More True With Each Passing Century

The Work of One Who Lives

All around the world this Christmas season people will be coming to new life.  Once dead in their sins and trespasses, they will arise and and see the Son of God for the first time.  They will be born again by the Spirit of God.  In every land.  In every nation.

In the early fourth century AD, church father, Athanasius reflected on the reality of his day which continues to our day.  Same truths, same realities, same Lord.  To the arguments and evidences that Athanasius lists, we can add this consideration: his case is tenfold more weighty nigh two millennia later.  The same realities of which he speaks, we, today, can testify to.  But our testimony is even more powerful, since it is about a living Saviour and a living faith which have, like an irresistible leaven, penetrated into many more centuries, many more cultures, more languages, more countries, and many more families and souls. 

Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave.  Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living.  Well, then, look at the facts in this case.  The Saviour is working mightily among men; every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond  the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching.

Can anyone, in the face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life?  Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ?  If He is no longer active in the world, as He must needs be if He is dead, how is it that He makes the living to cease from their activities the adulterer from his adultery, the murder from murdering, the unjust from his avarice, while the profane and godless man becomes religious?  If He did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and  the evil spirits whom they worship?  For where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed no such spirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it. 

This is the work of One Who lives, not of one dead and, more than that, it is the work of God.  [Athanasius, On the Incarnation. Translated and edited by Sister Penelope Lawson.  (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1946.), p.46f  ]

The previous century saw the most implacable, industrialised, and determined effort yet seen to overthrow the Son of God.  Militant atheism in Asia and Europe attempted to strip the knowledge and memory and power of Jesus Christ from the earth.  Now, it lies broken, like Ozymandius of old.  

The Meaning of Christmas

Echoes of Calvary

It pleases the Lord from time to time to remind us what true love, what great love looks like.  This Christmas season in New Zealand He has done just that–yet again.  Here is the story, as it appeared in Stuff:

Mother makes supreme sacrifice for son

HARRY PEARL

Last updated 05:00 21/12/2013

 

Jennifer Doolabh was never meant to fall pregnant for a third time.

She had a new partner, sure, but the doctors told her it was rare for someone in her situation. She had undergone nearly a year of chemotherapy and radiation after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012.  But around June, while enduring another bout of radiation treatment and preparing for hormone therapy, she was delivered the news.

“It was a shock,” she says, at her home in Hamilton. “We just thought I couldn’t get pregnant and they were just about to suppress my ovaries. I was about to go on other treatment as well.” So instead she stopped treatment, in order to give her baby a better chance of survival.

On Monday she’ll finally give birth to her son Matthias – which means God’s gift in Hebrew – just in time for Christmas, though she knows it could be the last one she will spend with him.  He’ll be born six weeks early, but it’s a wonder he will be born at all.

Because she wasn’t having treatment, her condition worsened and at 22 weeks, she was given six weeks to live.  “I was getting ready to die,” she says, matter of factly. “We were getting everything ready for the funeral and I was getting ready to die.”  The family and doctors met to discuss what to do. For Matthias to be born healthy, she was told she would need to make it to 28 weeks. She decided to start chemotherapy again.  The effect the chemotherapy, radiation and scans will have on her son, no one will know until he is born, she says.

All along, the doctors wanted her to abort the baby – even at 23 weeks.  But Doolabh couldn’t. She says she is morally opposed to abortion.  “You can’t just kill a baby.”  The family will have Christmas together – in the hospital.

Understandably, Christmas this year has been tough – emotionally and financially.  Since she became unable to work, the family have relied solely on her husband’s income, which has been a struggle. “We’ve only had enough money for our bills.”  Harder still has been preparing her kids for when she is gone.  “We made some videos and things like that,” she says. “That was hard, saying goodbye.” Her 10-year-old son Te Waraki understands, but her 5-year-old daughter Bailey doesn’t, she says. “She thinks death is temporary.”

And then there is Matthias.  Despite knowing she will not be there to support her son, she says she is not worried. “His father is amazing. He’ll have lots of support, so he’ll be fine.” . . .

Love so amazing, as the hymn puts it.   Thank you Jennifer for being an echo and reflection of our Saviour’s love for us, when He was “crucified, dead, and buried,” as He “descended into Hell” for us and our sake. 

May Matthias indeed be God’s gift to you and your family as you lay down your life for him.  Merry Christmas.

The Self-Excluded

For Whom Did Christ Come?

