"Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).
That was the announcement of His birth, and forgiveness is, thereofre, always at the heart of the gospel message. When translators tried to find a term for forgiveness in one African language, they finally put, "God spit on the ground in front of us." In that culture, to show love, you would spit on a man's head. If two people had a disagreement, went to court, and were finally reconciled, they marked it by spitting on the ground. So Jesus reconciled us to God, and to them that meant, "God spit on the ground in front of us."
Whether our description of it be crude or cultured, familiar or strange, we must all experience that reconciliation, which was the very purpose of Christ's coming into the world.
