At my daughter’s Christmas concert, she was playing a hymn for everyone to sing along. The program said there were two stanzas to sing. She thought there were three. So when everyone else stopped singing, she played two chords of the third stanza—and quickly stopped.

As we were walking out to the car, she only talked about those two chords—even though she had played four songs that night. I asked, “Why is it that out of all the right notes you played, you only think about the two that you weren’t supposed to play?”

She replied, “Those are the two that people noticed.”

We can understand her reaction, can’t we? We all know that one mistake can ruin our perception of a performance.

So it makes sense that one sin ruined perfection too. All it took was one sin from Adam and Eve and the rest of us were infected. “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). 

This is why we need Christmas. The baby in the manger came to be fully and completely obedient to his Father—to play all the right notes (without playing extra). Then, after he took the punishment for our failures, he gave us the credit for his performance. Now we are righteous—right with God.

And we can have a Merry Christmas.