Dr LM Murry
There is a lot of confusion in the celebration of Christmas. In my last article I have written God’s history of His rescue operation. Allow me some digression here. There is a difference between Gods history and the accounts of human historians. No human historian can write about the beginning because there were no human eyewitnesses. Also no human historians can write about the things after the Church Age. But God’s history encompasses everything about the beginning and what will come to pass after the end of this Age. This is important to know.
This time, I would like to write about the meaning of Christmas. We may call it the Theology of Christmas. Many of us believers in Jesus Christ, Christmas means merely the day of the birth of Jesus Christ. True, we are all celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ but what for and why?
If we want to understand why He had to be born, the answer can be found in the whole Bible from Genesis to the Gospels. For the sake of brevity in an article like this we will confine ourselves to Pauls Epistles to the believers in Philippi. (Philippians 2:5-11). In this portion of the Bible we can get the purpose. It is simply to know that Jesus is Lord. We are told “though in the form of God” which means he is God possessing all the attributes of the Triune God. Jesus, though God as the Son of God, abandoned His Sovereign position for our redemption. He had to come in the form of man by abandoning His attributes; in perfect obedience to His Father. We are told, “Being” in the form of God. He relinquished His Sovereignty to God in obedience. In heaven, Lucifer, as the Arch Angel of the worship leader wanted to snatch away God’s Sovereignty. He wanted to be equal with his Creator. (Isaiah 14:13&14) This was the cause of his fall. He was separated from God. But Jesus was willing to leave the form of God and became human. He was willing to give up everything and become a slave of God. By doing so, Jesus did not give up His nature as God. He remained the Triune God as the Son. His glory had to be veiled and humbly accepted the lowliest form of mankind. He surrendered His Sovereignty and Majesty. He removed the Royal robe and put on the rags of a slave. He was conceived supernaturally but went through the progress of the growth in the womb of human. He was born as a baby like any human being. He was wrapped in a cloth, cried as any baby. Raised in a rural, small village; learnt the trade of his father as a carpenter and grew up with the other children in the village. He ran around on errands as any young boy, was thirsty, hungry, tired and slept. But he remained selfless even to die on the cross. He grieved and cried with the heart broken relatives of the dead. He received all the anger and punishment of his Father. But He remained obedient, till death on a cross. He felt the abandonment of his Father crying, “why have you forsaken me”? He died, buried like any human being. But he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on Earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. Sovereignty and Majesty without glory is a false god. The glory of God is everything. Isaiah the prophet told us the name of God, “I am the Lord; that is my name. I will not give my glory to another; or my praise to idols” (Isahia42:8). Jesus Christ is a human name. Now the name of Christ is “The Lord”. He is fully man and fully God. This is the meaning of Christmas. Let us turn away from the chaos in the World with so many tradition and practices like Christmas trees, Santa Clause, Rein Deer and every conceivable tradition of man. Let us focus our attention to Christ the Lord and His Glory. Amen.
