Christmas Eve 2025
Description
In this Christmas Eve message, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund challenges our familiar assumptions by showing from John 8:36 that Christmas isn't a religious event—it's the announcement of freedom through Jesus Christ. Whether you've walked the straight and narrow your whole life or wandered far away, discover how the gospel offers real freedom from fear, pretending, and the exhausting treadmill of trying to earn God's love.
Summary and Application
When we think about Christmas, most of us immediately connect it with religion—churches, sacred songs, nativity scenes. But what if our very familiarity with Christmas has caused us to miss something profound? In his Christmas Eve message, Kurt challenges us to reconsider what Christmas is really about by examining John 8:36: "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
Missing the Obvious
Sometimes familiarity blinds us to what should be obvious. Kurt shares the story of a young boy who drew the nativity scene and included a figure flying a plane—"Pontius the Pilate"—because he thought "Pilate" was a job description rather than a name. It's humorous, but it raises an important question: In our familiarity with Christmas, are we missing what it's really about?
The Shocking Truth: Christmas Wasn't Religious
When we examine the key figures in the Christmas story, we discover something surprising—none of them were the religious people of the day.
The Shepherds: We often sentimentalize shepherds as humble representatives of the poor, but there's more to the story. Shepherds were ceremonially unclean because they worked with animals, which meant they weren't welcome in the temple. Yet the angel appeared to them, not to the religious insiders. As Kurt points out, "When the angel appears, he appears to the shepherds, not the people in the temple."
The Magi: These weren't religious seekers—they were "people who were looking at stars, trying to discern God in the skies." God sent a star to reach the cultural elite who were outside the religious establishment.
The Manger: Jesus wasn't born in a temple. He was laid in a feeding trough, probably in a cave or stable.
The angel's announcement to the shepherds captures the essence: "I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people" (Luke 2:10). That word "good news" means the announcement of a victory—something done for people, not something people had to do.
How Religion Traps Us
Religion infiltrates our lives in subtle ways. Sometimes it's through fear—worrying that we don't measure up, that our past disqualifies us, or that we'll mess up in the future. Sometimes it's through pride—thinking we're among "the good people" while others are doing it wrong. And sometimes it's through pretending—keeping up appearances to maintain our place in the group.
The result? Religion makes us hopeless. We either give up entirely, quietly quit while going through the motions, or become self-righteous. And here's the kicker: even those who identify as "spiritual but not religious" can fall into the same trap. As Kurt explains, "If you're spiritual and not religious and you have a moral superiority to other people because of how you see the world, you actually are just as religious as a religious person. You just don't have a formal religion."
What Real Freedom Looks Like
John 8:36 tells us that those who have the Son are free "indeed"—a word that appears only ten times in the New Testament, meaning "in reality" or "really, actually." This is genuine freedom, not just a nice idea.
Martin Luther captured this truth powerfully: "God does not stop his promises because of our sin, nor does he hasten them because of our merits. He pays no attention to either." This is radical. God won't love you more if you read your Bible instead of scrolling social media. He won't love you less if you binge-watch TV instead of attending Bible study. "There are horizontal consequences, but vertically we are unchanged because it's a freedom from earning."
The Order Matters
In John 8, when Jesus encounters the woman caught in adultery, the religious people are ready to stone her. But Jesus stands between her and her accusers. After they all leave, he asks, "Has no one condemned you?" She responds, "No one, sir." Then Jesus declares, "Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin."
Notice the order: "I don't condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin." Religion reverses this, saying, "Go and leave your life of sin, and maybe I won't condemn you." As Kurt emphasizes, "Those are radically different. And one is good news and one is religion."
For Everyone
Kurt shares a powerful baptism story about two very different people: a young boy who grew up in church with no dramatic story to tell, and a woman whose past "was closer to the woman in John 8, except it probably went way beyond." Both said the same words at their baptism: "I'm a sinner saved by grace."
That moment illustrates the heart of Christmas: "It's for the person who has been on the straight and narrow their whole life who needs a savior, and for the person who's been far, far away who needs a savior. We all need to be rescued. And Christmas is about the rescue of Jesus Christ."
Application Questions
Where has religion crept into your relationship with God? Are you operating out of fear of not measuring up, pride in being one of the "good ones," or pretending to keep up appearances? What would it look like to receive the freedom Christ offers instead?
