Photo Credit: “Nativity” by jeffweese is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Christmas and the Christmas tradition can trigger a host of emotions and memories for nearly everyone who lives in our country. Whether it’s the decorations in the neighborhood, the familiar holiday music on the radio, or the fact that nearly everything shuts down on Christmas Day, it’s almost impossible to ignore Christmas.
It’s not all merry though. This season can be difficult for some as they remember better days with loved ones no longer with us. Ironically, a season that celebrates hope, makes some feel hopeless. So, looking past the decorations and the memories, we need to consider Christmas itself. Is there any real hope here? What are we celebrating anyway?
The Christmas claim is that God Himself was born into our world. The immortal, invisible, all-powerful Creator came into His Creation! This claim is staggering. But is it true? For some, Christmas is all shine and no substance. It’s a good myth, a nice story. For them, celebrating Christmas is fine since any tradition that promotes goodwill, or a sense of solidarity has good utilitarian value even if it’s not true. The Christmas Spirit, not really the Christmas story, is all that matters.
But is there any real reason to celebrate? If we choose to believe, is it just blind faith? Must we simply trust the Gospels (particularly Matthew and Luke)? For some people, that’s a deal breaker. “I can’t just blindly believe the Bible.”
I get that. I’m wired that way too. I can’t help it. And if that was really all we had, I admit it would be hard to believe. I might agree with my utilitarian friends—Christmas might be a net good for society but let’s not be silly about it. It’s just a story—like all the good Christmas stories this time of year.
But simply taking the gospel accounts at face value isn’t the reason to believe that the Christmas claim is true. We believe the Christmas story because we believe Jesus, not the other way around. Let me explain.
The Bible Up Approach
Growing up I was taught to believe the Bible. The Bible is true. It’s inerrant. It’s infallible. And since that’s so, I can believe everything in it. If it says God came at Christmas, then he did. If it says Mary was a virgin. She was. If it says three wise men came following a star, they did. (Never mind Matthew doesn’t actually say there were three magi.) You see how the logic goes. My beliefs were built from the “Bible up.”
Since that’s how my faith was constructed, I found myself needing to resolve every tension I came across in the Bible. Sometimes, I found these myself, other times they were pointed out to me. This approach caused me to try and “patch holes” in my faith every time I came across something perplexing or disturbing. If my faith rested in the Bible, everytime I came across a question I couldn’t answer, my “boat” sprung a new leak. For someone like me, this was distressing and my faith was in danger of shipwreck (I Timothy 1:19). I realized I needed a new boat.
The Jesus Down Approach
That new boat was Jesus himself. My faith shifted from a “Bible up” approach to a “Jesus down” approach. To my surprise, I came to realize this was actually how the first followers of Jesus believed in him too.
Let me explain, Jesus was a hard messiah to follow. His demands were absolute. His sermons were paradigm-shifting. His claims were viewed as blasphemous. He placed himself above parents, above Sabbath, fulfilling Torah (Luke 14:26; Mark 2:28; Matthew 5:17)! He challenged the prevailing biblical interpretations of his day. And called the religious leaders, snakes and vipers (Matthew 23). Most of the brightest students of Torah didn’t think Jesus fit the messianic bill the prophets had predicted (John 5:39; 7:52).
For example, the well-trained Pharisee Saul of Tarsus was so convinced of this he believed he was doing God’s will as he persecuted, imprisoned and even killed followers of The Way (See: Acts 22:4-21). (In fact, things didn’t change for Saul until the Resurrected Jesus met him on the highway to Damascus.)
Even Jesus’s original disciples struggled to reconcile the things Jesus said with what they expected from a Messiah (Matthew 16:21-23; John 6:60-70). We can be too hard on the disciples sometimes. They struggled to believe; I suppose most of us would have too. When Jesus was arrested, they all defected (Mark 14:27-28, 50). It wasn’t until after the resurrection that Jesus was able to clearly demonstrate he had actually fulfilled the prophecies about the Messiah (Luke 24:44-49). Even then, their faith didn’t return immediately. Luke records it took 40 days and many “convincing proofs” (Acts 1:3). Even then, Jesus still told them to wait until after the outpouring of the Spirit before they publicly testify to what they had seen and heard (Acts 4:20). That’s because it’s the Spirit that empowers and nourishes faith. It’s the Spirit that inspires preaching (Acts 4:31) and it’s the Spirit that breathes out God’s word (II Timothy 3:16).
So don’t miss this: It took Jesus rising from the dead for his disciples to fully understand and believe his claim. They certainly didn’t believe in Jesus’s claims from the Bible up. They met Jesus. They followed Jesus. Eventually, his miracles led them to think Jesus was the Messiah. But then, they all seemed to lose that faith when he died. (Luke 24:11, 24:19-21; John 20-24:25). I can identify with that too. What happens to my faith when things don’t make sense!
It took the resurrection for them to finally understand the true claims of Jesus. He was more than a Messiah, he was the Divine King. In Jesus, God Himself had come. Expanding the messianic expectations to nearly the breaking point, these Jewish followers now read the prophecies with profound new insight. Yahweh saving his people wasn’t metaphor or hyperbole (Isaiah 40:10-11). He literally came.
Having come to see Jesus as the Divine King, we can now read the gospel records in reverse. This is the “Jesus down” approach. He’s the headwater of faith. Everything flows down from him. Knowing who Jesus actually is, reframes the whole story. (This is actually the way the Gospel of John is written.)
So, when Jesus calls his disciples to abandon everything and follow him, he’s not a narcissistic Rabbi, endangering poor peasants with false hope. He’s actually God calling a people to trust Him for their provision. When Jesus tells a lame man his sins are forgiven, he isn’t blaspheming. He has the authority on earth to forgive sins (Mark 2:10). And when awoken from sleep by the cries of his disciples in a boat, Jesus doesn’t pray the storm away, he commands it to stop. He’s the storm-stilling, chaos-killing Creator in human form!
Easter Faith Gives Birth to Christmas Hope
This brings us back to Christmas. Looking at the Christmas story from a Jesus-down approach. I believe these staggering claims not simply because Matthew and Luke recorded them but because the resurrection of Jesus validates them, and his Spirit inspired them. I believe the Bible is true because Jesus was raised from the dead and he believed it. (Now, if I encounter something I don’t fully understand in the Bible, my faith isn’t threatened since it rests firmly in Jesus.)
Jesus was (and is) God. Working back from that profound revelation, we can now see the Christmas claim in this light. God came. God was a human embryo carried in a virgin’s womb. He lived the entire human experience from start to finish. Why? For Love’s sake. God came to endure the death we deserve and purchase us for himself. Our savior King humbled himself unto death—even death on the cross for us. His resurrection provides real hope. So yes, in this world we will have trouble. We will miss loved ones at Christmas time. But as Jesus so memorably put to his disciples shortly before his death, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).
So read the Christmas story again this year. Don’t let modern skepticism rob you of its hope and wonder.
God came at Christmastime… And that changes everything!
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