Tags
Biblical Hebrew, Celebrate, Christian Life, Christmas, Defining Faith, Faith, Holy Spirit, Indwelling Spirit, Shield of Faith, Whole Armor of God
Happy Christmas, Readers!
Monday is my usual post day and, this year, Monday happens to be Christmas Day.
I am still in the midst of my study on Ephesians 6 verses 10 through the first part of verse 18. This is the passage where the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God. I have not yet moved on from the Shield of Faith and did wonder what sort of post I could create for Christmas Day that would continue to reveal the true definition of faith.
That might seem silly because of course Christmas is all about faith for Christians. I find that “faith” in this respect is used to mean “a religion or a system of religious beliefs” which is definition 3 of “faith” in my New World Book Dictionary. Those who use “faith” mean the set of rules and regulations set down by their denomination, the theology stamped approved by their denomination, and the fiercely held but not always audibly expressed idea that the faith of their denomination is the True Faith: all others are mistaken and have fallen short of the truth.
I suppose I ought to admit I am rather ambivalent about Christmas. On the one hand, there is everything I have learned about Christmas traditions. Would it shock you to learn that there is no Christmas movie (that I can bring to mind) that accurately portrays the birth of our Lord and Savior and that the Nativity Scenes where the animals gaze benevolently at the newborn Christ, the Shepherds bow down in worship, and the Three Wise Men offer their gifts, directly contradicts the Biblical story?
Only the Shepherds were there to see the Baby Jesus. The Wise Men-and there had to be a great many more than three visitors from the East-didn’t arrive until Jesus was a child and, when they visited Him, they did so at the house where He, Mary, & Joseph were living (see Matthew Chapter 2). There is every reason to question whether His birth occurred in December and there is also reason to question whether the place He was born ought to be translated as “stable”. All of these things as they are celebrated during Christmas are traditions and are “faith” only in the respect that they are the traditions of a belief system accepted by a wide group of people.
All of these things I can take or leave. If I have the opportunity to partake of these traditions, fine; if not, equally fine. It is the people I am partaking with who are important. I also admit there are some aspects of Christmas I thoroughly enjoy. Some of the Christmas music is the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. So beautiful, I don’t always save these songs for Christmas. You can find me singing “Joy to the World” and “O Holy Night” at any time of the year. And, accurate or not, I do like the Nativity Tableau because it is a picture of what the Hebrew words translated “remember” and “remembrance” mean. The two words are spelled the same but are pronounced with different vowels. Remember is zakar and it means “to mark-so as to be recognized-to remember, to mention”. The Strong’s also defines it as “to be male” which makes this word worth a devoted study. The word translated as “remembrance” is zeker and isn’t all that different than zakar being defined by the Strong’s as “a memento, recollection, commemoration.” The Strong’s also includes the word “scent” and “to burn incense” in these definitions and I like the idea of all of our senses being involved in our remembering.
Remembrance in the Biblical sense of the word is not an intellectual exercise. The meaning can be seen in these Christmas celebrations: acting it out as if Jesus was being born this very night, celebrating the Word made flesh, recognizing our likeness in His face, and reveling in the indescribable love of God.
Unto us a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given.
But, this remembrance is not our faith. We are not acting out a mere belief system. We are celebrating-or ought to be celebrating-the revelation of God Himself in Jesus Christ. This revelation of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the humility in the heart of God in that God became one of us-limited in every way as we are, tempted in every way as we are-is the catalyst for a response in us and that response is the definition of faith.
I read J. Preston Eby’s teachings and only recently discovered he’d written a short series on faith. I am currently on page 3 of the first study but have read enough that there is plenty to ponder. Mr. Eby opens his study series with this definition of faith: “Faith is the mental attitude of confident response which is evoked in you by what another person reveals himself to be.”
Mr. Eby goes on to write, “The very first thing that you will surely observe about this definition is that it declares that your faith is not something that you decided to exercise. Rather it is a response produced in you by someone other than yourself! True faith never accrues to the praise of the one who possesses it, but rather, to the glory of the one who evokes it! Then, in the second place, the “mental attitude of confident response” known as faith is totally dependent upon revelation, that is, the uncovering or unveiling of another person’s inner being in such a way that he may be seen as he really is.”
Does Jesus have December or a September or an April or some other birth month? Was He born in a stable or some other type of room? I do enjoy reading what others have to say on these subjects. I don’t have time for arguing about it because, whatever the facts may be, the truth is we have an unpredictable God who, maker and ruler of all things, did not choose to be born in a way that fitted His station. He was born to poor peasant parents, had a manger for His bed, and while angels filled the skies with song, only shepherds were there to mark His birth.
Tomorrow will be December 26th. Perhaps many of you will begin taking down decorations and packing them away until next year. Perhaps many of you will find tomorrow to be a bit of a letdown. Perhaps you sought the Magic of Christmas and needed Santa and Elves and Flying Reindeer in order to find it. But then, you probably stopped believing in all of that years ago. You try to create magic for your children but deep inside you know magic is nothing more than illusion and sleight of hand.
None of your days have to be a letdown. We don’t have to try and stir up some sort of holiday spirit and try to keep it going into the cares and trials of our daily lives. Jesus is not just the reason for the season, He is the reason for everything that exists: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:15-17).
I follow the blog Hebrew Word Lessons and a recent post addressed Christmas. The point was made about the unlikelihood of Jesus having a December birth but also pointed out the beauty of celebrating His arrival with lights during the darkest time of the year. The author also writes, “This Messiah (Anointed One), who would come as a child, would be an awe-inspiring, mighty, eternal, peace-bringer. And He would be a counsellor…an intimate advisor for every human heart.” John 14:16 refers to the Holy Spirit as the Comforter and the Amplified expands that word with “Counsellor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby”. (See also John 14:26-28).
Today is the day chosen to be the commemoration of God’s coming to earth through His being born a human being. However you choose to mark today, if you do so choose to mark today, I hope it is a day full of the comfort and joy that belongs to each one of us. Because that baby is no longer a baby. He is the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father, with all authority in heaven and on earth His, ever living to make intercession for us, dwelling in us in and by His Spirit.
When we experience the vitality of us in Christ and He in us, all substitutions pale in comparison. Our reality is we have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us. Emmanuel, God with Us, has become God in Us. Our very bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit not just today but every day. He is our Comfortor and His fruit is joy. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, will open our eyes to the magnitude of what it means to live in union with Christ in us: we only have to ask. And then, having opened our eyes, this same Spirit will strengthen us to live our lives in response to all we have seen: a life of faith.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
References
THE LAW OF FAITH Part 1 by J. Preston Eby (godfire.net)
Revisiting COUNSELLOR ‹ Hebrew Word Lessons ‹ Reader — WordPress.com
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1953, 1976
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990
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