Christmas and the cross

Santa Christ

Tony Reinke Christmas, Christmas and the cross, Sinclair Ferguson

What follows is Sinclair Ferguson’s article, “Santa Christ,” as published in Tabletalk Magazine, December 1997.

I took the hand of my toddler son (it was two decades ago) as together we made our way into the local shop on the small and remote Scottish island where earlier that year I had been installed as pastor.

It was Christmas week; the store was brightly decorated and a general air of excitement was abroad. Without warning, the conversations of the customers were brought to a sudden halt by a questioning voice from beside me. My son’s upraised index finger pointed at a large cardboard Santa Claus: “Daddy, who is that funny looking man?” he asked.

Amazement spread across the faces of the jostling shoppers; accusing glances were redirected to his father. Such shame—the minister’s son did not even recognize Santa Claus! What likelihood then of hearing good news in his preaching at this festive time?

Such experiences naturally encourage us to bewail the fact that the western world is given over annually to its Claus-mass or Commerce-mass, a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions whose only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshiped, not the Saviour; pilgrims go to the store, not to the manger. It is the feast of Indulgence not of the Incarnation.

It is always easier to lament and critique the new paganism of secularism’s blatant idolatry than to see how easily the church—and we ourselves—twist or dilute the message of the incarnation in order to suit our own tastes. But, sadly, we have various ways of turning the Saviour into a kind of Santa Claus.

For one thing, in our worship this Christmas we may varnish the staggering truth of the incarnation with what is visually, audibly, and aesthetically pleasing, thus confusing emotional pleasure with true adoration. For another, we may denigrate our Lord with a Santa Claus Christology. It is alarming to see how common it is to manufacture a Jesus who is the mirror reflection of Santa Claus. Christmas time demands clearer thinking on our part!

A Pelagian Jesus emerges under Santa’s influence. Like Santa he simply adds something to lives that are already in fairly respectable order. Christmas dinner is simply a better dinner for the well-nourished. Jesus thus becomes an added bonus who makes a good life even better.

Or, perhaps, it is the slightly more sophisticated Jesus who, Santa-like, gives gifts to those who have already done the best they could! Thus Jesus’ hand, like Santa’s sack, opens only when we can give an upper-percentile answer to the none-too-weighty probe, “Have you been good this year?” Heaven, like Santa, helps those who help themselves. The only difference from medieval theology here is that we do not use its Latin phraseology facere quod in se est (to do what is in one’s self).

For yet others, this is the time of year for the mystical Jesus who, like Santa Claus, is important because of the good experiences we have, irrespective of the details of historical reality. As long as we have the experiences, all is well.

But Jesus is not to be identified with Santa Claus; worldly thinking—however much it employs Jesus-language—is not to be confused with biblical truth.

The Scriptures systematically strip away the veneer which covers the real truth of the Christmas story. Jesus did not come to add to our comforts; He did not come to those who were already helping themselves.

Those whose lives were bound up with the events of the first Christmas did not find His coming an easy and pleasurable experience. Mary and Joseph’s lives were turned upside down; the shepherds’ night was frighteningly interrupted, and their futures potentially radically changed; the Magi faced all kinds of inconvenience and separation; and our Lord Himself, conceived before wedlock, born probably in a cave, would spend His early days as a refugee from the bloodthirsty and vindictive Herod.

There is, therefore, an element in the Gospel narratives which stresses that the coming of Jesus is a disturbing event of the deepest proportions. And that by necessity, since He did not come merely to add something extra to life, but to deal with our spiritual insolvency and the debt of our sin. He was not conceived in the womb of Mary for those who have done their best but for those in whose flesh there dwells no good thing. He was not sent to be the source of good experiences but the One who was destined to suffer the pangs of hell in order to be our Savior.

The Christians who first began to celebrate the birth of the Savior saw this. They were not, contrary to what is often mistakenly said, simply adding a Christian veneer to a pagan festival—the Roman Saturnalia—any more than Christians who mark Reformation Day are adding a Christian veneer to the paganism sometimes associated with Halloween. In fact they were committing themselves to a radical alternative to the world and its Saturnalia, refusing to be squeezed into its mold. They were determined to fix mind, heart, will and strength exclusively on the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no confusion in their minds between the world and the Gospel, Saturnalia and Christmas. They were citizens of another Empire altogether.

Indeed, such was the malice evoked by their other-worldly devotion to Christ that during the Diocletian persecutions of 300 A.D. a number of them were murdered as they gathered to celebrate Christmas. Their offense? Worship of the true Christ—incarnate, crucified, risen, glorified, and returning—who that day demanded, and had, their all.

One Christmas eve, in my teenage years, I opened a book given to me as a present, and found myself so overwhelmed by its teaching on my recently-found Savior that I began to shake with emotion at what had dawned on me: The world did not celebrate His coming but crucified Him. Doubtless I was an impressionable teenager. But does not the world still crucify Him in its own, often subtle ways? Unless the significance of what He did at the first Christmas shakes us we can scarcely be said to have understood much of what it means, or of who He really is.

Who is He in yonder stall
At whose feet the shepherds fall?
‘Tis the Lord, O wondrous story,
‘Tis the Lord, the King of Glory.

Let us not confuse Christ with Santa Claus. Let us find ways this Christmas, of making Him known in all His incarnate wonder.

My Favorite Version of the Christmas Story

Tony Reinke Christmas, Christmas and the cross, D.A. Carson

… is of course the version with the dragon in it — Revelation 12:1–6.

