“’Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy’, said the angel at the birth of our Savior. Great indeed is the joy thus announced, aye, greater than the human mind can conceive. It was a dreadful thing for us to lie under the holy wrath of God, to be led captive by the devil at his will, and to be under sentence of eternal condemnation; but it was still more dreadful that men were ignorant of their awful condition, or utterly indifferent to it. And now the angel brings the good tidings that He hath come into the world who will free us from all these evils. He came as the Physician to the spiritually sick, as the Redeemer to the captives of sin, as the Way to those who had wandered afar off, as the Life to the dead in trespasses and sins, and as a Savior to the lost.” 

– The Saving Benefits of Christ’s Incarnation (Sacred Meditations), Johan Gerhard