The King is Born
This time of year is a strange one. On the surface, our culture is inundated with the sights, smells, and vocabulary of gospel life. Hope, joy, peace, and goodwill to men are plastered in lights on every shop window, billboard, commercial, and front yard. Songs containing deep theological truths play in every store, not just Chick-Fil-A. Yet, just under the surface, the culture war rages. This time of year, it’s more of a Cold War.
The truth is, we are celebrating two different occasions: the holidays and the Advent. One is a high holy day for the Church; the other is a commercial event that adopts Christian values with a convenient excising of Christ from its central tenets. This doesn’t upset me, because I appreciate the clarity of the situation. The only thing worse than a pagan culture acting like its pagan is a pagan culture pretending to be Christian. It’s the lukewarm that makes Jesus want to throw up (Rev. 3:16).
However, I do understand that this parallel celebration can create a subconscious confusion for Christians. You can walk through Wal-Mart and get bombarded with Christian imagery. The effect is downright hypnotic. You begin to feel as if, perhaps at least for a moment, we live in a Christian nation. Then for some reason, you feel inextricably drawn to that new, 70-inch television you have been lusting after on aisle 12. Every time you come to this store for something your wife called you about on your way home, you go the long way around through electronics to get a slow look at this behemoth.
Now you find yourself captured in a trance of materialistic rapture. You wake up the next day lying in a pile of packing peanuts, styrofoam, and that new electronics smell still hanging in the air as a lingering indictment of your indiscretions the night before. Your new, 70 inches of 4k glory shines on your face like the dawn. You wonder what happened at Wal-Mart yesterday for a moment, shrug your shoulders, and scamper for the remote.
What happened? How did you so easily lose yourself? The retailer used all that intoxicating Christian-esque imagery to lure you down the electronics aisle to that false altar. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’ve all fallen for it.
Certainly, there is much to celebrate in concert with the world this time of year. Generosity is a godly value that contributes greatly to human flourishing inside and outside the Church. God loves to bless his kids, and if God has blessed you with a wall big enough to hold a 70-inch TV, then by all means praise God for it and host a Super Bowl party this year. (If you still feel guilty, maybe sanctify those pixels with a couple Kirk Cameron films. WWKCD?)
That isn’t the point.
The point is that we mustn’t allow the shallowness of our culture to make Christ small in our eyes. On Christmas, we remember that “though [Jesus] was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Phil. 2:6-7)
In that tiny baby, lying in that tiny manger, was contained the entirety of the Kingdom of God. This baby would not remain a helpless baby. He would grow into a man who would be King. Not just any king, but a righteous King. And not just a righteous king, but the King of the Kingdom of God. He came to fulfill Samuel’s prophecy to David that his kingdom would go on forever, a prophetic hope that would be echoed again and again by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others. (2 Sam. 7:8-16, Isa. 9:6-7) Christmas is nothing less than the initiation of God’s final act in the drama he began at creation and will extend into eternity.
This baby would ascend the throne of God at his resurrection. He would take the scroll from the right hand of the Father, shining with blinding glory, and Jesus, the conquering lion and the sacrificial lamb, would open the scroll and execute the will of the Father unto the end. All things made right again. Shalom restored. Every tear wiped away. Every wicked act made right. Every worker of evil judged. Every rebel against the throne cast out. The entire family of God finally gathered around his eternal table. (Rev. 4-5)
The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is the fulcrum of human history. Jingling bells, fat bearded men in red suits, and the smell of cinnamon and potpourri don’t do it justice. Enjoy this season. Drink your eggnog, wear that ridiculous sweater your wife hates, make small-talk with your in-laws. But don’t let the King be contained in that tiny manger.
May the majesty of your King and the beauty of his deeds rest securely in your hearts during this Advent season.