I discuss this passage in my book Lit! to show the spiritual value of dragons (see pages 85–86). But here’s the gist of Revelation 12:1–6 in the words of D. A. Carson in his outstanding book Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Crossway, 2010):

The scene is grotesque. The dragon stands in front of the woman. She is lying there in labor. Her feet are in the stirrups, writhing as she pushes to give birth, and this disgusting dragon is waiting to grab the baby as it comes out of the birth canal and then eat it (12:4). The scene is meant to be grotesque: it reflects the implacable rage of Satan against the arriving Messiah.

Do we not know how this works out in historical terms? The first bloodbath in the time of Jesus takes place in the little village of Bethlehem — in the slaughter of the innocents as Herod tries to squash this baby’s perceived threat to his throne.

Jesus is saved by Joseph, who is warned by God in a dream and flees to Egypt. Herod, in a rage, “gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16). Satan later manifests his rage against Jesus in the temptation, and he manifests his rage against the church in every temptation. Satan’s rage manifests itself when some people try to push Jesus over a cliff, and others take up stones to stone him. Satan is after Jesus and wants to destroy him by any means possible.

Behind all these attempts to destroy Jesus is the red dragon, and behind the red dragon is God himself, bringing to pass his purposes even in the death of his Son to bring about our redemption.

But the text does not go on to talk about Jesus’ triumph here, not because this book has no interest in him but because the triumph of Jesus has already been spectacularly introduced in Revelation 4–5. The great vision of Revelation 4–5 controls the entire book. There we learn that Christ, this male child, is the only one who is fit to open the scroll in God’s right hand to bring about all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. He is the Lion and the Lamb, the reigning king and the bloody sacrifice, the heir to David’s throne yet the one who appears from God’s throne. Because of his struggle, men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation are redeemed. Countless millions gather around him who sits on the throne and the Lamb and sing a new song of adoring, grateful, praise.

But here in Revelation 12 we move from Jesus’ birth to his ascension; we run through his entire life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension in two lines: he “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” and “was snatched up to God and to his throne” (v. 5). The male child, Jesus, is born and snatched to heaven. In other words, this passage focuses not on Christ’s triumph — that is presupposed — but on what happens to the woman and her children, the ones left behind. And that is us: the messianic community, the people of God, the blood-bought church of Jesus Christ. This side of the cross they are described as “those who obey God’s commands and hold the testimony of Jesus” (v. 17). The woman (the messianic community) is the focus of the passage.

Keep the X in Xmas!

Tony Reinke Christmas, Christmas and the cross

It’s been said “Xmas” is a seasonally attempt by subversive secularists to kick Christ out of Christmas. I don’t doubt that is the intent of some folks. But the reality is the Greek spelling of the name Christ starts with an X (Χριστός).

In fact, the early Church often referred to Christ simply by his first Greek initial (X), or more commonly by overlapping his first two initials (XP). The simple cross (X) of course carried double meaning for those early Christians, and for us today.

So in that sense there’s not only a Christ in Xmas but also a Calvary. Far from a secularist attack, “Xmas” reminds us of Christ, his birth, and his cross, all at once.

Did Jesus Get The Flu?

Tony Reinke Christ, Christmas, Christmas and the cross, Incarnation

This is the great season when we celebrate the Savior’s incarnation. Which also means it’s that time of the year when strange things are afoot—fruitcake, tensile, and questions about whether Jesus suffered from bed head, used the restroom, or vomited because he had a case of the flu.

Given the striking humanity of the Savior, it is easy to just assume that Jesus must have experienced the stomach virus and vomiting, just like we have experienced. However the question is a bit more complex.

This is one question addressed a long time ago in the book On the Incarnation by Athanasius (c. 293–373). It’s a section worth a more careful look.

Did Jesus get the flu?

Athanasius says no.

Here’s his argument (pages 50–51).

First, he argues that all men who die of ‘natural causes,’ die from some form of illness.

The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result of their natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and when worn out they die.

Yet, in contrast, Jesus died in full strength.

But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it would have looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed no more than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body was made strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others.

Here’s the logic: If Jesus was prone to sickness then he was also prone to natural death. So why not let his 80 years play out and then Jesus could just die quietly in a bed as the Savior? Seems more appealing than the crucifixion. But,

How could He fall sick, Who had healed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are made strong? Here, again, you may say, “Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?” Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection.

Ah, but didn’t Jesus feed the hungry and himself become hungry? Yes, but …

And as to the unsuitability of sickness for His body, as arguing weakness, you may say, “Did He then not hunger?” Yes, He hungered, because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger, because He Whose body hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.

Hunger is not a result of the fall—but sickness is. Hunger was born in the stomach of Adam and a garden of delightful food. However, sickness is the birth pang of death. Sickness is an enemy we battle until at some point we become too weak to fight any longer and we succumb to physical death.

In all this, it seems to me that Athanasius was really attempting to preserve the crucifixion. Jesus did not incarnate to waste away by sickness. Instead, Christ maintained his health and strength. To Athanasius, this is what makes the cross so amazing. His strength sets the stage for his crucifixion. It was in the vigor of his remaining strength that allowed him to yell that Jesus gave up his own life (Matthew 27:46, 50). Jesus did not waste away.

So if I understand correctly, here’s his point: The Incarnate Savior was not a dying man, who at some point in his descent towards natural death, determined to die for sinners. Rather, in fullness of human strength, Jesus freely gave his life as a ransom. This is what’s at stake for Athanasius. Jesus never would have died from old age because he did not get sick. Thus, the atonement could never be accomplished through a “natural” death. The question over whether Christ ever got the flu was inseparable from a discussion about the Savior’s cause of death.

Did Jesus ever vomit because he had the flu? Athanasius says no; the crucifixion prevents it. Some say yes; the incarnation assumes it. But of course the simple fact is that Scripture doesn’t tell us, and that is the strongest evidence that should really settle the whole matter in the end.