According to one legend, Satan and his demons once celebrated Christmas. After the party was over, as the guests were leaving, one of them grinned slyly in farewell and said to Satan:
— Merry Christmas, your highness!
Answering this ironic and double-edged greeting, the devil growled:
— See that you always keep it “merry,” because if people ever start to take it seriously, we are finished!
The trouble with Christmas is that most people receive it only on the surface. But if we stop and think more deeply about the facts and events that this holiday marks, if we grasp the spiritual truths it conveys to us, then it can radically change not only our life, but also our destiny for all eternity.
Let us do it! Let us this year take the birth of Christ seriously! Let us anger the devil! Let us open God’s Word, see what it tells us about the birth of the Savior, believe it and receive it! Every holiday celebrates something. It has a purpose and a meaning. The traditional date for marking the birth of Christ, December 25, was established in the fourth century after Christ. But what kind of holiday is this? What is the meaning of such a feast? What does it mark? And how can it best be celebrated? These are the questions we will consider, seeking their answers in the Bible.
WHY IS THE BIRTH OF CHRIST AN OCCASION FOR CELEBRATION?
The purpose of this holiday is to commemorate the birth of the Messiah — the Savior of the world. In Matthew 1:21 the angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream said the following about the child that the virgin Mary was to bear:
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21)
Jesus is no accidental figure. He is the Savior. A Savior who rescues us not from some political or other kind of bondage, but from the yoke of sin and its wage, which is eternal death.
The birth of Jesus is an occasion for celebration because it is the realization of a hope — the fulfillment of a promise given to humanity by God himself.
THE PRECISE BIBLICAL PROPHECIES
The prophet Daniel foretold the date of Christ’s appearing (Daniel 9:24–25):
“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. (Daniel 9:24–25)
The command to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was issued by the emperor Artaxerxes I in 445 B.C. The prophecy speaks of “seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’”:
7 + 62 = 69 “sevens.”
The “sevens” in these verses are not weeks of days, but weeks of years:
69 x 7 = 483 years.
Moreover, a prophetic year consists of 360 days, not 365. The Messiah was to be born approximately 440 years after 445 B.C. so that he could be a grown man at the time of his crucifixion. And he did just that! The most likely date of his birth is thought to be sometime between April and October of 6 or 5 B.C.
The confusion that the first year of our calendar does not begin exactly with the birth of Christ is due to the mistake of a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in the sixth century. To him we owe the modern reckoning of the years “before and after Christ.” In the transition from the old Roman calendar, which dated the years from the founding of Rome, to the Christian calendar, which dates the years from the birth of Christ, Dionysius Exiguus mistakenly calculated that the founding of Rome had taken place in 748 B.C., when in fact it happened in 753 B.C. From this error, which went unnoticed for a long time after the Christian calendar was established, there arose a negative discrepancy of about 5 years. It is also a fact that the birth of the Messiah did not take place in winter, since the shepherds in Palestine as a rule stayed out under the open sky with their flocks only from spring to autumn.
The prophet Micah foretold the birthplace of Christ (Micah 5:2):
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)
Jesus was indeed born in Bethlehem — in the birthplace of his forefather according to the flesh, King David. Such was the prophecy, and God had so “arranged” things that in that very year the emperor Augustus commanded that a census be taken. And although his parents were from Nazareth in Galilee, this census compelled Joseph and Mary to go to the little town where Jesus was to be born. In the Gospel of Luke 2:1–6 we read:
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, (Luke 2:1–6)
The prophet Isaiah foretold the special and wondrous way in which the Messiah would come into this world — born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14):
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)
THE PHENOMENON OF THE INCARNATION
In fact the birth of Jesus is one of the greatest miracles in the history of humanity — the incarnation. Through it, one of the persons of God, the Creator of the world, entered into creation. The little baby in the manger was, and is, God!
