It is easy for a Scrooge to react with a scowling grunt of 'humbug!' to the people and situations around him he considers bothersome. We are more ready to blame the rest of the world for going sour than admit our own cantankerousness. We are mentally self-programmed to justify our words and actions so much that we believe they emerge out of our own sweet and unsullied sincerity. How can there be any 'sin' in sincere? We excuse our self-indulgence by saying "After all, I'm just being real. I'm being true to my instincts." As human beings we are most reluctant to admit our faults. We rarely admit any lack of self-control. We try in vain to disguise our pride, ("I may not be much but I'm all I ever think about"). We passively comply with our own inner gravitations to self-concern and lust. The humbug is in our heart and we just don't own up to it.

This is where so many of our social and moral philosophies have failed us. They have led us to believe that humanity has a healthy core, an innate and inherent moral goodness. Upon this faulty premise we have attempted to build our utopias only to watch them crack and erode from within.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal recognized this, writing: "It is in vain, oh men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, but they were not able to keep that promise."

The prophet Jeremiah put it succinctly: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). We cannot even fathom the evil of which we are capable. At the same time we cannot cure ourselves.  It is an inalterable part of our nature. Jeremiah explains: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." (Jeremiah 13:23).

Malcolm Muggeridge gives a powerful autobiographical illustration of the nature of the human heart. While he was working as a journalist in India, he left the place where he was staying one evening to go for a swim in a nearby river. As he entered the water, he saw an Indian woman across the river who had come to have her bath. Muggeridge felt the tug of the allurement. He had struggled with sensual temptations in the past but had managed to fight them off by choosing to honor his commitment to his wife. This time however he played with the idea of crossing the line of marital fidelity and after a brief internal struggle, he decided to swim furiously towards the woman, trying to outdistance his conscience. He entertained the fantasy that stolen waters would be sweet. He swam in passionate pursuit only to emerge from the water two feet away from the woman and to his horror discovered that the woman was "old and hideous...her skin wrinkled... mouth toothless, and worst of all she was a leper." The old woman smiled at him. His immediate response was to think "What a dirty lecherous woman" when suddenly the rude shock of his own awakening occurred. It was not the woman who was lecherous. It was his own heart.

Our pride cuts us off from God and our sensuality chains us to earth. Ironically our attempts at religion only foster that pride and our self-justifying sensuality only further binds us to the earth.

Christmas reminds us why Jesus came. The name Jesus means 'God to the rescue. The Lord will save.' But Jesus did not come to save us by giving us a religion, a self-reform package of moral idealism. He came to perform the surgery promised in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34). He came to remove the humbug from our hearts. He came into the operating theater of time, put on the necessary surgical garments by clothing Himself in humanity, to perform the heart transplant that would save us from ourselves.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." (Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV).

A heart of stone has no capacity to respond to God. This new heart represents a new capacity through the indwelling life of Christ. Now by the power of the Holy Spirit we can relate to God and live lives that please and honor Him. By saying 'yes' to God by trusting Christ, our hearts can belong to Him and be motivated and empowered by His love.

He saves us from the penalty of sin by dying for us. He saves us from the power of sin by rising again and living in us by His Spirit.

Christmas can be every day of the year when Jesus does your living,