All Christians  profess that the season of Advent or Christmas is the remembrance and celebration of one of the pivotal events in all human history.  We do not use the expression lightly.  We mean this to be literally true, not mere rhetorical or hyperbolic flourish.  The Living God became flesh, took on human nature, and entered into history, to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). 

He did not come to save everyone.  He came to save only His people.  At first glance such a non-inclusive mission would naturally mean He had come to save the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The Gentiles would therefore be excluded.  As Christ’s ministry transpired, however, things became a little less obvious and a little more profound.  It became clear that “His people” included the Gentiles, non-Jewish humanity.  He spoke of “another” flock, one not of “this fold” which He must bring and shepherd (John 10:16).  He did indeed come unto His own after the flesh, but His own people received Him not (John 1:14).  In the course of the rejection of Christ by many, if not the majority, of His people,  He turned to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, to those outside the Covenant, the temple, the law, and the sacrifices. 

At the end of His earthly ministry in the flesh He was declaring that He had come to save the world and that He would draw all people to Himself.  (John 12: 27-50).  But this was foreshadowed at the very beginning of His ministry.  Right from the outset He had made it clear that there were certain Jewish people He had not come to save.  They were excluded.  They were self-excluded insofar as they had disqualified themselves.

How?  At the outset of His public ministry, in one of the most sarcastic and cutting remarks ever made by our Lord whilst on earth, He said of the scribes and the Pharisees that He had not come to call them.  “Those who are well,” He said, “do not need a physician, but those who are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (Mark 2: 17)  By referring to them as “well” and “righteous” our Lord was being sarcastic, but fairly and accurately so.  For the righteousness of His critics was self-diagnosed.  They were righteous in their own eyes, and therefore had no need of the Saviour of mankind.  At the end of His public ministry He denounced these very same for their extreme wickedness, corruption, and sin (Matthew 23). 

At Advent, we remind one another of the glorious coming of the Son of God into human history to save the world.  But, He did not come to save everyone.  There are plenty in our day for whom Christ did not come at all.  There are myriads who believe that they are too correct, too upright to have need of a saviour.  The very notion is not just beneath them, it is so far removed from their self-regard as to be grossly offensive. 

He came to save sinners, not the righteous.  We thank God that He came for this purpose.  If he had not, we Christians all know that we, of all men, would have no hope, and would for ever remain in the outer darkness. 

Christmas Carols

Drumming Glory

The Christmas season is approaching. We always need reminding that the core focus of Christmas for us, His people, is to be worship, with great joy. Here is a rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, using the greatest of musical instruments–the human voice. 

This particular piece is a reminder that worship of the God who is now amongst us clothed in human nature, who is bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, warmly accepts the worship of children, and that it is the adoration of children which provides us jaded adults with a tutorial in worship. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Go Overboard

Go Overboard Celebrating Christmas

A godliness that won’t delight in fudge and eggnog is no godliness at all.

Douglas Wilson 

 

[ posted 12/20/2012]

God Rest Ye Merry: Why Christmas is the Foundation for Everything
Douglas WilsonCanon Press
November 20, 2012
154 pp., $16.00

 

Socrates once famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In a similar vein, the unexamined holiday is not worth celebrating. Whenever we do anything on autopilot, it is not surprising that at some point we forget where we are going, or what we were supposed to be doing. And when we are just cruising in a mindless tradition, it is a short time before sin takes over.

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. (Is. 25:6–8)

As the prophet Isaiah prophesies the coming of the new covenant, he does so with the image of a glorious feast. The feast is prepared by the Lord of hosts Himself (v. 6). What kind of feast is it? He prepares a feast of fat things, he prepares a feast of aged wines, of meat full of marrow fat, and then some more aged wines.

This is the picture we are given of the gospel—not a glass of room-temperature water and a cracker. Right alongside this feast, in conjunction with it, He will remove the covering that kept us all in darkness for all those centuries. He will take away the veil over the nations (v. 7). The resurrection will come—and we have the down payment of that in the resurrection of Jesus—and death will be swallowed up in victory. The Lord will wipe away every tear, and all things will then be put right (v. 8). As those who have accepted this gospel, we have accepted that all of this has now been established in principle, and as we live it out in true evangelical faith, we proclaim this good news. But there must be continuity between what we are saying and how we are living. And by this, I mean much more than that our words should be true and our behavior good. I mean that our words should sound like good news and our lives should smell like good news.

