Christmas - all about Jesus?

Christmas - all about Jesus?

At first glance, Christmas is all about Jesus. It’s his birth into our world – a birth that forever ends any sacred / secular dualism. It’s the start of a story that tells how he grew and matured in perfectly obedient humanity. It’s the backdrop to his kingdom ministry which culminated in the cross, resurrection and ascension and which will yet finalise in his return. 

And so, and rightly, there will be Christmas songs and Bible talks about Jesus and prayers centred on him. This is one of those seasons when he is at centre stage. What someone clumsily calls “Jesusology” seems right.

That clumsy word captures a trend in contemporary evangelical church life. To quote a church slogan, for many, “it’s all about Jesus”. At first glance that seems apt, for Jesus is the pivot point in the great plan to unite all things in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:9-10). Without him there is no Christmas, no Easter and no gospel.

However, not so fast!

After a great struggle for shared understanding, the early church carefully defined our Lord as one God in the three distinct persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That teaching is known as the Trinity and gives a key Christian distinctive against the other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam. “Trinity” is not a word found in the Bible, but is a word coined to try and make sense of the Bible’s teaching about the nature of God.

The whole Bible has a trinitarian focus starting with the work of the Father and Son in creation, over which the Spirit hovered. (Gen 1:1-2; Jn 1:2-3). Even the last chapter of the Bible mentions each person of the Trinity (Rev 22:1; 17). It’s a trinitarian Bible and faith from start to finish.

Christmas is strongly trinitarian. The Son came by the Father’s sending, to glorify him by doing his kingdom will (Jn 17:2). He was conceived by the Spirit and that same Spirit ministered to him when tempted, came upon him at his baptism and was then to empower his preaching (Lke 26-35; 4:1; 14-19). So, while the Son is centrepiece at Christmas he is not exclusively so - his coming is a work of the trinity acting with common purpose.

Our understanding, worship, prayers, Christian life and service are impoverished and unbalanced if it’s all about Jesus to the practical exclusion of the Father and Spirit. No evangelical worthy of the name denies the trinity as an article of faith, but we may inadvertently do so with a near-exclusive emphasis on Jesus.

This Christmas let us join exuberant Mary to whom the angels announced that the child she conceived through the Spirit would be called the Son of the Most High and would be given David’s throne by the Lord God (Lke 1:26-35). There’s her trinity.

Let’s join Mary and have a trinitarian Christmas!