The moment of truth
Astonishment, joy, gratitude – all were focused in that gasp of sheer delight. She had expected to celebrate her 60th birthday with just the two of them. Suddenly she turned to see the whole family standing to greet her. A moment to savour! The secret plan had been conceived much earlier, and its fulfilment endangered by many hazards and pitfalls. Now, the whole thing had come together with perfect timing.
It was just such a moment, but one of universal and eternal significance, when an angel, surrounded by a host of others, declared, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11). God’s plan for mankind, worked out in secret, though often hinted at, suddenly matured and came to light.
Eddie Porter writes the following when commenting on Galatians 4:4 in Geneva Bible Notes for 1 September 2006: ‘Christ’s work was no hastily thought out idea, not something brought in on the spur of the moment. No, Christ’s coming was the culmination of the plan laid down before the world began – a plan spoken of in the Old Testament by prophecy and by type [model or picture], over hundreds of years, a plan for which God controlled all events of history, so that when the time had fully come God sent forth his Son.
How often it had seemed that the plan would fall apart. It was to be focussed in a far off child of Abraham. But he was one hundred years old and his wife ninety! The ‘coming one’ was to be in the line of King David, but a Queen mother set about destroying the whole royal family, except that one prince was rescued, nursed and hidden for years by a princess:
When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family. But Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash son of Ahaziah and stole him away from among the royal princes, who were about to be murdered. She put him and his nurse in a bedroom to hide him from Athaliah; so he was not killed. He remained hidden with his nurse at the temple of the LORD for six years while Athaliah ruled the land (2 Kings 11:1-3).
A decree was issued that could never be revoked, that the whole race, through which the plan was to be fulfilled, should be exterminated, and the date was set (Esther 3). Again and again the whole scheme hung precariously on the slenderest thread, and now nothing had been seen or heard of it for four hundred years.
Then, literally ‘out of the blue’, the heavens opened and a voice declared, ‘Today …!’ Now was the moment of truth; the fulfilment of the ages (1 Corinthians10:11) had come. No wonder the skies were ablaze with glory; that is not surprising. But could anything be more Godlike than that this momentous announcement was not made to some imperial potentate, or within some gaudy palace, but to shepherds living out in the fields (Luke 2:8). Breath-taking!
But what was the great plan, conceived from eternity and now ‘rolled out’ before angels and men? A military strategy for the defeat of all God’s enemies? No! A master plan to rid the world of oppression, poverty and disease by social and political engineering? No! A set of rules to advance world-wide purity and peace? No!
What then? Today in the town of David, a Saviour has been born (Luke 2:11). A Saviour. A Rescuer. From what?
An angel said to Joseph, You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). And the apostles of Christ, having lived with him and heard him speak on many subjects, never lost sight of the great priority that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and that this was a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance (1 Timothy 1:15).
Despite all the best efforts of Old Testament prophets and Greek philosophers, the world was helplessly enslaved in godlessness and wickedness: the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness (Romans 1:18). None could put themselves right with God by human strength, or by human wisdom cure their persistently perverse human hearts.
The glorious person who was born would say many important things, but first and foremost he came to do for us what is impossible for us to do for ourselves: to save us from our sins. If only Christmas revellers would listen to the angel! So far from understanding this, despite glib talk of ‘a season of goodwill’, we have the strange spectacle of vast numbers of people indulging even more in the very kind of life from which he came to rescue us – greed, drunkenness, gluttony, covetousness and all kinds of debauchery.
The plan erupts into a blaze of light: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests (Luke 2:14). Out of the mass of corrupt and lost humanity, God, out of the sheer freedom of his grace, will rescue a great multitude – his people, chosen before time. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight (Ephesians 4:4). On these he now rests his favour.
A Saviour is born, not to help us to save ourselves, not to make our salvation possible, but actually to save us!
Will the plan succeed? Is there room for the slightest prospect of failure? Absolutely not! The saviour is the Christ, the one appointed by the Father and anointed by the Spirit to perform the greatest rescue mission ever devised. Not only so, he is Lord, invested with all the power and authority of God. He is ‘mighty to save’ (Zephaniah 3:17) – able to save completely and for ever. Glory to God in the highest!