We have just celebrated the sacred feast of Christmas and are embarking upon yet another new year. But why talk about Christmas when, as many may remark, it is over and done with? This question reveals a profound misunderstanding about the nature and meaning of the birth of Christ. The fact is that we do not so much celebrate Christmas as become it. The wonder of this divine intervention in human history, is that the separation between man and God was bridged through the Incarnation of Christ. Not only were we reconciled with our Creator, but, through his “divine power,” we have been granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Indeed, as the Apostle Peter writes, we have “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
Christmas is, therefore, not something that we do but something that we become. It is the realisation that we have been called to “his own glory and excellence,” that “he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.” What are those promises, if not that, in being reborn into him, we have been delivered from “the domain of darkness” and transferred “to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”? What are they if not, as St. Paul instructs, that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” And now, “because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
This is precisely why Charles Dickens can have Scrooge exclaim: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Put simply, Christmas is neither day, a feast, nor a celebration—even if that is how the world perceives it. Rather, it is a transformation of life from “being alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,” to being “reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.” That is, through the Incarnation, we have been “baptised into Christ Jesus,” and thus we “were baptised into his death.” Or, as Paul proclaims: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.” In other words: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brough to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” As such, “you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Christmas is the realisation that we now walk in newness of life, that our old selves, born into Adam, are now, through baptism, alive in Christ Jesus. It is the realisation that, having been set free from sin, we are no longer slaves but children of God and coheirs of his Kingdom. Moreover, it is the realisation that “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” It is, indeed, the realisation that God, “being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,” made us alive “together with Christ,” seating “us with him in heavenly places.” In sum, as Paul writes in Ephesians, we are “no longer strangers and aliens,” but “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”
To keep Christmas all the year, is to live in the realisation that you have been recreated in Christ—that “old things have passed away; behold, all things have been made new!” The great tragedy is that so many Christians consider the Gospel as either a code of conduct or as the key to postmortem paradise. Few understand that, with the Incarnation, our very nature has been transformed from “sons of disobedience” to “sons of God.” Paul tells us that “having been set free from sin,” we have “become slaves of righteousness” and temples of the living God. To live in that realisation changes everything about how we operate in this world.
It means that if “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Immortal life, yes, but also the supernatural power to do what seems impossible to man but which is entirely possible to God. Paul proclaims that Christ is in you, the “hope of glory.” This means that the promise of the Incarnation is fulfilled “not only in word, but also in power.” What type of power? Christ himself tells us when, in the concluding chapter of Mark’s Gospel, he proclaims:
Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe; in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
Notice that Christ says baptised “believers” will do all these things. Neither he nor Paul nor Peter say that supernatural athletes will do these things, but simply ordinary Christian believers. Yet, as I have previously inquired in these pages, how many Christians cast out demons, pick up serpents, or even lay hands on the sick? The fact is that Christ did not become incarnate, suffer a grievous death, and rise from the tomb simply to leave us in captivity as sons of Adam. He came to crucify us with him so that, having been “united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Hence, now that we have been raised up a completely “new creation” we ought, as Paul admonishes, “to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”
That is the magnificent promise and the transforming power of Christmas: having been strengthened with all power, we can walk as sons of God in a manner worthy of the Lord. This, however, does not only mean that we now have the ability, as believers, to heal the sick and to cast out demons. It also means that, as our lives are “hidden with Christ in God,” we can do what seems impossible from the natural perspective. We are told by Paul to “earnestly desire the higher gifts”—such as healing, speaking in new tongues, and prophesy—but that he will show us “a still more excellent way.” What is this more excellent way?
The way is opened through these words in 1 Corinthians 13: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” The key to walking in newness of life, to operating in the power through which he strengthens us, is agape love. Indeed, even if, as Christ instructs, we have faith to remove all mountains, but do not have this love, we are considered nothing in the eyes of heaven. The love of which Paul speaks opens the path to all other spiritual gifts, to the new inheritance won for us on the Cross and is the fulfilment of our new nature in Christ. For it is through a love that is patient and kind, a love that is neither envious, boastful, arrogant or rude, that we come to manifest the Christ that is in us and is the hope of glory.
Paul tells us that love never fails, and that is because wherever love manifests, Christ manifests. This is what it means to walk in newness of life, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, and to bear “fruit in every good work.” It is what it means to say that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Becoming Christmas means realising that we have died and been reborn in Christ. It is coming to terms with the revelation that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” It is living in the knowledge, as St. John writes, that “as he is, so also are we in this world.”
So no, Christmas is not over, for we live in a new heaven and a new earth, one in which Christmas is the only reality that is and ever shall be.
This essay appears in the Winter 2024 issue of The European Conservative, Number 33:129-130.
