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"Christ the Savior Is Born" (posted December 2, 2002)

There is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
      - Luke 2:11

As compared with Matthew--the only other Gospel which gives at all the circumstances of His birth or infancy--the account of the Lord's coming into the world [in Luke] is clearly in keeping with the Gospel of the Manhood. There is no incident that the two have in common, and each maintains its own character with the most perfect consistency.

In the one (Matthew 2) the Gentile magi may come to do homage to a King of the Jews; in the other (Luke 2), to shepherds in the field heaven opens to announce a Savior. The testimony of Simeon and Anna (vv. 25-39) is also to a Savior and salvation. His circumcision, and the offerings at His presentation to God, alike show Him to us in the "likeness of sinful flesh;" while His growth and development testify to the verity of His Manhood. These things are in full accord with the truth presented in Luke, each one being necessary to it.

How thorough the humiliation into which He is come is shown by the circumstances of His birth. Caesar is lord of the world, and orders it as he will, for his own purposes. How different a world from that which He had made at the beginning; yet He is in it as under Caesar's rule, Joseph and Mary being brought out of Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled as of David's line. Spite of all this, the power of the world is unconsciously working to fulfill a prophecy concerning One it knows not; and this being accomplished, the design drops through as if it had never been: "the census itself first took place when Cyrenius (or Quirinus) was governor of Syria"--some years afterward.

Thus the Lord of all is born a Man, among men His creatures, and laid in a manger, because there is no room for them in the inn. Sad sign, surely, of men's condition, when their Maker, come to be their Savior, prophesied of in every particular as coming, heralded even now by angelic visitation, could come after all unnoticed and unknown!

As already said, in Luke the announcement is, not of a King of the Jews, but of a Savior; and it is not to the great or wise, but "to the poor the gospel is preached" (Luke 4:18). To shepherds keeping watch over their flocks, the news is brought of the Good Shepherd who goes after that which is lost; and here it is not a star in the heavens that is the sign, but heaven itself opens, and the angels bring a direct face-to-face message, while the glory of the Lord shines round about. Good tidings of great joy there are for all the people: a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And now there is a sign: What is it? Not a sign in heaven, but a little babe, and wrapped in swaddling clothes. Not in a king's palace, but lying in a manger!

This little babe brings out the praise of angels, if the earth is silent and asleep. The hosts of heaven praise on man's behalf, and with a fuller praise than when, at creation first, "all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:7): "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men."

Sin has dishonored God and thus introduced conflict where all was harmony. Man, the image of God, set over all else on earth, has fallen lower than was possible for the beast, and after centuries of trial has only demonstrated the impossibility of self-recovery. The first man has had children in his own image, himself repeated in every one of them but too faithfully. But now, at last, there is a Second Man. At last God is glorified in the scene of His dishonor, nay, in a manner which has given heaven itself such a theme of praise as it has never known before. Here is for earth's wounds a healing power, for its conflict peace, if delayed yet assured; and for men more than justification of wisdom's old delight in them (Proverbs 8:31). The Second Man becomes the last Adam of a new humanity, the embrace of God for a renewed creation.

So the angels depart, and the shepherds go their way to Bethlehem, to find all as the angels had declared, and to make known to others what they have heard and seen. All who hear it wonder; Mary ponders it in her heart; the shepherds praise and glorify God.

F. W. Grant



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