Celebrate the ‘Stuff’

Some of you have heard that the Puritans hated Christmas, that they were the original scrooges and grinches. But this, as is often the case, is grossly unfair to them. One of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, George Gillespie, a staunch opponent of the church year being used to bind the conscience, said this: “The keeping of some festival days is set up instead of the thankful commemoration of God’s inestimable benefits, howbeit the festivity of Christmas have hitherto served more to Bachanalian lasciviousness than to the remembrance of the birth of Christ.” In other words, a person might object to pepper spraying fellow shoppers on Black Friday without rejecting the blessing of Thanksgiving. He can object to a Mardi Gras orgy without objecting to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. He can turn away from a drunken office party without denying the Incarnation. And there was, for the Puritans, the matter of compulsion also.

Remember the words of C. S. Lewis here:

There is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries.

This period of Advent is one of preparation for Christmas. If we want to celebrate Christmas like Puritans (for that is actually what we are), this means that we should prepare for it in the same way. Look at the whole thing sideways, like Chesterton would. Here are some key principles:

Do not treat this as a time of introspective penitence. To the extent that you must clean up, do it with the attitude of someone showering and changing clothes, getting ready for the best banquet you have ever been to. This does not include three weeks of meditating on how you are not worthy to go to banquets. Of course you are not. Haven’t you heard of grace?

Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism.

Where Sin Really Resides

At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin not resident in the stuff. Sin is found in the human heart—in the hearts of both true gluttons and true scrooges—both those who drink much wine and those who drink much prune juice. If you are called up to the front of the class, and you get the problem all wrong, it would be bad form to blame the blackboard. That is just where you registered your error. In the same way, we register our sin on the stuff. But—because Jesus was born in this material world, that is where we register our piety as well. If your godliness won’t imprint on fudge, then it is not true godliness.

Some may be disturbed by this. It seems a little out of control, as though I am urging you to “go overboard.” But of course I am urging you to go overboard. Think about it—when this world was “in sin and error pining,” did God give us a teaspoon of grace to make our dungeon a tad more pleasant? No. He went overboard.

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. This article is excerpted from his book, God Rest Ye Merry: Why Christmas Is the Foundation for Everything (Canon Press).

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same . . .

O Holy Night

A Christmas Carol which has become very popular in recent decades is “O Holy Night”.  The music was originally written by Adolphe Adam in 1847 as a setting to the French poem “Minuit, chrétiens” (Midnight, Christians) by Placide Cappeau (1808–1877).

An English translation of the original poem runs thus:

Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour,

When God as man descended unto us

To erase the stain of original sin

And to end the wrath of His Father.

The entire world thrills with hope

On this night that gives it a Savior.

People kneel down, wait for your deliverance.

Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer,

Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer!

May the ardent light of our Faith

Guide us all to the cradle of the infant,

As in ancient times a brilliant star

Guided the Oriental kings there.

The King of Kings was born in a humble manger;

O mighty ones of today, proud of your greatness,

It is to your pride that God preaches.

Bow your heads before the Redeemer!

Bow your heads before the Redeemer!

The Redeemer has broken every bond:

The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.

He sees a brother where there was only a slave,

Love unites those that iron had chained.

Who will tell Him of our gratitude,

For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

People stand up! Sing of your deliverance,

Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer,

Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer!

The version we now sing in English is based upon the following:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!

O night divine, O night when Christ was born;

O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,

Here come the wise men from Orient land.

The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!

Behold your King, Before Him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

This version was penned by John Sullivan Dwight a New England Unitarian.  It remains sufficiently true to orthodox doctrine to remain Christian in its content.  The common version now sung comes to us from John Rutter’s setting, here performed by Kings College Choir.

Or, if you prefer solo artist, try Susan Boyle’s rendition: Or, if you prefer,  a great vocal rendition by Celine Dion:

The Glory of the Incarnation

Songs

Every sabbath, and every Christmas season in particular, songs ring out around the world.  A King was born, the divine being, taking on human nature, human flesh.  The world would never be the same.  Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs, not of angry men, but of humble, pure joy?  We do.  We hear them singing both modern hymns of praise and ancient ones. 

What gives them their power?  They tell us that there is a great love that has intervened in history, making itself known in terms that are startlingly, and inexhaustible, palpable to us as human beings.  They are tales of love, lovingly enacted once, and afterward cherished and retold–by the grace of God, certainly, because they are, after all, the narrative of an obscure life in a minor province.  Caesar Augustus was also said to be divine, and there aren’t any songs about him. [Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), p. 127.]

