OF “peace on earth” God’s angels sang at Ephrata, and no Christmas-tide has ever passed over the Church of Christ, but this song of heavenly exultation has been stammered after them by human lips.
At the manger of Bethlehem the whole Church gratefully and solemnly confesses: This Babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, is our Peace!
That the name of that Babe would be “Peace”, already from of old the Seer had foretold; and the holy apostle, who showed us the shadow of His image in Melchizedek, praises him as King of Salem, that is, King in the realm of peace.
“Peace through the blood of the Cross!” but which has come to us already from His conception, is ever at Christmas festivities the key-note of our heart.
And yet, with whatever high-sounding praises you may celebrate holy peace, it must not fail of notice, that in Scripture the Holy Ghost does not ring in the Christmas night with a jubilation of peace, but quite to the contrary with a song of vengeance and a proclamation of bitter enmity.
The first mention in Holy Writ of Christmas night is, when in Paradise Adam and Eve, but also Satan himself, who had tempted them, passed under God’s terrible judgment.
In that moment, which dominated the lot of the whole world, it has pleased God, in the midst of the terror of judgment, under which the transgressor succumbed, to announce the Christmas night and the manger of Bethlehem.
Already then, while Eve stood by and Adam heard it, God the Lord said to Satan: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between they seed and her seed”, and to this He added the prophecy of the most dreadful vengeance: “It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel”! (Gen. 3: 15.)
So in Paradise God spake of the woman, of a child that was to be born of a woman, and of this born child as of the Savior and Redeemer, Who would set men free from Satan’s violence and cunning.
This is a prophecy of Bethlehem; a calling in from afar of Christmas night.
So in Paradise it is not the angelic host, but far more still, God Himself, Who makes that Christmas night to glimmer through from afar, and not peace, but enmity, and not “good-will toward men”, but entire victory over Satan, till his head shall be bruised, is the key-note of His Divine prophecy.
Now the soft tones are good, and the sweet sounds of peace and loveliness harmonious, and therefore our ear listens with such tense joy and delight to the beautiful, friendly angel-song, but already in the Temple Simeon had the courage to let the sword glisten before the eye of the mother of the Lord, that terrible sword “that was to pierce through her own soul”.
Yea, in Bethlehem the manger and the swaddling clothes are in shrill contradiction against that enchanting song of the angels. No satin nor bed of down awaits this King of peace, but what almost the poorest child finds prepared, is withheld from Him at His coming into the world.
And when presently Herod seeks the blood of that Babe, and His mother must flee with Him into Egypt, and shortly after in Bethlehem so many a sword is seen, “redstained” with the blood of the massacred innocents; and when, stronger yet, that Babe arrived at the years of a man, Himself declares: “I came not to send peace, but a sword” (St. Matt. 10: 34); and when at length all peace is gone, and that Babe of Bethlehem as One accursed and doomed to death, cries out His “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani”!—confess, does not the whole Scripture spell, that merely to listen to the peace-anthem of angels at Ephrata is a rocking upon sounds, of which you neither understand the seriousness, nor the profound significance?
In connection with Bethlehem’s Babe there are not two, but there are three, with whom you have to count.
There is not merely God above and the sinner upon earth, but there is also the old Satan from Paradise, who had worked separation between the two.
So there is always a twofold relation, one of which always stands diametrically opposed to the other. Either peace with God and enmity with Satan; or peace with Satan, and enmity with God.
This was the fall in Paradise, that the woman made peace with Satan, and hence came to stand in enmity with God. And this also is the joy of Christmas night, that in and through the Babe it again became: Enmity with Satan and peace with God. Not the one without the other, but these two ever inseparably together. The presence of the one is proof, by which to test the reality of the other.
Hence, it is shallow, superficial, and beneath the seriousness of the matter at Bethlehem, to speak of peace only, and of peace merely, and explains why, he, who would be taught of Scripture, and would enjoy Christmas pleasures according to the Scripture, does not stop with that Peace-call from the lips of angels, but realizes that back of it lies the call of enmity with Satan, announced by God Himself in Paradise.
If Satan had his realm in hell alone, you might hold it in suspense; but such is not the case. When God had put man in “the garden of Eden to keep it,” i. e. to make it inaccessible to the encroachment of Satan, Eve tempted Adam to let him in. In false coveteousness she drew back the bolt of the gate she had to watch. So Satan has obtained access to this world; and from that hour the realm of Satan has not been confined to hell, but in all sorts of dreadful evil has been extended upon earth. By this, in an evil sense, this earth has become “world”, “worldly” in her endeavor, “worldly” in her development, and that world has come to stand so pronouncedly over against the living God, that at Christmas also the holy apostle asks: “Know ye not, O people of God, that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” (James 4, 4.)
Therefore our Christian people, who seek deeper paths, can have no peace with the Christmas tree. For however lovely the intent and however kindly it presents itself, the Christmas tree does not lead up to Christ, but away from Him. It overshadows the seriousness, which is of all importance here. With its gleams and its colors it outshines the somber side of the Christmas mystery. It does not internalize, but it externalizes. At the Christmas tree even the scoffer can have pleasure. And the child will sing of Jesus, o, he will sing anything you say, so long as presently he may carry off your valuable presents. But meanwhile he is so mightily impressed by that tree and by its lights and its colors, that with no thousandth part of the attention of his soul, does he think of Jesus, Who sits above at the right hand of the Father, and of the lights that glisten there in glory.