The church council that defined the framework within which the christological question is to be examined is the Council of Chalcedon. It met in the year 451. The definition of the faith that it gives is the following:
Following the holy fathers, we all with one voice teach that it is to be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God. The Same is perfect in his deity, perfect also in his humanity — truly God and truly man, with a rational soul and body; of one substance (“homoousios”) with the Father as regards his deity, and of one substance (“homoousios”) with us as regards his human nature; like us in all things, except sin. He was begotten of the Father before all ages as regards his deity, and as regards his human nature, now in these “last days,” for us and for our salvation, the Same was born of the virgin Mary, who is the Mother of God (“theotokos”) according to the flesh. One and the same Christ, the Son, the Lord, the Only-Begotten, is made known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The difference between the two natures is not removed by their union; rather, the distinct properties of the natures are preserved intact, both being united in one Person (“prosopon”) and one Being [Subsistence] (“hypostasis”) — not parted or separated into two persons (“prosopa”), but one and the same Son, the Only-Begotten, the divine Word (“Logos”), the Lord Jesus Christ — just as the prophets of old testified; just as the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us; and just as the Fathers handed down to us in the Creed.”
In his article “THE CREEDAL DEFINITION OF CHALCEDON,” Todor Mihaylov writes the following:
“The uniting of God and man in one person, without this leading to a blurring or an effacing of either the divine or the human nature — this is the most intimate mystery of God’s revelation, will, and action toward us human beings. The other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, confess that there is one God — Creator and Lawgiver — but for them it is blasphemy that he should unite himself with people and take on human nature.
Ancient pagan beliefs and some eastern religions speak of gods who became men, but these deities, most often created by someone else, turned into men in order to demonstrate things beyond human capacity. They did not become true men, taking our nature into themselves and giving theirs, the divine, to us. The abyss between humanity and God has always divided the existence, the essence, and the direction of the two sides. God has always been “up there” — infinite, absolute, perfect. Man, after the fall, has remained “down here” in the mire of earthly nature and sin — limited, weak, mortal, corrupt.
The pagans served the demons through their superstition. The eastern religions offer that through self-absorption a person may find himself and realize his spiritual potential, not understanding that sin will lead him to the spiritual world of the demons. Judaism and Islam go so far as to acknowledge the perfect and eternal God, to lift up God’s law (whether the true law of Moses or the distorted law of the Quran and the Sharia) as a standard of behavior and to impose it upon people, despite the resistance of our sinful nature. But the truth is that our sinful nature is far too strong, and our human will cannot on its own fulfill the whole law (Romans 8:7–9).
Here is the perfection of the Christian faith — God himself “steps across” the abyss, taking our nature without effacing his own, uniting himself with us, so that we may receive his nature.”
In the Gospel of John 1:1–3, 14 we read:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:1–3)
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
The word “Word” in these verses does not refer to language in general or to philosophical thought (as some suppose), nor to the words of God or to the Bible. “The Word” is the name that the evangelist John gives to Jesus, because he best reveals to us the character and will of God. To understand these verses better, let us read them again, replacing the name “the Word” with the name Jesus Christ:
“In the beginning was Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was with God (this means together with him in his dwelling place), and Jesus Christ was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
Here Jesus Christ is categorically and unmistakably described as without beginning and uncreated, as God, and as Creator. And in verse 14, with a few strokes, John conveys to us his incarnation:
“And Jesus Christ (the Second Person of the Trinity) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The birth of Christ is a feast of God’s love, of his perfect providence, and of his boundless faithfulness and power. It is the feast of this: that THE MESSIANIC HOPE IS NO LONGER A HOPE, BUT A FACT! A SAVIOR IS BORN! THE SON OF GOD BECAME THE SON OF MAN, SO THAT WE, THE SONS OF MEN, MIGHT BECOME THE SONS OF GOD! Truly there is reason to celebrate such a feast!
HOW CAN WE BEST CELEBRATE THIS FEAST?
A feast such as the birth of Christ, if it is truly and fully understood, cannot leave anyone indifferent and passive. How we celebrate it, and whether we celebrate it at all, depends on what our attitude toward Christ is. Like every momentous event, the birth of the Messiah allows for no neutrality. Then, as now, it challenges people to stand either on his side or against him.
