The angels had a clear perception of the purpose of Christ's coming. One of the chief of them said to Joseph, "Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins." And they all sang when He came, because they knew that God was now dealing in a special and most effective way with that dark thing which cast its shadow on heaven as well as on earth. And it becomes us to remember that it is the sin of man which in the mind of God and His holy angels is associated with the coming of Jesus Christ. To this end was He born, and for this cause came He into the world.
The sin of our first parents had passed on from generation to generation, and each one of the millions of mankind had to say, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me"; and each fulfilled in his own life all too truly the sad promise of his birth. How was the tradition to be broken, and yet broken by one who really belonged to the race? The instincts of man himself foreshadowed the truth. Stories of a virgin birth here and there discernible in paganism show the deep intuition which was realised in Jesus Christ. He came into the world to fight with sin, to redeem a race steeped in a terrible heritage of evil, and that He might redeem it He Himself was born, and yet was free from evil.
He fought sin and He conquered it. Why, then, has the angels' song not been fulfilled? Why does sin still cast its shadow on earth and heaven alike? Why does God's loving purpose in sending His Son seem still to suffer so wide defeat? Because in his recovery as in his fall, man's will must play its part. I can only be saved from sin when I will to be saved; I only become a partaker of the benefits which Christ brought from heaven to earth when, yielding to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I turn with full accord to Jesus Christ as my Saviour. Marvel not, therefore, that we say to you with peculiar emphasis on the day in which Christ was born, "Ye must be born again." Otherwise, His birth is of no avail to you and me. We are not honouring Him, we are putting Him rather to an open shame, if we keep out of our thoughts at this time the supreme purpose of His coming, if we are not personally dealing with Him even now as to the burden and guilt of our sin.
But we can set the angels a-singing in the sky, and the melody of their music can be felt in our own hearts, if we turn in lowly penitence to Him who came to save His people from their sins, and to quicken them to a new life of righteousness and peace and joy. Only when a man comes to himself in lowly penitence, and then goes to his Father with a lofty faith, does he enter into the full purpose of his manhood; and only then, also, is there not only joy among the angels in heaven over the sinner that thus repenteth, but there is music and dancing on the earth as well, and the old life ends in which sin reigned, and the new begins in which Christ reigns; and His reign means "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men."
"There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."
O Wondrous Night!
A NEW CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Words by Arthur Bryant. Music by Charles Bassett.