A Serious Word about Christmas

Christmas exposes the deepening divide in our nation between those who hate Jesus Christ and all he represents, and those who love the Savior – or at least are positively haunted by him. There is no détente between these two sides, for God started this war (Gen. 3:15). He will finish it (Rom. 9:27). Every knee that does not bow to his Son will be crushed: not by us; not by ballot box stuffing; not by finding cutesy ways to make our faith sweet and inoffensive. God will crush every thought raised against the dominion of his Son.

                Most of the hatred we see has nothing to do with us, at least not directly. I say this not to lessen our failures or to diminish our discipleship responsibility but to warn us against making too much of ourselves. Long before we were born, the world hated Jesus Christ. He exposes its sin and demands its allegiance through faith and repentance. His Spirit is at work convicting of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Nothing can quench the world’s hatred for Jesus Christ except his powerful voice calling the dead out of their tombs. We should know this. It is our testimony.

                The intensification of hatred for Christ in our nation has a specific origin. The majority of the people who originally populated these shores entered into covenant with God in Christ. Their original charters and constitutions bear witness to this. Their covenants bind their descendants and direct their destinies. Political vicissitudes and civil wars cannot change this fact. Evolving philosophies cannot nullify a covenant. Hardly anyone takes this into consideration when they consider reasons for our nation’s decline. It has broken covenant with Christ. Those who rebel against previously confessed gospel truth will always manifest the greatest hostility to God. Their wickedness will run to unbelievable lengths in order to obliterate all memory of the hated past and cover the scars of an apostate conscience. There is only one way back for covenant breakers: the most self-abhorring repentance for treacheries committed against Jesus Christ, national repentance, and the renewal of the former covenants. Do not wonder, child of God, why things here are going from bad to worse, with men deceiving and being deceived. God reserves his most exquisite judgments for those who depart from his truth.

Our particular nation’s hatred for the Prince of Peace did not come about overnight. It has grown over time. Changes have occurred over the last three centuries that have so emasculated our public defense of the Savior that the Reformation recovery of biblical Christianity was soon frittered away into revivalism, pietism, and liberalism – now into silliness and sound stages. One event in particular stands out in my mind: the privatization of faith.

What I mean by this is the now dominant idea that faith is an affair of the heart. It can have no public relevance and should therefore be kept private. Most western Christians believe this, but it is a lie. It is a declaration of agnosticism. Since no one can know truth for sure, as the argument goes, faith commitments are like fairy tales: believe them if you must but keep them out of the real world. This lie is veiled under the pretended virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is nothing but rebels being polite. They do not really mean it. They want tolerance for themselves. They are violently intolerant of anyone who posits a different reality, one in which there are absolutes and in which toleration is presented as it really is: mischievous children caught with their hand in the cookie jar and then complaining that cookies should always be free for the taking.

When faith is privatized, moreover, the most unfounded assumptions are made – rarely stated honestly but made nonetheless. God’s word cannot be trusted. Truth claims are not verifiable. God has not spoken. Man is left to his reason and experience to determine what works in an ultimately unknowable universe. God has certainly not created man or entered the morass of man’s misery through the God-man, Jesus Christ. The Bible – well, quote it when convenient, when needing votes from sentimental religionists, but everyone knows it is just a book of myths and religious stories. Each one of these is assumed when faith is privatized, when God’s truth is relegated to the realm of legend.

Not so fast. God cannot be mocked. We daily witness with horror the consequences of the privatization of faith – governments run amok with tyranny; the unborn slaughtered by the millions; statist wars that slaughter hundreds of millions in only one century of rebellion against God. What is the connection? If God’s honor is not made the chief goal of man’s public life, his governments, institutions, families, and cultural pursuits, then all of life will be consumed under his judgment. Unbelief always breeds revolution – not simply against God, but against man himself. Without God, man can have no true respect for man, for human life, purity, and decency. When God is abandoned, man is the loser. He is lost. He is left to himself. There is nothing left for him but perversity, body piercings, celebrities, escapist entertainment, and the dismal loneliness of man without his divine exemplar and true life: God himself. We were made for him. Without God, man is nothing, can find nothing solid, and will brutalize and ruin everything he touches. Having God as our life is joy and peace; declaring war against him is the death of man: familial, cultural, political suicide. 

More than any other single thing the church can do to meet this crisis is a renewed preaching and discipleship emphasis upon the present reign of Jesus Christ. Unbelievers will never be brought to their true King unless those who profess his name know, serve, and proclaim him as such. Far more insult has been done to our Savior’s majesty by his professing friends than his avowed enemies can ever give him. Think of all the denominations that have capitulated to worldly wisdom, or withdrawn into emotionalism, or spiritualized away all the kingdom promises of gospel growth and victory or never address their own members in terms of Jesus as Lord: in life and thought, worship and doctrine, education and finances, family and business. If we do not take our Savior’s reign seriously, the world certainly will not. And if we do not take his reign seriously, humbly, even as the great reality of life, he will chasten us and give our enemies the upper hand. He must, for how else shall we be convicted of our sins and brought back meekly under his royal scepter?

For this reason, we must also take Christmas seriously – not mangers, stars, and wise men, as wonderful as these are. One of the most miraculous lines in all of Scripture is: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Here is the answer to man’s sin-created confusion and misery. Here is the answer to statism of every form. Here is the recovery of man in the totality of his existence. God the Son assumed our flesh and came to earth. He did this to bear our curse by his death, to satisfy divine judgment, and to reconcile us to God by his blood. Reject his blood, O West, and you will still have blood, but it will be your own! The Advent of our Savior is not a time for mushy sentiment, wistful dreaming about a better life, or nostalgia about the past. His birth was God’s declaration of salvation, of victory over sin and death, of gospel good news, and of death to all tyrants, rebels, and appeasers of sin.

Let us, then, bow before the manger as the shepherds did. Unto us was born that day a Savior, Christ the Lord. He is our only salvation and righteousness. He is our peace and joy. He is our King, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Prince of the Kings of the earth. The manger gave way to the cross, and the cross to the crown. This is good news for the repentant. It is bad news for rebels. The King is reigning. He is putting down all opposition, exposing the foolishness of this world, and building his church. Let us worship him and confess with Thomas: “My Lord and my God.”