Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 18, 2022

We go to great lengths to give ourselves privacy. This individualized notion that we have this right affects what we believe about God, who He is, and what He does for us. Therefore it even affects the most crucial doctrine of them all—justification by faith alone. The desire for a distant God is to want space where He is not actively at work. Why would we want that? So that I can change my behavior and get closer to Him. Therefore, this desire for privacy and a distant God is a desire to be justified before God by what you do. And God will have none of it. Christmas will have none of it.