Christmas Hymns: A Call for Deeper Reflection
With the Christmas season now in full bloom around us, it is
almost impossible to go anywhere where there are not Christmas carols
playing. While the familiar
refrains bring a certain joy and nostalgia they also bring with them the danger
of everything that is overly familiar: complacency. I often marvel during the Christmas season how people who’s
worldview and theology are so flagrantly non-Christians can sing such powerful
words. It is no less baffling that
Christians can sing the great Christmas hymns in such a routine manner as to be
unaffected by their message. From
one who is a lover of both theology and music, this ought not to be. So in the following days I hope to
remedy this complacency by rekindling your love for the hymns of Christ’s
Incarnation. Not to revive the
nostalgia, but to revive a working knowledge that God was manifest in the flesh
for us! This Christmas season I
will be posting reflections from Christmas hymns that provide for us perhaps
the most full-orbed theology in any one genre of music. For now consider why Christmas hymns
are important:
1) They tell the story of the single most important event in
history.
Christmas hymns tell the story of God’s invasion of time and
space at the perfect time to redeem what is rightfully His. In contradiction to the mythical gods
of folk lore who risked nothing,
God put everything on the line in sending His Son and won the battle over sin,
death, and Hell. No other event in
history matters if this one event did not happen.
2) They celebrate the miraculous.
A virgin who gave birth to an infant who was literally the
Son of God, and yet her own flesh and blood by Divine conception! That above everything else in the world
qualifies as a miracle. Christmas
hymns celebrate God’s sovereignty over nature and the time God threw all the
rules of biology out the window to become what we are so that we might become
what He is and we are not.
3) They join us to the activity of Heaven.
Have you ever wanted to sing like an angel? Then sing Christmas hymns! Both the account of Christ’s birth and
the glimpse into the future of Heaven provided in the Book of Revelation show
us that angels are engaged in the singing of hymns that magnify the work of God
in Christ. Is there any greater
song to join in? I think not!
4) They infuse us with the hope of the Gospel.
“Joy to the
world! The Lord has come!” If that does engender hope, I do not
what will. And yet it is not an
abstract hope, for it is fundamentally the hope that comes from knowing that
God has kept and will keep His promises.
The Gospel is God’s Good News, and there is not greater good news than
the reality that God has come near in His Son. He has made great promises, and greater than the promises is
His keeping of them.
5) They link the pain of humanity to the exalted comfort of
Deity.
Jesus came not as an untouchable emanation of God, he came
as a human being made under the infirmities of a fallen world (Gal. 4:4-5) so
that He would know every sting and temptation of human experience (Heb.4:15-16). We do not trust, serve
or worship a God Who does not relate, we have a God Who came precisely so that
He could relate and yet rise above for our comfort!
And for many other reasons it is imperative that we not only
enjoy the hymns of Christmas, but that we understand them as well. Christmas will become a richer
experience for you and me if we will take the time to understand what it is
that we sing about.
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