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We are men of Letters, the Lettermen, a People of Epistles. We traffic in Paul and Peter, John or James, maybe the author of Hebrews once in a while. But each December’s end we dip into two (or maybe three) of the Gospels. We read the Bethlehem story so that we can remember the context for the doctrine of incarnation. We know that we need Emmanuel—God with us—because we need atonement. Justification requires a perfectly righteous substitute and only God Himself could be sinless. Besides, only God could make a sacrifice for more than Himself. Baby Jesus grows up to be Sacrifice Jesus so that we can be redeemed. The justified can be sanctified, can evangelize others, and then can turn back to the Epistles again.

We’re the people who have five fingers on our soteriological hands but no arms (or Arminians) to carry them. Our doctrine is unassailable but also often unattached to life.

I hope that our time in Genesis, and also the Psalms, has put some more things of earth together for us, broadened our horizons, and given us more of an appreciation for the Old Testament ground the New Testament walks on.

Let’s apply that thinking to Christmas. Here we are in the holiday season to celebrate the birth of Jesus (even though He probably wasn’t born in December). Here’s a question for us to work from: Is Christmas more about Creation or Redemption? Is there an end in Emmanuel that we should stop on, at least for a while, or is Emmanuel only a setup for, and therefore subordinate to, Messiah?

We might be tempted to argue that since birth chronologically precedes death then Easter is logically dependent on Christmas. But, apart from the prophecies of a virgin birth, which God Himself was under no obligation to reveal, why not give the Second Adam flesh like the First Adam got his? Or why not send the Son in His maturity, maybe with an entourage, rather than as mother and child?

I want to argue that Christmas is revelation, that Christmas is a light by which we must see the world.

A couple things made me think about this and about its importance for our discipleship.

I mentioned last Sunday—mostly in passing—that we were reading Plato’s Republic in Omnibus. Plato lived more than 400 years before Jesus was born. He was Greek, not Hebrew, and he didn’t have the law of the LORD. He was trying to figure out how the form of and how to form an ideal community apart from divine revelation. One of his famous analogies is about how the sun—especially important in a day long before artificial light—enabled men to see and be seen.

‘the eye’s ability to see has been bestowed upon it and channelled into it, as it were, by the sun.’ (235)

‘the ability to be seen is not the only gift the sun gives to the things we see. It is also the source of their generation, growth, and nourishment, although it isn’t actually the process of generation.’ (236)

Plato then argued that in order to see morality (which was necessary for the community to flourish) the sun was goodness. When goodness shines then men can see what is really real, what has true being. Goodness enables things to be seen and therefore to be known.

‘The sun is the child of goodness I was talking about, then,’ I said. ‘It is a counterpart to its father, goodness. As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see.’ (235)

What Plato didn’t know is that he was sort of right. What he didn’t know is that goodness is a Person and that Person is the Son of God. The apostle John riffed off Plato and revealed the reality in his gospel. The eternal Logos, He who was God and also with God, He who created the world, is also the One by whom men see and are seen.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4–5)

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

John made the connection between the Logos and the Light because he learned it from Jesus.

Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

“Life” in the “light of life” is the object on which the light shines. The light illuminates the cosmos, the light makes the cosmos visible for us to see for what it is. Any real understanding of life comes from Jesus because He made it and He sustains it. Some don’t acknowledge the light. They have their backs turned to the Light and prefer shadows and darkness. Those who know Jesus, who recognize goodness as a person, do not walk in darkness. They are out of the cave to see clearly.

We’ve been singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” numerous times this Christmas season. The second verse of that song says, “God of God, Light of Light.” Jesus is revelation—the image of God in flesh, the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:2). Jesus makes God known (see John 1:18). And Jesus is also the revealer—the bright beam by whom we see. Believers know Him and they know through Him or by Him, they see by His light.

Earlier I said that Jesus and His birth illuminate Creation as well as Redemption, cosmology and soteriology, visible and invisible. A good understanding of Christmas turns the lights on and answers (at least) three questions. These answers reorient our prayers and our parties, our devotions and our dinners. If our Christmas doctrine makes our Christmas dinner dull, then it is (likely dualistic and definitely) diluted doctrine.

