The wonder of Christmas

Tis soon “the season to merry” – so the song goes, as Christmas approaches. But Christmas, let us not forget, is the Christians’ fête; it is the celebration of a miraculous event that sparked off the Christian faith. So behind all the buying and giving of presents, the big family meal, and all the musical songs that surround this fête, let us spend a few minutes in this blog post and in ones to come, looking into some of the profound expressions that properly honour this unique historic event. 

Here’s one from the pen of the apostle Paul, one-time persecutor of Christians, in one of the earliest New Testament writings:

“When the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4.4).

This simple statement is rich in theological truth! It says essentially three things:

1.      God did something at the right time in history

2.      He sent his Son into the world

3.      His Son was born of a human woman

Christians believe in a God who is active; he is no mere philosophical ideal, a postulate put forward to start some kind of Christian reasoning. Not only does God act in history, but he acts at the right time. He had prophesied the coming of his Son, the Messiah, in the Old Testament, as some future blog posts will show. But here and now, writes Paul, this event that had been predicted by the prophets of old had recently come to pass.  

And what did God do? He sent his Son into the world. Think about that. God must be a Father if he has a Son. Here is an allusion to what Christians have discerned from the acts of God according to the Bible – that God is a mysterious divine Tri-unity. There is only one God: on that the Bible is clear. Yet in that one God there is the Father and there is the Son. They are distinct from each other (the Father sends the Son) yet they are united in the same divine nature. That’s why Jesus could say, “I and the Father are one” (John 10.30), and “I have come down from heaven… to do… the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). He also said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9).

Jesus is also called, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1.15). He came into the world in human form, and by the holy life he lived, he showed forth the holiness and the love of God his Father. We can know God’s character by considering the life of his Son, Jesus.

The third thing is that the Son of God, Jesus, was “born of a woman”. This does not mean that there was any sexual activity that brought about the incarnation of Christ. But it does mean that Jesus was brought into the world as a baby, formed by a miracle of God’s Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin, Mary. Mary herself was neither divine nor should be honoured as having contributed to the incarnation of God’s Son. She agreed to God’s angelic messenger who announced to her that she would have this unique role. The fact that this text of Paul is the only allusion to Mary in all the didactic writings of the apostles in the New Testament should prevent us from glorifying Mary. She called herself the humble servant of the Lord. She was a godly woman and she brought up Jesus and other children after him.

So Jesus was truly divine – the Son of God, who became incarnate; and he was truly human, born the natural way, yet as an act of God surpassing anything else in time and history.

Clive Every-Clayton