How does understanding that God's love for you doesn't change based on your performance affect your approach to the New Year? If God won't love you more for your spiritual disciplines or less for your failures, how might that change your motivations and expectations?
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Martin Luther
"God does not stop his promises because of our sin, nor does he hasten them because of our merits. He pays no attention to either."
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INTRODUCTION
Merry Christmas. It's great to be together. I want to say a special welcome to those of you in the chapel in the lobby. Thank you for your flexibility today. I want to direct our attention primarily to one verse for our consideration today.
This is John, chapter 8, verse 36: "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
Let's pray together. God, I ask that as we're gathered here today, that you would just speak to each of us that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
FAMILIARITY CAN BLIND US TO THE OBVIOUS
Sometimes when things are familiar, the very familiarity can keep us from seeing what is obvious. Because we're so familiar, we no longer see what's obvious. This happened to a little boy several years ago. His family wasn't regular around church, and he went to church at Christmas time with his family, and he ended up in a Sunday school class.
And they were talking about the Nativity story, the story of Jesus' birth. And so as they talked about it, he learned about it. And then, as they often do in those kinds of classes, they had a chance to draw for a moment. And so he drew the story. And this is a recreation of that.
And this is what he basically drew. And when he was asked to explain it, he said, "Well, this is obvious, right? I mean, we have Joseph, we have Mary, we have baby Jesus." And then the teacher said, "Well, who's this in front?" He said, "Well, that's Pontius the Pilate."
Now, for him, not knowing that Pilate was a name, not a vocation, it seemed obvious that pilot would be flying a plane. But I wonder if in our familiarity with Christmas, if we can miss some of what it really is about. I mean, we gather with friends, family, do the presents, the food, and we know that there's something sacred to it. We have sacred songs, we have church services and shepherds and all of this. But I'd like to suggest something to you today.
CHRISTMAS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS EVENT
And what I'd like to suggest is that Christmas was not and is not a religious event. Now you may say, "Oh, come on, of course it is—Christ, Christmas, Christianity." And you're right, I mean, they're tied together. But when I'm talking about this, what I'm trying to communicate or want you to think about with me is that it's not primarily a religious event. Because if you look at some of the most familiar aspects of the story, it wasn't about the religious people of the day.
So take for example, shepherds. Here's how we envision shepherds a lot of times: nice brisk evening outside, an angel appears to him. And we always make that kind of cute. You know, the kids crawl across the stage and it's all like shepherds. But shepherds weren't just a stand-in for people of lower socioeconomic class that Jesus comes for everybody. You could say that that's not unfair. But you know what was true about shepherds? They were not welcomed in the temple. And do you know why they weren't welcome in the temple? Because they were ceremonially unclean.
And they were ceremonially unclean because they were around animals. Therefore they could not go into the temple. And when the angel appears, he appears to the shepherds, not the people in the temple. Christmas is not a religious event.
Take the magi. Again, how do we perceive the magi? Kind of like this, you know, three wise men on camels making a trek across the wilderness. I had somebody say to me, if it had been wise women instead of wise men, they would have arrived on time because they would have stopped and asked for directions. They would have brought useful gifts and cleaned the stable and brought a meal. But the magi were not religious seekers.
They were people who were looking at stars, trying to discern God in the skies. And God sent a star to the people that today we would typically call the cultural elite, not the faithful. Christmas is not a religious event.
Take the manger where Jesus was laid, probably in a cave or a stable of some kind. It wasn't in a temple because Christmas is not a religious event.
And I believe that these images are actually meant to shock us a little bit, to turn some of our categories upside down, to cause us to rethink how we see Christmas. In fact, when the angel appeared to the shepherds, he reframed it in many ways from a religious event, at least as we tend to think of it. This is Luke, chapter 2, verse 10: "But an angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.'" And that word, "good news" is a word that is sometimes translated "gospel." It means the announcement of a victory. It means that the good news was something that was done for people, not something that people had to do, because Christmas is not a religious event.
HOW RELIGION GETS INTO OUR LIVES
But religion gets into our lives. And here's how you know that religion is part of your life. Sometimes it's because of fear. You have a fear that says, "If I don't do right, if I don't know enough, maybe there will be something that I'll do in the future. Maybe there's something in my past that if it came to light, it would somehow discredit me." And if it isn't fear, sometimes it's pride saying, "I'm one of the people who's one of the good people who's on the inside who does things the right way. I'm not like those other people who do things the wrong way." And sometimes if we think we're on the inside, maybe we aren't filled with pride, but we start to pretend in order to keep up appearances.