The Real Deal

This Day Is Born to You . . . 

Today is Christmas Eve when all around the world Christians will recall, re-celebrate, and rejoice in the birth of the Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, our Lord.  We celebrate this event not just as a mere memorial.  We celebrate it because it begins what continues to this day, and ever shall be.  We celebrate the arrival into this world of the One who is now its Lord and King. 

When Christians celebrate in this way  they are making a political statement of course, or more precisely, they are celebrating an event which has profound and everlasting implications for all powers and authorities upon this earth in 2012 and beyond.  For to the Christ has been given all power and authority in the heavens and upon the earth.  All who do not worship Him and serve Him and and obey Him are rebels and will be so judged at the end of days. 

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that during His days upon earth there were plenty of such rebels and abusers of the power they had been given.
  Herod the “Great” was one such.  He was a megalomaniac who sought to make an eternal name for himself by means of constructing grand edifices.  In reality he concerned himself far more with those of his family and court, most of whom he successively murdered.  He also sought to murder the Son of God, making his name eternally infamous because of his slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem.

But  Herod was a puppet, an underlord to the great Caesar of Rome.  Augustus claimed divinity and the worship of his subjects.  Caesar Augustus means “Caesar is Lord”.  And so we have the antithesis: is Caesar our god and lord–in whatever form he takes in our day, be it president, prime minister, excellency, or despot–or is Christ the Lord?  Every man, woman and child upon earth must take a stand right at this point.  It confronts us all.  None is exempt. 

Christians of course declare that they believe and acknowledge Christ as the Lord of the heavens and all the earth and that, therefore, He is our Lord.  Consequently Christians celebrate His birth, His coming.  Their submission to the Lord of glory is joyful and glad.  They convey this joy by their singing, by music.  For the Lord is both terrible and yet gentle, humble of heart.  His human perfection, His sinlessness, His righteousness stands in sharp contrast to the Herods and the Augustuses of this world–usurpers and pretenders all.  Christ alone is worthy to sit upon the throne of the earth.  He laid down His life to redeem and save the world.  He rose again from the dead, proving infallibly that His sacrifice was accepted by God  and that atonement for mankind had indeed been made. 

This day, in China, Botswana, and Bosnia songs of joy will be heard.  Celebrations will take place as Christians gather to honour His birth, His coming to us. And so it will continue to world’s end.  No songs are now sung for Caesar Augustus or Herod the “Great”.  They were pretenders.  Christ is the reality.  He alone can save men from their sins.  He alone is fit to rule the whole earth.

Wonder and Great Joy

The World Would Never Be The Same

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

And Slew the Little Childer 

Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 15 December 2012

Whenever you have to deal with something like the Connecticut shooting, something that simply crushes the heart, it is important to think carefully before speaking or writing. This is not the time to be debating gun control, drone attacks in the Middle East, and it is certainly not the time to be drawing ham-fisted comparisons to the abortion carnage. The reason for this is that the parents who are broken over this were parents who had chosen life, not parents who hadn’t. This does not mean that abortion is irrelevant to this tragedy, for it certainly is not, but we want to make sure we locate it as a clear point of gospel relevance.

Otherwise we just come off as opportunists who are just looking for a chance to haul the topic of conversation over to a particular hobby horse. But in the aftermath of something sick like this, we need to reconnect with the permanent things. If we don’t point to transcendental realities in a time like this—gospel truths—then we might as well sign a peace treaty with the darkness now.

I have often said that nativity sets should include a set of Herod’s soldiers—that is as much a part of the Christmas story as the shepherds, or the star, or the wise men.
These traditional figures all glorified Christ in His coming, but the reality of such bloody soldiers was the reason He came. Nothing illustrates the need for His mission to us better than that appalling loss to Ramah. An early English carol, “Unto Us is Born a Son,” has a verse that understands this juxtaposition of humility and adoration over against the haughtiness of pride and blood.

This did Herod sore affray,
And grievously bewilder
So he gave the word to slay,
And slew the little childer,
And slew the little childer.

And Rachel wept for her children, for they were no more.