No, the tree, to which the Holy Scripture leads us back on Christmas night, is not the heathen pine tree with its ribbons and its lights, but is that other tree, which once stood in Paradise, and was begnawed by the worm, and with whose withering the glory of our human life has paled.
There, at that sin-tree, God the Lord takes His stand, when He unfolds to us and to our children the prophecy of Bethlehem’s mystery; and there, at that withered tree, which in its withering is become the symbol of the withering and the dying away of our soul, there the Lord announces the coming of the Son, the birth of that Babe, that was to bring us peace with Him, yes, but through the enmity, which He would put between Satan and our heart.
And now, as is self-evident, it would be folly, at Bethlehem’s manger to think more of our enmity with Satan, than of our peace with God. But yet, if our exultant song of “peace with God” shall be something more than a sound, that enmity against Satan must immediately follow from it.
To him who is adrift upon the sweet sound of “peace” without a more serious background, Christmas joy is an oasis in the wilderness of life. At Christmas he steps out for a moment from the conflict of his heart and from the struggle of life. And now transported into that unnatural, unreal state, he plays a kind of angelplay, but it stands outside of the conflict of his heart and of the reality of what life offers him.
And such Christmas keeping brings no profit, but injury. It is the misuse of the manger of Bethlehem, to enjoy a spiritual relaxation; in order presently, after the pleasure has been enjoyed, to return to a life, into which Christmas does not dovetail, to which it does not belong, between which it came in as an heavenly appearance.
And such our Christmas must not be. This is to mark the mystery of the Incarnation as though it were no Incarnation. For Christmas is an incoming of the Mediator into the reality of our existence, of our life, of our sunken-awayness, of our conflict and of our deadly oppression.
His coming in Bethlehem does not stand by itself alone, but is the first step on a way, upon which presently the second shall follow with Satan in the wilderness, and the third in Gethsemane, and the fourth in the descent into hell, and the fifth in the death on the Cross, and the sixth in the grave.
Our Christmas is not disposed to the flippancy and thoughtlessness of superficial merriment. On the contrary. At that manger indeed begins our exaltation, but His humiliation. That manger itself and those swaddling-clothes betoken it. No room for Him in the inn.
And will it do, at that first step on the way of His humiliation, which is only charming by reason of His beauty, to suffer yourself to be tragically enthralled? Will it do, because you became rich, to forget, that here His poverty begins; His becoming poor to make you rich?
And if you are repelled by this yourself, do you then not understand the seriousness of our fathers, who were afraid of keeping Christmas, from very fear, that the call of Peace should mislead, and with it the enmity with Satan be forgotten?
By taking on “the flesh and blood of children”, the Mediator has more strongly than by anything else, announced Peace to you, but has also roused the enmity of Satan and of the world against Himself.
That enmity begins already at the manger and from out Jerusalem mutters against Him at the very moment that the angelic host proclaims the Peace on earth.
That manger is intolerable to Satan, with that manger his dominion comes to an end. He knows, that this Babe is come, “to destroy his works, the works of the Devil,” and that by this Babe one day his head shall be bruised.
But one thing he also knows, he may first bruise the heel of that Babe.
This now is all his intention.
He must go under, but this one vengeance is left him. And already at Bethlehem Satan thirsts after the blood of the Son of God, that shall flow on Golgotha, even though he knows, that in that blood he shall drink in death unto himself.
And if you so understand it, o, then our Christmas is no longer a drop of oil upon the waters, but fits into the real life of God’s Church, as it has been known in all ages.
The Christ born and thereby the enmity of Satan broken loose against the Church.
First the combat to the death upon Golgotha. And after that the endless struggle to destroy the Church of Christ. The effort, that speaks in the massacre of Bethlehem’s innocents, endlessly repeated.
So then the reverse should also be present with you.
Satan your enemy, but you too alive with enmity against Satan.
All who at the manger of Bethlehem joyously sing an angel-song, and meanwhile continue life on a footing of decorous peace with Satan, and of decorous peace with the unrighteous world, their song does not ascend from lips incapable of deceiving.
Love for Jesus is not a matter of the emotions, neither is it a play of your imagination.
Love for the Babe of Bethlehem is at the same time hatred of sin, hatred of Satan, and hatred of the unrighteousness, which in this world Satan supports. Both go equally steadily and simultaneously up and down as cold makes the thermometer go down and warmth makes the quicksilver go up in the glass tube.
And therefore, would you at Christmas-tide trace the tie in your own soul that binds you to the Mediator, investigate deeply and very deeply in your inmost parts, whether it has yet pleased God, to put in you this strong enmity, which He in Paradise has promised.
Would you bless your chidren, then do not entice them by ribbons and lights and presents to an outward merry-making, but imbue them with repugnance of sin, breach with the world, enmity against Satan, and see, how with it and by it simultaneously real love for Jesus will increase.
And when even at Christmas-tide you hear of opposition and of the bitternesses with which all kinds of inimical powers turn themselves against God’s Church and against God’s people, o, brothers and sisters, do not take an attitude as though this were strange to you, and neither wonder at it. Enmity is paid with enmity. And if enmity against Satan is put in your heart, what wonder then, that Satan hates you in return.
There is but One, Who requites enmity with the kiss of peace; the Merciful One, Who has given you, that were enemies, peace by His dear Son.
And, there is but one generation upon earth, which when reviled, reviles not again, and when it suffers, refrains from threatening: even the generation of the children of God, that learned mercifulnesses from Him, Who became our Peace!
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