Maybe for others, maybe for ourselves, we just think, "If I could just kind of keep myself looking the part, at least then I would be part of the group." And what religion does is it makes us hopeless because we say, "I can't measure up. I'll never be like my mom or my dad. I'll never be the person that my spouse wants me to be. I'll never be." And so we either just say, "I'm done. I'm done with religion, I'm done with church. I'm done with the whole thing, because I'll never be." Or we quietly quit and we continue. But inside we're just saying, "I'm just not that person."
Or we become somebody who sees ourselves as virtuous and we start saying, "Yeah, I'm one of the good people." And by the way, you may be here saying, "Yeah, there's a lot of those church people who think they're the good people." And you don't fancy yourself as one of them, but you would call yourself somebody who's spiritual and not religious. But can I just tell you, if you're spiritual and not religious and you have a moral superiority to other people because of how you see the world, you actually are just as religious as a religious person. You just don't have a formal religion.
What you have instead is a sense of saying, "I'm good, other people are bad, I'm right, other people are wrong. And I like to congratulate myself about it." And at the end of the day, it's no different than religion. And what John 8 teaches us is it says, the person who has the Son is free indeed. And in the original language, that word "indeed" appears only 10 times in the New Testament. And it means "in reality" or "really, actually." And so what it's saying is, if you have the Son, you're actually free. You're really free.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FREE INSTEAD OF RELIGIOUS?
So what does it mean to be free instead of religious? Well, let me use an analogy. I was trying to think of a way to communicate this. This is one of our dogs. We have two rescue dogs. This is a lab and a beagle mix. And she wasn't wanted by anybody.
And one of my sons said, "We should adopt this dog." We adopted the dog. And after we had the dog for a while, I understood why no one wanted her. That's not harsh. She's just gross. But we took her in, and she's not the most discerning dog. Anybody who comes to our house, she wants to be friends with. She's just like, "I'll be your friend. Please love me." But when I come home sometimes—did I mention she's a beagle?—she'll howl. And it's kind of cool to be howled for when you come home, because she gets excited that I come through the door.
Now, I've heard somebody talk about dogs and cats and say, "Do you know what the difference is? Dogs look at their owners and they say, 'You have given me a place to live. You feed me. You take me on walks. You must be a God.' Where cats look at their owners and say, 'You have taken me in. You feed me. You let me in and out. I must be a God.'"
FREEDOM FROM FEAR
[Philip Yancey quote] He said, "Only in the context of grace can we face our sin. And only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds. And only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature." So there's a freedom from fear, there's a freedom from pretending, imposing.
FREEDOM FROM EARNING
But there's also a freedom from earning. And I say from earning because if Jesus has done it and we don't do it, if Christmas isn't about religion, but it's about the good news, the announcement of victory, it means that there's nothing for us to earn. Here's how Martin Luther put it. He said, "God does not stop his promises because of our sin, nor does he hasten them because of our merits. He pays no attention to either."
Now, I realize that that was written about the Bible. That isn't the Bible. But if the way he states that is true, and I think it is, that God doesn't pay attention to our merits, we don't get good things for doing good things. We aren't punished for doing bad things. In that sense, that—then what that means is we don't earn our way with God. Now think about that. That's radical. Here's what that means.
If you're looking at the New Year and you're thinking, "You know, New Year, I should get a little more spiritually in tune, maybe I'll read my Bible, have a Bible reading plan, maybe I'll do a Bible study." And then the New Year comes and you get up in the morning and you scroll mindlessly instead of reading the Bible. Do you know God won't love you any less because you scroll or you binge watch TV instead of going to a Bible study? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm pro-Bible study. Just if you didn't know, I think your brain and your mind and your soul will be better for it. But God won't love you more.
If you're sitting down at night trying to decide what beverage to have and your options are tea and bourbon, God will not love you more if you choose tea. You will feel better in the morning. But God won't love you more if you speak against your boss. You may have consequences, but God won't love you more because of how you handled that situation.
