The Birth of Grace

It's the Christmas season, and I love this season for so many reasons. One of them is the music--I LOVE Christmas songs and hymns (we honestly have at least 25 Christmas albums of some kind). I was on the road to court listening to one of my favorite albums, City on a Hill: It's Christmas Time and the song that Caedmon's Call sings on that album is "Babe in the Straw."

I had listened to the song several times, but when I was listening to it the other day, the words in the chorus struck me:

and if we lose sight of your sweet face
at the birth of grace, at the birth of grace
light of truth shine like Bethlehem's star
lead us to where you are, show us who you are

I've been reading a lot in the Old Testament for my nightly Bible reading (I just finished Ezekiel and if that doesn't put a fear of God into you, I don't know what will!). In Reformed doctrine, we often talk about the Old and New covenants and how God ordained the Savior to come as He did, and how Christ is the eternal priest before God and mediator on our behalf.

But there's something at work in the transition between the covenants as well--notice that before Christ the people of God had to continually make sacrifices to God that were of an appeasing nature but did not ultimately satisfy the holiness of God. God's attitude towards Israel--His own people--had to be one of mercy. Mercy is often defined as having leniency towards another when wrong has been done, in other words, on the receiving end, not getting what you really deserve when you wrong someone else. God, in His forbearance, showed mercy to the Israelites time and again, pulling them out of their slavery to other peoples and saving them on the battlefield.

But they would sin against the Lord and grieve Him, over and over. But He mercifully brought them back until ultimate salvation could be achieved--this was GRACE. That God sent His only Son to earth to be born of a virgin, live a perfect, sinless life, and die on the Cross for the sins of the elect, whom God had ordained to save. At the birth of Christ, grace prevailed--the Lord would no longer need to show His forbearance toward His people because Christ as Savior wore the mantle of God's Holy wrath against our sin on the Cross while at the same time being the perfect and eternal sacrifice that satisfied God's justice and holiness.

The Lord still shows mercy to whom He will show mercy, but not as much in the overarching way that He had to show forbearance to His people in the Old Testament. Grace now prevails in that it gives us what we cannot earn for ourselves--eternal salvation and righteous standing before the Father. And this was all guaranteed by the birth, death and resurrection of Christ.

So this Christmas season, celebrate the birth of Christ, for it was the birth of grace!