Christmas answers: What is good on earth?

I am not talking about the semi-gloss world of Hallmark Christmas editing room filters applied to the footage. I’m talking about the Word becoming flesh original Christmas. In Christ’s birth a number of creational goodnesses were affirmed.

Earth is good, material is not evil, stuff in itself has no sin. In particular, flesh and bones, the human body, and life are good. When God’s Son took on the form of a man He did something humble, but He did not do something unholy. The enfleshing affirmed by the Word-Man reveals that God thinks His creation is good even after the fall.

There’s more. The light shining in Bethlehem’s manger affirms the goodness of family, of authority and submission, of relationships. Jesus—the divine Logos—was born with kin, with parents (and with siblings to be born and named later). For that matter, that He was born affirms the goodness of babies and, by extension, the goodness of growth. God created the world in which “becoming” is not a second class citizen to “being.” Going from immature to mature is good and not sinful, not even a defect.

The emptying of the Son also reveals that humility is good (see Philippians 2). Of all the ways that God could have come, Christmas sheds light on sacrificial love in small packages.

So Christmas shines on the dignity of mankind, on the value of history (since He came “in the fulness of time”), the goodness of place, and even holiday travel. Okay, it became a holiday later, but Joseph and Mary were still traveling to be with family in the city of David.

Even the announcement of the Messiah’s birth to shepherds watching their flocks in the field, rather than to the philosophers and wise guys of the age, shows that you can’t pull wool over the eyes of those who see in the Light of Light.

Christmas answers: What is wrong on earth?

What’s wrong is when the things that are God-given goods are not seen or received or used for God. What’s wrong is darkness and disobedience, and those lead to death. Death is the wages of sin. It began when Adam and Eve started looking at reality differently, when they started to believe that they could be gods, to be like God in a way that meant they didn’t need God. That is darkness, blindness. They stopped seeing in His light.

Christmas reveals that men have been grabby since the garden. Sin is not good because it tries to steal possessions/stuff or recognition/glory or time.

That God had to come meant that man was not only wrong, but also that he could not fix it by himself. By the time Christ came, the world lay in “sin and error pining,” not knowing Christ, not wanting to know Him. Even though the light came into the world, “people loved darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19-20).

So the light of Christmas shows the dignity of flesh but also the depravity of flesh. The effects of the curse have gone far. This is why Christmas traditions and sentiment and family cannot overcome what’s wrong. These things do not have light of their own, they need the light to shine on them.

Christmas answers: Is there hope on and for earth?

The answer is, “Of course!” The answer is Christ, the Light of Light, the light of the world. His birth is the good news that goodness enables men to see and to be seen.

This good is not a good we can only see in heaven. We do not need to get off the earth before Jesus does us any good. Christmas disciples us to look to Jesus and, when we look to Jesus, we see what is wrong and what is good on earth. Christmas reveals the deadliness of envy and lies and gluttony, of pride and grabbing like the first Adam.

Christmas also disciples us in the light of grace and truth and thankfulness, of humility and giving. The second Adam from above is effacing the first Adam in us. As He does so, our increasing likeness to the new Adam includes cinnamon and butter and bread and yeast and hops and child-proof toy packaging. It also includes patience with immature children—which is okay, you are helping them to grow up, as well as grumpy, complaining kids—which is okay in a different way because Jesus came for sinners.

Conclusion

Plato described how men need to be reoriented in order to know reality. Reoriented is a good word, though we could also say that men must be born again. We also can say that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). That “God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Do not try to do Christmas without the light, without the Son as the sun. He is the light of the world by which we see everything good and everything wrong, Who enables us to know which is which, and to Whom we give thanks for grace and truth. Christmas light reveals God-given dimensions so that our celebrations won’t be as flat as the page in Luke 2 we’re reading from on Christmas morning. He enables us to call men out of darkness and to live in Christmas delight.