Christmas Challenge: Love as Sacrifice

December 1, 2025

The lights are twinkling, the carols are playing, and the ads are shouting that Christmas is all about getting… more stuff, more experiences, more everything. Yet the quiet truth at the heart of the manger is the opposite, Christmas is about giving until it hurts. The first Christmas was not a sentimental Hallmark moment, it was the opening act of the greatest sacrifice in history. God did not send a card; He sent His Son to a feeding trough in an occupied country, knowing the child was born to die.

John 3:16 is so familiar we can miss its sharp edge: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” Love, in God’s vocabulary, is not a feeling; it is a transaction that costs the giver everything. The Father did not give from His surplus; He gave what was most precious, most irreplaceable. The baby wrapped in rags was the Lamb marked for slaughter, and this was God’s perfect plan for our salvation since the beginning of time.

Jesus Himself defined love the same way. In John 15:13 He said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He was not speaking hypothetically. The same hands that cradled a carpenter’s tools would one day be pierced. The voice that calmed storms would cry, “Father, forgive them.” The feet that walked the extra mile would carry a cross up the hill called Golgotha.

Paul captures the staggering self-emptying in Philippians 2:6-8 (paraphrased), “Though He was in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but humbled himself, even to death on the cross.” The incarnation itself was sacrifice. The Infinite became infant, God became human. The Creator allowed Himself to be laid in a manger by the people He created.

This is why sentimental Christmas feelings can actually be dangerous. They let us celebrate the baby while ignoring the cost. We love the “little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes” version, but we flinch when the story moves to Golgotha. Yet there is no Christmas gospel without Good Friday. The wood of the manger is the rough draft of the wood of the cross. The swaddling clothes foreshadow the linen strips in the tomb.

Real love always looks like this—costly, inconvenient, sacrificial.

When I fast, I have a prayer I lift up regularly, “I make this small sacrifice for You, Jesus, to remind of the great sacrifice you have made for me.” Sometimes love demands sacrifice, and when it does we understand who Jesus is better.

I think of the single dad who works two jobs, so his daughter can stay in dance. The widow who sets an extra place at her Christmas table for the lonely neighbor. The teenager who gives up his gaming budget to sponsor a Compassion child. These are not side notes to Christmas; they are the main story repeating itself in ordinary lives.

The world’s version of love says, “You deserve it.” Jesus’ version says, “I will absorb the cost, so you can have it.” One leaves us empty; the other fills us with the only love that never runs out.

This Christmas, the most radical thing you can do is love the way heaven first loved us, sacrificially. Forgive the relative who wounded you years ago. Serve the person who cannot pay you back. Give until the spreadsheet says stop and the Spirit says keep going. Lay down your life in a thousand small deaths: your time, your pride, your right to be offended, and/or your need to be right. Because the truth is still nailed to the tree outside Jerusalem.

When the last present is opened, and the leftovers are in the fridge, one question will remain: Did anyone see Jesus in the way we loved this year? Did our love cost us something? Did it point to the One who loved us when we were unlovely and gave everything when we deserved nothing? Most of the time, these are the gifts that will still matter when the decorations come down.

Where is God asking you to love someone at real cost this Christmas? What are you clutching that Jesus is inviting you to release for the sake of another? When was the last time your love hurt? How did it feel to love like Jesus? Who in your life needs the kind of love that only sacrifice can give? What is your next step, that God will be glorified by your life? (To learn more about Al Earley or read previous articles, see www.lagrangepres.org. You can purchase my book, My Faith Journal, at Amazon.com, a compilation of 366 articles as a daily devotional. Check out my podcast on YouTube, called “My Faith Journey”).