1. On the part of those who oppose God, the birth of the Savior is met with alarm, malice, hatred, and even violence.
In Matthew 2:1–8, 9–18 we see the treachery of King Herod:
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matthew 2:1–6)
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” (Matthew 2:7–8)
Herod pretended to be very devout, but in his heart he harbored a terrible irritation and anger — a fear that the newborn Messiah might threaten the foundations of his throne. Perhaps you too are afraid that if Jesus enters your life, your “kingdom” will not be the same. And indeed it is so — it will not be the same — it will be much, much better!
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. (Matthew 2:9–12)
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2:13–15)
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:16–18)
What horror! What a tragedy! For some, the birth of the Savior was not an occasion for joy, but for weeping. Why? Because the Messiah had entered the satanic kingdom, and the powers of darkness, trembling, reacted — and in the most cruel and repulsive way possible. Ignorance and spiritual blindness, love for the darkness, cannot be excused. In John 1:9–11 the evangelist John recounts:
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” (John 1:9–11)
Such was the reaction of the ignorant and proud people. When Jesus was born, they not only did not receive him, but some of them even sought him out in order to kill him.
2. But there were also others — people who rejoiced at the birth of the Savior — people who worshiped him, and whose lives were forever changed by this encounter.
These were the shepherds and the Magi. In Luke 2:8–15 we learn how God sent his angels to announce in a wondrous way the birth of the Messiah. He chose to make it known first of all to ordinary people, to those who at that time were working the night shift.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” (Luke 2:8–15)
When they saw the angel who announced to them the birth of the Messiah, the shepherds were at first frightened of him. But when they then obeyed, they went to Bethlehem. There they found the sign that confirmed that the Anointed Savior had been born — a baby wrapped in cloths, lying in a feeding trough for animals. They truly rejoiced beyond measure (Luke 2:20):
“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” (Luke 2:20)
As we saw earlier, the Magi, who are representatives of the wise and learned, also sought him out and came from afar in order to worship him (Matthew 2:1–2, 10–12). They realized that he, the child whose star had risen, and not Herod, was the true one, worthy of worship, God’s Anointed. That is why they brought him royal gifts. And this too is the way to celebrate the birth of Christ best of all — by rejoicing over the Savior who has been born, by glorifying him, by receiving him into our heart and worshiping him!
WHOSE SIDE WILL YOU TAKE?
How do you receive Christmas, the birth of the Savior, of the heavenly King? Whose side will you take on this festive day? The side of the ignorant, the closed, and the indifferent, the side of Herod? Or the side of the pure-hearted shepherds and the knowledgeable, learned Magi?
Just as on that evening about 2,000 years ago, when Christ stood and knocked at the doors of the houses of Bethlehem, so today, if you have not yet received him, he stands and knocks at the door of your heart. He desires to come in to you and to save you. The door opens only from within. Will you open to him? Will you receive him as your Lord and King? In Revelation 3:20 he says:
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20)
If you receive him, if you believe in him, the Holy Spirit will make your spirit born anew, and you will become a child of God.
At the birth of Christ, the Son of God became the son of man, so that we — the sons of men — might become the sons of God! In John 1:11–12 the evangelist says the following:
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become CHILDREN OF GOD— (John 1:11–12)
Receive him now! Do not delay! With a simple prayer, invite him into your heart. Say to him:
“Lord Jesus, until now I have not known you.
But you came to this earth
to offer yourself as a sacrifice for my sins,
and to rise again for my justification.
Forgive my ignorance.
Forgive my indifference.
Forgive my sin!
Today I invite you into my heart.
Enter my life and be my king.
Come now and become my personal Savior!
Thank you that you hear me,
and that right now
you are pouring your saving joy into my heart.
Amen!”
In Matthew 2:12 it says that after their encounter with Jesus, the Magi departed by “another route.” If today you have come to this Christmas service by one road — by the wide road of sin, which leads to destruction — then my Christmas wish for you is that you would leave by “another route” — by the narrow road “that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14)!
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:14)