Two things should stand out about this. First, while I noted that this is not the time to call out those who would use the tragedy to promote gun control—or to call them names on the Internet—we must confront those who would continue their lockdown policies of gospel control. And by gospel, I mean the whole counsel of God for a lost and sinful race—the restored order of things, repentance for sin, and true faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. If you want a society which refuses to name the name of Jesus, and yet is somehow free from these sorts of outrages, you want something that this sinful world cannot ever provide. We can have no salvation without a Savior. God sent a Savior to us, and we have no saviors of our own, just a lot of pretenders. His invitation to our generation is the same as it has been for every generation, and it is “come with me.” We cannot be saved unless we do.

It is not possible to build a culture around a denial of God-given standards, and then arbitrarily reintroduce those standards at your convenience, whenever you need a word like evil to describe what has just happened. Those words cannot just be whistled up. If we have banished them, and their definitions, and every possible support for them, we need to reckon with the fact that they are now gone. Cultural unbelief, which leads inexorably to cultural nihilism and despair, is utterly incapable of responding appropriately to things like this, while remaining fully capable of creating them. In the prophetic words of C.S. Lewis, “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

This shooting was horrendous, but far worse is the fact that our blind seers have no idea what to say about it. The horror happened, and it was immediately followed by the horror of countless individuals saying wildly inappropriate things about it. We have monsters in our midst, and vapidity in our highest council chambers, not to mention the monsters there too, and all of them want to slouch toward Bethlehem. God have mercy.

And so this leads to the second point. The reason we need to have fixed and God-given standards is not so that we might climb up some moralistic ladder, rebuilding a mythical past where these sorts of things didn’t happen to us. No, these sorts of things have always happened. We live on a screwed-up planet. We must have a God-given, fixed standard so that we may know why we need forgiveness so much. God’s law is not to pat us on the back and tell us what fine fellows we are. God’s law is given to provide a proper shape for our repentance. In moments like this, we are aghast, but our “repentance” is formless and void. We need the shape of God’s holy Word so that we know how shapeless we have become. We need the Spirit of God to move on our waters.

And here is where abortion really is relevant, along with all the other awful things we do to children. We do not need to talk about these things as political issues—however appropriate and necessary that may be in its time and place. But before we can even think about that, we need to come to grips with the fact that, at the personal level, it is plain that an aching bloodguilt rests upon our nation. I am not talking about our officials, though they are included. I am talking about the millions of us who have occasioned it, paid for it, obtained it, provided it, and funded it. According to Scripture, blood is something that returns to those who shed it. It also returns to the land where it was shed. And our vast reservoir of guilt is larger and deeper than it has ever been.

The only blood that does not return with compounded guilt is the blood of Jesus. His blood comes to us for cleansing, and not for condemnation. His blood does not return with guilt, and it is the only way that all the other guilt can be prevented from returning to us. An old gospel song points the only way to our salvation—“nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Nothing.

So we must confess that while the spirit of Christ is alive in the world, the spirit of Herod is not yet gone. And the only way to expel that kind of darkness is to boldly proclaim that Jesus came into this world precisely to destroy this kind of darkness through His death and resurrection. He was born in Bethlehem from Mary, and He was born again in Jerusalem, the first born from the dead. His grave, just like Mary, was full of grace.

This is a darkness that must be confronted, and it can only be confronted by believers who are prepared to wield the gospel—not as a sectarian talking point, but as real gospel for real sin, real balm for real pain, real light for real darkness. So go find your children, hug the little childer, thank God for the life that is in them, and teach them the Christmas story. We need it so much.

Christmas Meditation

A Theology of Christmas Gifts

Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, December 17, 2011

INTRODUCTION:
One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift-giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the course of our lives, and not just at Christmas. But it has to be said that the machinery of our consumer racket does throw the question into high relief for us at this time of year.

THE TEXT:
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt 2:11).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:
The first Christmas gifts were given by the magi to the young child Jesus. This happened sometime within the Lord’s first two years of life. Because three kinds of treasures are mentioned—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—it is often inferred that there were three wise men. There may have been, but we don’t know. What we do know is that the gifts were very costly.

SOME BACKGROUND:
Gentile wise men from the East sought out Jesus and they worshiped Him. The established rulers in Israel did not—in fact, Herod played the role here of a treacherous Pharaoh, going on to kill the young boys in the region of Bethlehem. We know what gold is, but what are frankincense and myrrh? They are both aromatic resins, harvested from different kinds of trees. Frankincense was often burned for its smell, and hence the smoke could signify prayer, ascending to God. Myrrh was used in burials (John 19:39), and Jesus was offered some mixed with wine on the cross, which He refused (Mark 15:23). It was associated with death. From the context of the magi’s visit, and the association with gold, we may infer that these were high end gifts. All three of these gifts were very expensive—in these verses, Matthew calls the gifts treasures.

