow. BJU Seminary equips Christian leaders through an educational and ministry experience that is biblically shaped, theologically rich, historically significant, and evangelistically robust.

Ever since Adam ate of the tree in the garden, every man and woman has inherited a nature of sin. Running its course, sin leads to hopeless slavery. However, if we are believers, sin no longer holds us hopelessly captive because God has justified us, has broken that slavery, and is progressively sanctifying us. But we can still become temporarily and routinely entangled in sin—a sign that something is very wrong or missing in our Christian walk.
Scripture is clear that sin habits are incongruous with a redeemed lifestyle: “we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die” (Rom. 8:12–13a). In other words, a person who continues a life of sin without any real desire or efforts to change has no legitimate claim of redemption.
Consequently, God calls us to mortify the sin in our lives: “but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13b). As we pursue holiness and rest on Christ’s finished work on the cross, by grace we aggressively strive against sin in our lives.  Pursuing holiness Christ’s way will weaken a sin habit, until its power and predominance is subdued and practically destroyed.
But mortifying our sin is not accomplished by our own efforts to break sinful habits. To mortify sin, we must aggressively strive toward a growing walk of faith with Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, the call to mortify our sin is really a call to vivify our faith in Christ and His gospel, first of all and ongoing. To vivify something, we endue it with life and effectuate it. Vivifying is not just about doing something; it is about possessing or personally embracing something from the inside out—for the glory it brings to God and the eternal life it expresses in us.
To vivify our faith in Christ, we must vivify true worship of Christ alone. Turning from competing pursuits and truly seeing Christ and His radical love for what it is will breed radical love, trust, and obedience (with delight) in us.
This vivifying of our faith in Christ includes vivifying faith in the gospel truths of Christ, daily. Turning to the power of Christ in us, His forgiveness, our hope of heaven, and all God’s promises will greatly impact our thinking and our actions. We must especially vivify or exercise our faith in the moments of trial and battle. Specifically in times of temptation, choosing to put faith in what we need to will empower us to resist sin and then grow our faith even more.
Vivifying faith effectually vivifies a walk in the Spirit. As we turn and submit to the truth of God and depend on the Spirit who dwells in us, through prayer, God and His Word can influence us. God’s Word, active faith, and the indwelling Spirit combined, in tandem with other saints, assures a walk in the Spirit.
With the vivification of our faith, we must then focus not on our habit of sin, but on Christ’s specific, righteous alternatives to our sin. Aggressively pursuing the Christlike characteristic corresponding to sin with real faith and dependence effectively works to mortify sin habits.
Replacing our sin habits with the help of the Holy Spirit is necessarily an intensive practice. It involves addressing personal hindrances such as laziness, apathy, and misplaced priorities. It involves personal, periodic examination with confession, and it involves any needed radical amputation of facilitators—all in response to Christ’s radical love.
This vivifying of our faith in the practical putting off sin and putting on righteousness is an ongoing Christian endeavor with Christ. Everything about our Christian walk and mortifying sin is inextricably linked to exercising our faith in a worthy and sacrificial Savior.
A fuller treatment of the cycle of sin habits, and of hope to mortify them, can be found in the book Killing Sin Habits: Conquering Sin with Radical Faith, written by Stuart Scott with Zondra Scott.

The young boy had a privileged upbringing and spent his childhood on a fine estate that boasted a large and carefully-tended garden with bright flowers, cobbled paths, high walls, trimmed lawns. He spent hours of every day playing in this garden, exploring it, and delighting in its many wonders.

But there was one part where he never ventured to go. At the very end of the garden stood a grove of trees that grew tall and full and cast dark shade upon the pathway beneath. As he squinted his eyes from a safe distance, he could see that the path winding through the grove led to a gate set in the distant wall. And though he wondered what lay beneath the trees and beyond the gateway, he dared not approach, for when he was small, a gardener had told him an idle tale of ogres that lived among the trees and giants that lived in the land beyond the walls.
Finally a day came when his older brother heard of his fear. Playing in the garden one day, the older led the younger to the very edge of the grove. Leaving the young boy frozen there, stricken with terror, his brother took up a happy song and walked down the path without fear, without worry, without hesitation. Reaching the gate, he opened it deftly and passed through, his voice still audible and still joyful.
And then, having shown his brother that there was nothing to fear, he returned. He entered back from beyond the wall, he retraced his steps along the pathway, until the two brothers once again stood side-by-side. He assured him he had seen no ogres among the trees and no giants beyond the gate. In fact, the gate had opened into a garden even more splendid than the one in which they stood. And now the young boy knew there was nothing to dread, no reason to be anxious. His fears had been allayed and his heart calmed, replaced by the knowledge of his brother’s safe journey. Yet even then, “Let me know when you are ready,” said his brother assuredly, “and in that day I will take your hand and we will walk the pathway and pass through the gate together.”
And just so, our elder brother Jesus knows we live in fear of death and are prone to doubt that joys lie beyond the gateways of this life. He knows we fear what we cannot see and cannot yet experience. He knows our anxiety, he knows our weakness, he knows our frailty. And so he has gone before us. He has made the journey and returned to assure us that all will be well and to tell us that we need do no more than follow in his footsteps. For as the sacred Word tells us, by his death he has broken the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and has freed those who all their lives have been held in slavery by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). By defeating death, he has liberated us from the fear of death.

Inspired by The Way Into the Holiest by F.B. Meyer