Born a Child!

And yet a King! This is one of my favorite Christmas Hymns, one among many! I think partly because I can remember when I stumbled at the answer, when I didn’t know who Jesus was. Certainly I had heard of Him, this Babe, the Son of Mary but it was only a story to me then, a story of a baby in a manger with animals all around and men bringing gifts and shepherds and angels singing. I know now of course that no one can believe the story and know the Babe apart from having a new heart TO believe and that new heart comes in regeneration, the new birth. You see we too have to be born anew as a child with the first dawning of truth in the new heart and the first joy in KNOWING Him.

The longing of our heart is to know Him; Philippians 3:10 “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death”

The Apostle Paul certainly knew Christ when he penned this verse but his knowledge of Christ was imperfect just as ours is. Paul suffered the loss of all things and counted that loss as dung so that he might KNOW Christ. We see only in part now and know only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12) but we long to know more. We want to know more of Christ; we want to know more of His love and the unsearchable riches of His grace. We want to know more of the power of His resurrection because in that resurrection we find our justification. We have been begotten again unto a lively hope by His resurrection (1 Peter 1:3) and we want to abound in Christ and that lively hope as we sojourn here. It is amazing to think that the power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that worketh in us, the same power that keeps us and the same power that hath given unto us all things pertaining to life and godliness.

In time He came to save His people from their sins; “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, but He came as a child. It is this coming that we remember at Christmas; it is THIS Child that we celebrate, the Christ Child!

Joy, Joy for Christ is born!