NO EITHER/OR:
The relationship between God and your neighbor is not an either/or relationship. When it becomes that, it is the result of a sinful kind of dualism.
In any context where grace is necessary and called for, you can of course sin . . .
·    Through being a grump and begrudging the giving of gifts at all (John 12:5).
·    You can also sin by giving to your neighbor instead of to God (Rev. 11:10);
·    By giving to God instead of to your neighbor (Mark 7:11).

The way through, the real alternative, is to give to God by means of giving to your neighbor (Esther 9:22). Your neighbor bears the image of God. How can you give to God, who dwells in the highest heaven? You reach up by reaching down, or by reaching across. No gift given here in the right way goes missing in the final tally (Matt. 10:42). With every form of unrighteous mammon, you have the opportunity to extend grace to your fellow creatures, in the hope that they will receive you into glory (Luke 16:9). But every gift given here in the wrong spirit is just thrown into the bottomless pit, that ultimate rat hole (Luke 12:34; Jas. 5:3).

We see our relationship to God mirrored in our relationship to our neighbor. The state of the one reveals the state of the other. “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). When the two great commandments are discussed, we are told that the second great commandment is “like unto” the first (Mark 12:31). The Scriptures are explicit on this point. “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn 4:12). “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20).

WHAT THIS DOES NOT MEAN:
This does not mean that we are to charge about aimlessly, buying and giving gifts willy-nilly. The grace of God is not stupid, so don’t give pointless gifts just to have done something. The grace of God was freely given, so don’t let a racket run by unscrupulous merchants extort money from you that you don’t have. At the same time, merchants are a form of grace to you. How does God get that daily bread to you (Matt. 6:11)? So don’t identify crowds with a racket. Crowds do provide an opportunity for pickpockets, but Jesus loved crowds and He fed them. He gave them gifts (Matt. 14:21).

COLD WATER & THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT:
The best gift we can give one another at Christmas time is the best gift we can be giving to one another all the time—and that is the gift of gospel-saturated grace. Gospel means good news, and as I mentioned earlier how God keeps track of cold water gifts, we should always connect this with gospel. What has God given? Let us give the same way, and in the same spirit. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Prov. 25:25).

The Son of God from Heaven is the gospel from a far country. He is the gospel Himself; He is the good news. And we know that His contagious form of life has taken hold of us when we start gracing each other the same way that He graced us. Notice how the great vertical gift and horizontal gifts must be understood together.

“For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men; And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (2 Cor. 9:12-15).

And the Point Is . . .

The Meaning of Christmas

Great stuff from a congregation in the UK. (Just love the Aussie classicist.)

That’s Christmas (Short Film) HD from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

Letter From America

Merry War on Christmas!
I can’t wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan.
December 17, 2011

Mark Steyn

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE 

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions — the sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular “holiday” tree; the ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman; the familiar strains of every hack columnist’s “war on Christmas” column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing “Winter Wonderland” . . . 

This year has been a choice year.
A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the “holiday” display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia — because, let’s face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — and he’s hanging lifeless in the town square.” Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? Christians intolerant of the First Amendment (as some have suggested)? Or perhaps a passing Saudi?

Our friends in Riyadh only the other day beheaded Amina bin Salem (so to speak) Nasser for “sorcery,” and it would surely be grossly discriminatory not to have some Wahhabist holiday traditions on display in Loudoun County. (The Islamic Saudi Academy, after all, is one of the most prestigious educational institutions of neighboring Fairfax County.) Across the fruitcaked plain in California, the city of Santa Monica allocated permits for “holiday” displays at Palisades Park by means of lottery. Eighteen of the 21 slots went to atheists — for example, the slogan “37 million Americans know a myth when they see one” over portraits of Jesus, Santa, and Satan.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned the city of Santa Monica in this space since my Christmas offering of 1998, when President Clinton was in the midst of difficulties arising from his mentoring of a certain intern. My column that year began:
“Operator, I’d like to call Santa Monica.”
“Why? Just ’cause he’s a little overweight?”

