Christmas: The Revelation of God’s Inner Life of Love

By FRC Managing Editor Dan Hart

There’s a certain magic about the Advent and Christmas season that always seems to take hold in the hearts of those who celebrate it. As we count down the days to Christmas, our anticipation builds, and for most of us, this magical feeling combines with a bit of anxiety as we scurry from one shop to the next to buy just a few more presents for our families and friends. This tradition of gift giving has become one of the central rituals that embodies Christmas. Despite the American tendency to over-commercialize this tradition, gift giving remains an important reminder for Christians to keep the central message of Christmas foremost in our thoughts and deeds: love.

As children, gift giving was all about the thrill of the gifts themselves. What treasures did Santa bring this year? We couldn’t wait to rip off the wrapping paper and experience the euphoria of a new toy. But as we grow older, we begin to realize that it’s not so much about the gifts themselves that brings us joy. What our hearts truly hunger for is what these gifts signify: to receive love in the form of a gift.

In the truest sense of the word, Christmas is the greatest gift human beings have ever received. And just like wrapped presents under the tree, God’s gift to humanity for the first Christmas was, in a certain way, wrapped in mystery. When the angel of the Lord first came to Mary to reveal her role in the coming of Christ, it mystified her: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” (Luke 1:34). Likewise, when Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, first learned that she was with child, he was stunned. But “since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly” (Matthew 1:19).

Nevertheless, when Mary and Joseph took a step forward in faith, they came to know the ultimate expression of God’s love: His Son. Christmas, then, marks the beginning of the full revelation of the inner life of God to man. First, He came in the form of a baby. Not only does this elicit from us a natural response to care for and nurture our relationship with the Christ child, it also reveals His innate fruitfulness—He brings forth life even from seemingly impossible situations. Examples of this are found all throughout Scripture. In the book of Judges, an angel announces God’s gift of life to the wife of Manoah, who was barren, and the heroic Samson is the result (Judges 13). In the Gospel of Luke, God continues His lifegiving work with the miraculous conception of John the Baptist, despite the fact that his mother Elizabeth “was barren and both [her and her husband Zechariah] were advanced in years” (Luke 1:7). God’s intrinsically fruitful nature miraculously culminates in Christ’s conception in the womb of a virgin (Luke 1:27).

This divine fruitfulness points toward what actually occurs on Christmas: the perfect union of God’s divine nature with our human nature in the Christ child. Christmas reveals to us that God is in fact wholly human through His Son, who is one with His Father through the unity of the Holy Spirit — which makes up the Holy Trinity. This truth is mysterious and overwhelming, but if we think about it in terms of the nature of God’s inner life, it becomes a little more comprehensible. If God is love (1 John 4:8), then there must be a lover (God the Father), a beloved (the Son), and their shared love (the Holy Spirit).

This truth becomes even more comprehensible for us when we see the Holy Trinity imaged in marriage: the husband (lover), the wife (the beloved), and the fruitfulness of their shared love, which bears spiritual fruit and often results in a literal incarnation of their unity — a child.

So what is Christmas, at its root? It is God fulfilling His plan of salvation for humankind by giving us the perfect gift of His Son, thereby revealing His true nature, His inner life of love. What a gift! May we all receive it with a truly free and open heart.

May you and your family have a blessed and merry Christmas and a fruitful New Year!

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

EDITORS NOTE: This column by the Family Research Council with images is republished with permission.

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