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12-22-21 Glenda Simpkins Hoffman
While I was driving to an appointment this week, I heard Lauren Daigle sing the wonderful song “Noel” (written by Chris Tomlin):
Love incarnate, love divine. Star and angels gave the sign.
Bow to babe on bended knee, the Savior of humanity.
Unto us a Child is born. He shall reign forevermore
Refrain: Noel, Noel, Come and see what God has done.
Noel, Noel, The story of amazing love!
The light of the world, given for us. Noel, Noel, Noel.
Son of God and Son of man. There before the world began.
Born to suffer, born to save. Born to raise us from the grave.
Christ the everlasting Lord, He shall reign forevermore. (Refrain 2x)
Each Advent, we are invited to prepare our hearts and to “come and see what God has done.” We remember that Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us. The light of the world has crashed into the darkness bringing us salvation. This is the story of amazing love.
The song brought to mind the chapter “God Incarnate” in J. I. Packer’s book Knowing God. I read this chapter almost every Advent. Because it unpacks the lines of the song, I am including an excerpt: “The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man– that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human….
“It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. ‘The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”
At Christmas we remember Jesus’ humility and vulnerability in becoming a human baby. However, he did not stay in the manger, and we need to be careful not to keep him there. The incarnation of Jesus doesn’t only refer to his birth but to the totality of his life on earth. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but after a sojourn to Egypt, he returned to his parents’ hometown in Nazareth where he grew up. He lived a faithful life, and traveled throughout Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, fulfilling his ministry by proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, teaching the ethics of the kingdom, and manifesting the power of the kingdom in many signs and wonders.
The song “Noel” reminds us Jesus was “born to suffer, born to save.” Again, J. I. Packer unpacks the truth of these phrases more fully: “We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty Himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony—spiritual, even more than physical that His mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. (See Luke 12:50 and the Gethsemane story.) It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who ‘through his poverty, might become rich’. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard or will hear.”
Along with hearing the song “Noel,” the phrase “Love Came Down at Christmas” kept coming to mind. It’s the title of a famous poem by Christina Rossetti that has been set to music by many. When I looked it up, I was surprised to discover that the song “Noel” actually uses several lines from the poem, which I doubt is coincidental:
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.
I like the poem because it reminds us that Christmas is all about love. God is love. He loves us with an everlasting love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).
I like the poem too because it invites a response—both to worship Jesus for who he is and to live a life of love for God and all people. So, as Christmas approaches, I invite you to consider two questions: 1) How will you make time to worship the Lord of love, not only Christmas Eve but throughout the Christmas season and the coming year? 2) Whom is God bringing to mind that you could you reach out to love this week, perhaps even inviting them to “Come and see what God has done” so that they too may hear and believe the greatest news the world has ever known.
