A Fresh Look at the Nativity

The Nativity of Christ is the most powerful and uniquely heavy scene of humility in all of history. Each Christmas season, our family reads the account of Jesus’ birth. We read of the tension of Joseph and Mary having no place to stay in the inn. We see Jesus coming forth amongst the animals, wrapped in swaddling cloth, and placed in a manger. Then, we read of the angel of the Lord appearing to the shepherds and a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and the shepherds quickly going to Bethlehem to see the Christ child. 

The Familiarity of the Christmas Story

We, like Mary, treasure this story in our hearts. Among the decorations, feasts, activities, and gifts of the Christmas season, we try to ground our hearts and minds in the glory of this nativity scene. But I have to be honest. Each year, I want to focus more on Jesus and less on the to-do lists of the holiday season. Yet, I get overwhelmed and exhausted by all that I need to get done and fail to really take in all that He has done. I can miss the glory of the King in the midst of the Christmas things. So as I set out to write this blog, I asked the Lord to show me something different in the nativity account. Something I’ve missed in the overfamiliarity of Christ’s birth. Here’s what He revealed. 

Significance in the Insignificant

First, the stable was God’s plan. Every time I read “because there was no place for them in the inn”, I get flustered. I envision them running from inn to inn, desperate for a clean safe place to give birth to Jesus. I get anxious thinking of how young Mary must have felt in that moment. How could people turn away a woman in labor? But this was not a mistake. God placed Joseph and Mary in that specific situation, with all the frustrations and fears it likely held, for His purposes. 

Way back in the early 5th century BCE, Micah 5:2 prophesied, “As for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, seemingly insignificant among the clans of Judah-from you a king will emerge who will rule over Israel on my behalf, one whose origins are in the distant past.” Christ wasn’t born into the greatest clan of Judah, or in a King’s palace where most would expect. But He was born in the humble “seemingly insignificant” town of Bethlehem.

Mary and Joseph seemed stranded, but they weren’t. God had them right where He wanted them. Christ Jesus our Savior came into the world in the most humble of places, among the beasts of the field…in a stable. God puts each of us in these kinds of places. Stables. It’s not where we want to be. It’s far from where we “should” be. It’s uncomfortable. It’s smelly. It seems out of the way. In those moments, it can seem like God has forgotten us. Yet, just like Mary and Joseph, our unexpected location in life may be what places us right in the middle of God’s will. 

Consuming Christ

Second, the manger was God’s plan. Our family nativity scene was a gift from my best friend. It’s more modern than traditional in style, and my favorite piece is the manger. The little baby Jesus figurine lies carefully on a bed of real hay in a manger. The vulnerability and simplicity of that image always pierces my heart. But as I read this nativity account again, I became wrecked by the full meaning of it all. 

We know that the freshly born body of Jesus Christ was placed in a manger. And most of you already know that a manger is a feeding trough. But did you know that the word manger comes from the Latin word manducare, which means “to chew or devour”?

I have wrestled with Jesus’ words in John 6 for years. Unable to grasp the gory nature of Jesus’ “solemn truth” that “unless [we] eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, [we] have no life in [ourselves].” Now, I get it. Jesus Christ who is fully God and fully man, chose to veil his Godship, to step into the confines of time, take on human flesh, be limited by the boundaries of humanness, experience pain and suffering, feel the depths of sorrow and joy, die on a cross, and rise from the dead. He did all this by first coming as a little baby, wrapped in swaddling cloth and lying in a feeding trough. 

Jesus said “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever.” (John 6:51) Just as we must first chew and then swallow bread for it to sustain our physical bodies, we must “eat” or “partake in” the bread that is Christ. We can know in our minds that Jesus is the only Way, chewing on the truth of who He is, but until we take Him in and swallow that truth, we have not received the gift of eternal life. We must “devour” or consume the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way for us to be reconciled to God. Then we get to enjoy God’s provision for eternal life that begins here on earth and continues forevermore.

Our Rags for His Glory

Lastly, God’s plan has always been that His glory be revealed through His poverty. The root word for “poor” in the New Testament is ptochos, which means “someone who is destitute of resources.” Why in the world would the God of the universe become “poor”? Colossians says that ALL THINGS in heaven and on earth were created through Jesus and for Jesus. And that Jesus is before ALL THINGS and ALL THINGS are held together in Him. Basically, Jesus Christ has it ALL, the furthest thing from destitute. And yet, “although he was rich, he became poor.” WHY? 

He did it “for [our] sakes, so that [we] by his poverty could become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). This is the great exchange. His glorious riches for our poverty. Our poverty for His glorious riches. This is the most extreme expression of love. THIS IS GRACE. Unfathomable, incomprehensible, unmatched, and immutable GRACE. Such grace is only possible because of the “attitude” of Christ. Though fully God, Jesus didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped. His attitude wasn’t dictated by his reality. His reality was dictated by his attitude. He chose to humble himself, veil his glory, empty himself, take on the form of a slave, place himself in a feeding trough, and become the bread of life! As a result, God the Father chose to “exalt Him and gave Him the name that is above every name.” 

May this Christmas season birth in you the “same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had.” And may you more fully comprehend that the humble baby in the manger is the same One to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.