Crickets chirping? Ah, how soon they forget. Perhaps Santa Monica should adopt a less theocratic moniker and change its name to Satan Monica, as its interpretation of the separation of church and state seems to have evolved into expressions of public contempt for large numbers of the citizenry augmented by the traumatizing of their children. Boy, I can’t wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan. Or does that set their hearts aflutter quite as much?

One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is devoted to forestalling litigation. What’s less understandable is the faintheartedness of explicitly Christian institutions. Last year I chanced to see the e-mail exchanges between college administrators over the choice of that season’s Christmas card. I will spare their blushes, and identify the academy only as a Catholic college in New England. The thread began by asking the distribution list for “thoughts” on the proposed design. No baby, no manger, no star over Bethlehem, but a line drawing of a dove with a sprig of olive in its beak. Underneath the image was the following:

What is Christmas?
It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.
It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal,
and that every path may lead to peace.
Agnes M. Pharo

The Agnes M. Pharo? A writer of such eminence that even the otherwise open-to-all-comers Wikipedia has no entry for her. Still, as a purveyor of vacuous pap to America’s credentialed class for all-purpose cultural cringe, she’s hard to beat. One unfortunate soul on the distribution list wandered deplorably off message and enquired whether the text “is problematic because the answer to the question ‘What is Christmas?’ from a Catholic perspective is that it is the celebration of the birth of Christ.” Her colleague patiently responded that, not to worry, all this religious-type meaning was covered by the word “blessings.” No need to use any insufficiently inclusive language about births of Saviors and whatnot; we all get the cut of Agnes’s jib from the artfully amorphous “blessings.”

When an explicitly Catholic institution thinks that the meaning of Christmas is “tenderness for the past, vapid generalities for the present, evasive abstractions for the future,” it’s pretty much over. Suffering no such urge to self-abasement, Muslim students at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., recently filed a complaint over the lack of Islamic prayer rooms on the campus. They find it offensive to have to pray surrounded by Christian symbols such as crucifixes and paintings of distinguished theologians. True, this thought might have occurred to them before they applied to an institution called “Catholic University.”

On the other hand, it’s surely not unreasonable for them to have expected Catholic University to muster no more than the nominal rump Christianity of that Catholic college in New England. Why wouldn’t you demand Muslim prayer rooms? As much as belligerent atheists, belligerent Muslims reckon that a decade or so hence “Catholic colleges” will be Catholic mainly in the sense that Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia is still a cathedral: That’s to say, it’s a museum, a heritage site for where once was a believing church. And who could object to the embalming of our inheritance? Christmas is all about “tenderness for the past,” right? When Christian college administrators are sending out cards saying “We believe in nothing,” why wouldn’t you take them at their word?

Which brings us back in this season of joy to the Republican presidential debates, the European debt crisis, and all the other fun stuff. The crisis afflicting the West is not primarily one of unsustainable debt and spending. These are mere symptoms of a deeper identity crisis. It is not necessary to be a believing Christian to be unnerved by the ease and speed with which we have cast off our inheritance and trampled it into the dust.

When American municipalities are proudly displaying the execution of skeleton Santas and giant Satans on public property, it may just be a heartening exercise of the First Amendment, it may be a trivial example of the narcissism of moral frivolity. Or it could be a sign that eventually societies become too stupid to survive. The fellows building the post-Western world figure they know which it is.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2011 Mark Steyn

Duoglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Brief History of Christmas

Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, December 10, 2011

INTRODUCTION:
We celebrate the birth of Christ, and we are able to do this because we have seen what His rule has accomplished in the world. Jesus told Thomas once that there was a blessing for those who would believe without having seen the risen Christ, as Thomas had (John 20:29). On this principle, our place in history gives us access to a greater blessing because we have not seen Christ with our eyes. But it goes the other way also. Those at the time of Christ had not yet seen what His rule would do in history (as we have). And so they are more greatly blessed looking toward the future—the same way that we will be blessed by looking forward to what Christ has yet to do (1 Cor. 2:9).

THE TEXT:
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Is. 9:6-7).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:
There are many lessons that can be drawn from a rich text like this, but our task this morning will be to consider just two of them. The first is the Christmas element—the fact that a child is born unto us, and that a son is given unto us (v. 6). The second has to do with this child’s relationship to what is here called “government.” We are told that this child was born in order to rule, for the government will be upon his shoulder. And the second thing we are told about His government is that it will continually increase (v. 7). He will bear the government upon His shoulder, and it will be a continually increasing government. This increase—unlike the growth of secular governments—will be a blessing, and not a pestilence.