What Has God Done? From the Manger to the Cross – The Gospel Story

God has not left sinners to wonder how they might reach Him. Scripture declares that the triune God has acted decisively in history to deal with sin, uphold His justice, and bring His people to Himself in Christ – and the story runs from the cradle to the cross to the empty tomb. (See: Who Is God? The 5 Attributes That Show the Heart of the Gospel)

What Has God Done – From Promise to Manger

God did not begin thinking about salvation on the night Christ was born. Long before Bethlehem, God promised a Redeemer.

• Right after the fall, God spoke of the offspring of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).
• The prophets foretold a child who would be born, a son given, who would be called “Mighty God” and “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6-7).

In Advent, the church remembers that in “the fulness of the time,” God fulfilled those ancient promises in the most surprising way.

• “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4).
• “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

The stable is not a sentimental backdrop; it is the place where God the Son truly took on our humanity. The baby laid in a manger is the same person who will later hang on a cross. In Advent we marvel that the eternal Word “was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The incarnation is God’s first great public act in the Gospel story.

What Has God Done – The Obedient Life That Led to the Cross

The child who was born in Bethlehem did not save simply by being born. He came to live the life we never lived.

• He was “made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5).
• “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

From the manger to Nazareth to the wilderness to Gethsemane, Jesus walked a path of perfect, active obedience to His Father. Every command you have broken, He kept. Every temptation you have yielded to, He resisted. That long obedience is part of what God has done for sinners; it is the positive righteousness that will be counted to those who believe.

The wood of the manger and the wood of the cross belong to the same story. The One wrapped in swaddling cloths came, as He Himself said, “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

What Has God Done – The Substitutionary Death

If God is to justify the wicked without becoming unjust, sin must truly be punished. That is why the Advent child had to go to Calvary.

• “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).
• God set Christ forth “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,” in order to “declare his righteousness… that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-26).
• God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

What has God done? He has taken the holy Son whose birth the angels announced and offered Him up as a true, wrath-bearing sacrifice in the place of guilty sinners. The infant adored by shepherds is the Lamb who will one day cry, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Advent without the cross is an unfinished sentence.

What Has God Done – Resurrection, Exaltation, and the Gift of the Spirit

The story does not stop at the cross.

• Jesus “was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25).
• God “raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:20).
• The risen Christ poured out the Holy Spirit on His people (Acts 2:32-33).

The child of Bethlehem is now the risen Lord of glory. God has taken the incarnate, crucified Savior and enthroned Him. From His throne, He sends the Spirit to bring His saving work home to hearts:

• While we were “dead in sins,” God “hath quickened us together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5).
• If anyone is “in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

By the Spirit, God calls, regenerates, grants faith and repentance, unites sinners to Christ, justifies, adopts, and begins to conform them to the image of His Son.

What Has God Done? The Line From Stable to Cross to You

So, what has God done?

• He promised a Savior from the very dawn of human history (Genesis 3:15).
• He sent His own Son, born of a woman, born in real poverty and humility, in the days of Caesar Augustus (Galatians 4:4; Luke 2).
• He led Him through a life of perfect obedience under the Law (Romans 5:19).
• He offered Him up on the cross as a sin-bearing substitute, satisfying justice and displaying mercy (Isaiah 53:5–6; Romans 3:25-26).
• He raised and exalted Him as Lord, and through Him has poured out the Holy Spirit to give new life and every spiritual blessing to those who believe (Romans 4:25; Acts 2:32-33; Ephesians 1:3).

Advent looks at the manger and says, “God has come near.” The cross looks at that same incarnate Son and says, “God has dealt with sin.” The empty tomb and the occupied throne say, “God has finished the work and now gives life.”

Before you ever ask, “What must I do?”, the season of Advent invites you to behold what God has already done: the Holy One has entered our world as a child, walked our path, borne our curse, risen in power, and now calls you to turn from sin and trust on His Son.