A thought (or two!) about Christmas:
(1) Without the Easter event, there would be no Christmas event. (2) Without the Christmas event, there would be no Easter event.
The former refers to the significance of our Lord's life; the latter refers to the significance of our Lord's humanity. The former refers to Jesus' ministry; the latter to Jesus' essence.
After all, Peter's confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16), was found to be (partially) wanting because Peter failed to understand the necessity of Christ's suffering and death (Matt. 16:21-24). Without understanding the necessity of the Easter event, our understanding of His birth, life, and ministry will be truncated. In fact, our understanding of the gospel itself will be flawed, failing to grasp the very power of the gospel in our weakness.
On the other hand, the Easter event must also be understood in light of the Christmas event. In other words, Jesus' death and resurrection is significant precisely because He was the God-man. John testifies that his own hands had handled and his own eyes had seen the Word of Life (1 John 1:1). This is no accident, no peripheral issue: Jesus is fully human. He breathed our air, sweated our sweat, cried our tears, bled our blood, felt our pain. He laughed and he wept; He felt the joy of friendship and the bitterness of betrayal; in other words, Jesus experienced our humanity in full. Without this man, exemplifying humanity in what we all ought to be, what we were made to be in the Garden, without this man there would be no Cross. Without understanding the significance of Jesus' humanity, the Cross is stripped of its meaning: it remains a theoretical doctrine. The significance of the Cross is precisely in this: Jesus the man stood in my place and bore the penalty that I justly deserve. As John Calvin so well puts it, "When we behold the disfigurement of the Son of God, when we find ourselves appalled at His marred appearance, we need to reckon afresh that it is upon ourselves we gaze, for He stood in our place." How can we behold this disfigurement, how can we "find ourselves appalled" unless He is fully flesh and blood?
Thus, the significance of Christmas: We understand Christmas rightly when we come to grips with His life lived, His necessary suffering and death, His receipt of my penalty. We understand Easter rightly when we come to grips with His humanity, fully and gloriously displayed in the fullness of His life, initially manifested on that first Christmas Eve. Let us, then, celebrate his birth with an eye ever toward the Cross and resurrection; let us celebrate his death and resurrection with an eye ever toward His birth, His humanity.
Merry Christmas-Easter, everyone!