And my point isn't to say there aren't consequences. There are. There are horizontal consequences, but vertically we are unchanged because it's a freedom from earning. And if you have kids or you've been a kid, you understand this. Because if you've had children, here's what you know: Your kids can do things that you wish they would not do, that annoy you, that you think are wrong, and yet you love them anyway. And that's what God does and why we can be free from earning.
THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY
In John 8, the chapter begins with an iconic story. It's about the woman who's caught in adultery. And she's caught in adultery and the religious people gather around and they're ready to stone her. And Jesus comes between the woman and the accusers. And he writes something in the ground. And we don't actually know what he writes in the ground because we're never told. But whatever he communicated in that moment, it caused all the people to leave. And Jesus at one point says, "Whoever's without sin, you throw the first stone."
And they just—they leave.
And then Jesus turns to the woman. He says, "Where are those who've accused you? Has no one condemned you?" And she says this, "No one, sir." "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
Now notice the order. What does he say? "I don't condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin." Religion says, "Go and leave your life of sin, and maybe I won't condemn you." Jesus says, "I don't condemn you. Now leave your life of sin." Those are radically different. And one is good news and one is religion.
A BAPTISM STORY
I saw this play out here years ago. We had a baptism service. And the way we were doing them at the time is we would have the people who were being baptized do a little video telling their story. And then toward the end of the video, they would usually say something like, "I'm a sinner, saved by grace." I remember one time this group was going through this, and there was a boy who was about 9, 10 years old, and he had grown up in a church family. He had only been around the church. He hadn't gotten into a whole lot of stuff yet. He had believed. And as he watched the videos of the other people, he was feeling a little self-conscious that he didn't have more of a story. He's like, "You know, I just kind of grew up in the church. I kind of just believe. That's my whole story." And as he was joking about it backstage, he decided he'd come up with a story. So he said, "I used to sell drugs, but now I'm a selfless servant of the King." And of course, it was kind of funny. And then his baptism came. He was baptized. And the line, "I'm a sinner saved by grace"—it was beautiful moment.
And in that same group, there was a woman. She didn't share her whole story. There were some of us who knew it. Her story was closer to the woman in John 8, except it probably went way beyond. And she had started coming to the church, and she had begun to find relief in what Jesus thought about her. And yet here she was at kind of this pinnacle moment, saying, "I don't know." She went into the water, her video played, and she said, "And I'm a sinner saved by grace."
I had that moment where I just said, "Yeah, Christmas is not a religious event. It's a gospel event. It's for the person who has been on the straight and narrow their whole life who needs a savior, and for the person who's been far, far away who needs a savior. We all need to be rescued. And Christmas is about the rescue of Jesus Christ."
THE DOG ILLUSTRATION REVISITED
I mentioned the dog earlier. You know what's true about the dog that we adopted? She has a forever home. No matter how gross she is, she doesn't earn anything, she does nothing for our family. Bottom line, she is a parasite. But she has been rescued.
Some of you are hearing this and you're probably saying, "Wow, you know, this is different. This might be the best Christmas message ever. I mean, you're saying, you know, church, I could take it or leave it. Yeah, at least in terms of how God sees you." But here's what's true about the dog again. If the dog never gets off the sofa and comes to greet the owner and is indifferent, she's not a dog, she's a cat. Okay, now some of you have cats who greet you. I know that's good. I'm happy for you.
But my point is this: If you are saying, "I just want to kind of live my life and do the bare minimum, and I don't have any affection for God or Jesus or his church or his people," chances are your approach to God is religious. What you're doing is you're saying, "Tell me what I need to do, tell me the bare minimum so I can punch my ticket to some eternity somewhere." That's religion.
CONCLUSION
Christmas is not a religious event. It's a gospel event. You, if you believe in Jesus, if you have the Son, you're really free because you've been rescued and you're free from fear, free from pretending, free from earning. And it changes everything. And anyone can get in on it.
Because what we're told is that whoever has the Son, whoever has the truth, is free indeed. And you just heard the truth. And by believing in what Jesus Christ has done, you enter into that relationship. And then as you experience the freedom, you'll begin to say, "I can't get enough of who this Jesus is." And it'll change you and you'll experience real freedom.
Let's pray together. God, as we're here today, I just ask that you would help each of us to not just do religion for Christmas this year, but to understand the gospel and that it's a gospel event that is life changing. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
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This transcript was auto-generated and edited using AI assistance. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, there may be errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation of this message, please refer to the original audio or video recording.
