When Hope Was Born

It was the eve that it all came to pass. The night that God's plan foretold by the prophets of Israel would finally be revealed. The dusk penetrated by the dawn. The Messiah, the Christ-child was here. And hope was born.

Up until this point, the descendents of God's servant Abraham had struggled in captivity for nearly 700 years. It had been four centuries since the last prophet had spoken of Israel's long-awaited Deliverer. Within that span of time, religious groups like the Pharisees had taken it upon themselves to cement the Law as the centerpiece from which righteousness and holiness was attained. They built a fence around the law and encircled it with rituals and rites, which only served to further erode the spiritual heart of God's people. Ritual had supplanted reality. Reality was a lifetime of bondage to a foreign people. The Law, circumcision, and sacrifice were, they believed, the only possible connections to the God that had set in motion their circumstances. Many found obedience to these laws much too difficult, and so they turned to far easier and more satisfying idol worship. Where is God in all of this?

Where was the promised Messiah? He came. But not in the way they expected. Never in a million years were they anticipating a Savior's birth the way it took place. They wanted a couple of well-renowned status, not two nobodies like the virgin Mary and the poor carpenter Joseph. They wanted a birthplace of towering landmarks, festivities, and bright galas, not a shoddy little manger encompassed by hay, manure, and dirty, smelly animals. They wanted the first word to spread to kings and monarchs from far and wide, not broadcast by the Bethlehem starlight to a group of nameless shepherds in the fields. God's plan did not meet their expectations; despite Isaiah telling them the kind of Savior who would deliver them, they simply wanted another 'great' king like David. How short they sold themselves! For even David was "a man after God's own heart." He knew his one, true master.

A mere king was insufficient. He could not meet the standards set by mankind because of our depraved nature. The Savior had to be greater than man. Only God fits that bill. But at the same time, God had to become like a man in order for the transaction from bondage to liberty to take place. As Aslan subjected himself to Edmund's rightful torture, humiliation, and death sacrifice in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so it must be with us and God. Like Edmund, we are traitors. We've given in to selfishness and our own greedy desires, and in doing so, we have fallen into the deceptive clutches of Satan, our own White Queen. Our sentence is death, and it must be paid, or peace can never be possible. But we can't pay this sentence. Only God, as a man, can. It is only by his power that we are victorious against our White Queen and we are restored.

That man was God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Fully God and fully man. Where our rituals were useless, Jesus provided. Where our courage failed us, Jesus taught us to have faith. And where we could not stand and fight sin and death, Jesus bore them both on a wooden cross. And He triumphed. Once and forever.

This is when it all began. The night when hope was born.