When Jesus was born, the possibilities of human nature began to be realised. Humanity took a new start. The highest hope of all time was realised, and the possibilities of human nature had expression. Christianity comes to every one of us as an inspiration. It hangs, a star in the darkened sky of our lives. Jesus had faith in Himself, and therefore He had faith in the race to which He belonged. He knew that His own capacities typed the capacities of mankind. And on this He built His hope when He said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me."
I. Observe the universality of the good tidings. The angel said, "I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Jesus, in birth, became an organic member of the race. His connection was race-wide: He was brother to humanity everywhere. Within the circle of His sublime brotherhood stand peasant and king, serf and czar. The relationship which every person sustains to the Saviour overwhelms all earthly distinctions.
II. Christianity relates not only to the future of mankind, but to the present. It is not an arrangement of forces which shall begin to operate upon man when he has passed out of the body, but an arrangement to operate upon him while in the body. It teaches us earthly duties. It controls the daily adjustments of our lives. It is a thing of today, rather than of tomorrow.
III. When we consider what the birth of Jesus meant, in its application to human progress, we can well understand why the angels should call it tidings of great joy. For the birth of such a Being should mean nothing less than joy to man. A clear, hopeful, joyful spirit animates all Gospel history. It sounds out through the promises of Jesus; it speaks in His invitations; it rises like a strain of sweetest music in the Beatitudes; it can be distinguished even in His warnings. And the strong clear notes of hope and gladness, sounded first in Him at His departure into heaven, His disciples took up and prolonged. The fact that music has always been the handmaid of our religion is in itself sufficient to characterise that religion as impulsively happy and emotionally jubilant. Music cannot survive on grief. The fact that the Bible is a book of music is enough to characterise the religion that it teaches us. The fact that heaven would be imperfect without its harp reveals to us that religion is not only happy in its origin and progress, but happier still in its culmination.
W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 485.
Consider why the proclamation of Christ's birth should be an occasion of joy.
I. Because Christ came to make atonement for the world's guilt and sin. The greatest plague a man can have is the plague of a guilty conscience. Most other miseries may, by skill and time, be removed, and all come to an end in the grave. But a guilty conscience is something no one can remove, either from himself or from others. This forms its peculiar sting that after death it pursues to the judgment-seat, and will torment us in the abodes of despair. And so the fact, that, in Jesus Christ, His incarnation and death, we have an antidote for the uneasiness of a guilty conscience, ought to lessen, yea to allay altogether, the disquiet of the guilty soul that has received the good tidings of great joy.
II. Christ's birth is good tidings of great joy, because it is the coming to us of a loving and joy-giving Friend. The joy of deliverance, to be complete, must be associated with the love of a personal friend. And in the goodness and wisdom of God in saving us from our wretchedness He has given us the love and joy of a heavenly Friend. It is quite possible for one to be a real friend, and yet the announcement of His coming to be other than good tidings of great joy; although friendly, He may be stern and morose. But Christ is a Friend in whose presence is fulness of joy, although our Lord was a Man of Sorrows.
III. Christ's birth should be to us "good tidings of great joy," because He has come to secure us a home above. He abides with us always; His presence and joy remain with us to the end of life. And even then He does not leave us, for His guiding, supporting, and joy-giving presence accompanies us when we enter upon that dark valley which separates the tabernacle on earth from that everlasting home in heaven.
Pulpit Analyst,vol. iv., p. 678.
Christmas Day Lessons.
I. Christmas Day brings before us the relation of Christianity to the religion which went before; for the birth at Bethlehem was itself a link with the past. The coming of Jesus Christ was not unheralded or unforeseen; other nations had prided themselves on their illustrious origin in times long past, delighted to think that their first fathers had sprung from a god, a demigod, or a hero; the Jewish nation alone had hardly anything of this feeling. Its best and wisest spirits turn steadily towards the future the King, the Deliverer, the Glory of the golden times of their people was far in advance; and as years rolled on this belief grew deeper and stronger. It was the hope of the whole nation, it became like a natural instinct within them; like an instinct of duty, of immortality of self-preservation. Jesus of Nazareth, the Child born this day in the city of David, was at once the satisfaction and realisation of these ancient forebodings.
II. The recollections of this day also combine it with the future. If so much of what went before led up to it, so all that is most important in what followed leads us back to it. If we trace the laws, the morals, the literature, the art, of the modern world back to their source, we shall find that for the largest part of their peculiarities there is no event adequate to produce the immense transformation until we reach the same point as that in which the ancient prophecies ended.
III. This decisive world-historical birthday took place in a small inn of a small village of a small province of a small nation. It was the greatest of events on the smallest of scales. There are some who think that all events and characters are to be measured by the magnitude of the stage on which they appear; there are some who are perplexed by the thought that this globe, on which the history of man is enacted, is now known to be a mere speck in the universe. But the moment we go below the surface we find that the truth conveyed to us by the birth of the world's Redeemer in the little village of Bethlehem is the likeness of a principle which ramifies far and wide. The great nations of the world have almost always been amongst the smallest in size. "Many are called, but few are chosen."
A. P. Stanley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 417.