Day 3, At home this Christmas with the Church Fathers
THE FESTIVAL OF CHRISTMAS is a celebration of Jesus Christ entering the world as its rescuer, the eternal Son of God breaking into time and space as its champion, its center, its salvation.
♦ ”In the person of Christ a man has not become God; God has become man.” — Cyril of Alexandria, Egypt, A.D. 376-444
♦ ”Although Christ was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was, God.” — Origin, c. 185-253
We don’t begrudge any pleasant cultural trappings that have attached themselves to this holiday—gift-giving, yuletide trees, lovely lights, mulled wine, and so on. But at the bottom of it, sounding the reality behind the trappings, these pleasantries have no particular bearing on the substance of things. The essence of Christmas is Christ, in the same way that it is sometimes said that “Christ is Christianity.” Indeed the whole of authentic Christianity is nothing more than a signpost to Jesus Christ, the Christ-focused faith once delivered to the saints, and the way of knowing God properly and living faithfully before him in the power of Jesus Christ. As we look for others to worship alongside, this is the one indispensable factor that must be present—they must be a community that never tires of talking about Jesus Christ, a group of reclaimed sinners who refuse to focus on anything other than him who is altogether lovely. Having come to know Christ, the believer is convinced that every guide outside of this way of Christ is the way of the world, the blind leading the blind into swamps of error and perdition. Therefore, we attach ourselves to Jesus, and fix our eyes on him.
One of our ancient creeds that focuses on the person and work of Jesus is drawn from the lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem, who in A.D. 348 was preparing candidates for baptism.
“We believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father, Very God, before all worlds, by whom all things were made, who came in the flesh, and was made man of the virgin and the Holy Spirit. He was crucified and buried, he rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sat on the right hand of the Father, and he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.”
Without apology, ours is a Christ-centered faith. We love to extol the beauty and supremacy of our Savior. We very much think like Lucian of Antioch, who in another early creed celebrates him as Jesus, the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Lord of Lord, the living Word, Wisdom, Life, True Light, Resurrection, the Divine Logos, our Mediator, and Shepherd of the sheep. And we guard our hearts with these kinds of scriptural metaphors, creedal manifestos and similar symbols.
This exuberant language about Jesus, obviously, is not the tenor of the world. And so, we strive to love Christ more the world with its charms and maxims. We shun everything that would rival Christ in our minds and lives; we distance ourselves from all false teaching that dishonors Jesus Christ and disturbs the peace and purity of his Church. Do not be surprised when you are confronted with competing notions and counterfeits of Jesus Christ—whose image we find in the Scriptures alone. Jesus himself warned that there would be many false Christs and many wolves in sheep’s clothing seeking to devour whomever they meet upon. In all ages Christ is the primary target of not only secularizing forces and of the would be gods of earth, but of religious liars, charlatans, and of those who teach things contrary to the faith and focus of the Scriptures. Many are hard at work hoping to make key biblical truths obscure and opaque in order to advance their own pet notions, unscriptural fancies, and deceitful doctrines. But Jesus the good Shepherd knows how to call and to keep safe his sheep. No matter who or what eyes him with envy, Jesus Christ will ensure his eminence and exaltation in human history, in eternity, and in the hearts of his people.
Deliver us, Lord Jesus, from everything false, from every worldview and fancy that does not make much of you or eagerly exalt you. Be to us a Deliverer, a Christ come and crucified, a Liberator who frees us from every bondage, a Renovator who makes all things new, a Redeemer from sin, our Alpha and Omega, our all in all, our God and our Savior.
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Christmas 2016
kdd
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