We have just been through the Christmas season, and if our hearts were right, our reason for the season was the coming of the King. I must admit that the decorations in my house look more like a celebration of the coming of a jolly old elf from the North Pole. (My wife is a Claus collector.) There are a few shepherds and mangers in the mix, but like most Christmas decorations, they lean away from the true meaning of Christmas and into the shiny, silly, worldly version. In our defense, I can only say that our traditions and our memories are so thoroughly steeped in the tree and the presents and the colorful lights that even I have to remind myself what this celebration is all about: the greatest gift ever given in the form of the baby in the manger who became the King on the throne of Heaven and Earth.
Baby Jesus had to grow into His kingship. I know – He
was with God and He was God from before the foundation of the Earth. But,
in His unique expression as God’s earthbound Son, He had to be born and grow
and ultimately
become obedient unto death. It was only after His sacrificial death at Calvary
that He could ascend to the throne of Heaven. The Bible reveals that because of
Adam’s sin, the rulership of Earth was relinquished to God’s arch enemy, Satan.
Divine justice required a human payment for Adam’s sin. That was the reason for
the incarnation, the baby born in Bethlehem came to die to redeem mankind.
More than that, Paul
told the Ephesians redemption was the reason for creation itself! It is
truly a mystery, as
Paul said, that God would create our universe knowing that His crown of the
creation, us humans, would rebel and require redemption. But that is what the
Book says. Paradise lost was to become Paradise regained, but only at great
cost. The entire sweep of the Old Testament is a record of God moving in human
history to prepare for the arrival of the Seed/Servant/Savior, Jesus. The road
from Bethlehem to Calvary was posted with signs that the prophets had written centuries
before.
One of the most important things the prophets foretold was
that the One who was to come would be a king. So, when Jesus finally came, most
of the Jewish people were looking for a conqueror king to free them from Roman
oppression. They were ready when John the Baptist and then Jesus Himself
announced the coming of a kingdom. It was most frequently called the Kingdom of
God, but Matthew called it the Kingdom of Heaven. This implied that there was
something unearthly about it. Jesus confirmed this when He
told Pilate His kingdom was not of this world.
His disciples obviously missed the distinction, though. At
the time of Jesus’ return to Heaven, they
asked, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to
Israel?” I can imagine Jesus sighing deeply – maybe rolling His eyes – when He
answered, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that
the Father has set by his own authority.” Times (χρόνος) or seasons (καιρός)
could be translated “dates or circumstances.” He gave them a marker for the
date: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The circumstances would only
become clear after the Spirit had, in fact, come.
What became clear after the Holy
Spirit guided them into the truth was that the kingdom was to be a
spiritual reality. I believe they finally understood what Jesus had meant by
saying, “The
kingdom of God is within you.” If I could paraphrase what
Jesus told the Samaritan woman it would sound like this: “The King of
Heaven is a spirit being who requires those who would honor Him as king to do
so using their spiritual faculties; physical locations are no longer important
to Him.” I think He was trying to make the woman (and us) understand that true
human existence is spiritual, and true worship of the One who made us in His
likeness must be “in spirit and truth.”
We humans are so bound up in our time/space universe that we
fail to see how a spiritual reality can be more real than our physical one. The
Apostle
Paul encourages us to think of earthly things, material things as temporary
(temporal: time-bound) and passing away to be replaced by more permanent things
– spiritual things. His explanation to the philosophers in Athens was that the
true God did not have a physical existence as represented by their idols and related
sacrifices. Rather, he said the true God made the world and everything in it,
and that it is in
him we live and move and exist.
The teachings of Jesus and Paul are clear: we all exist in
God in one sense, but God in us only applies to those who take their
place in the Son. Jesus’ disciples must have been horrified when He told them He
was going away; then they were mystified when He said it would be better
if He went away. What could be better than walking through life in Jesus’
physical presence, they must have asked. The answer came to them with the
coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Once they were filled with
the Spirit, they understood what Jesus meant by fulness
of life – completeness
of joy. They soon learned that they also had been given power to do Jesus’
work – first twelve of them, then thousands, then millions of them.
We are among those millions, those of us who have given our
lives to Christ, those of us who hail Him as King Jesus. We
are ambassadors of the one true King speaking into the darkness of this
world, “Be reconciled to your King; escape
the darkness and enter the Kingdom of Light.” Today that kingdom is a
spiritual reality, true enough. But we look forward to the day when all creation
will be remade; heaven and earth will be reunited at the return of the
King. But you won’t enjoy Him as King then if you don’t accept Him as King now.
It is the question of the ages: where is King Jesus?
Related Posts: The
Virgin Shall Conceive; Toasting
Christmas; Merry
Priestly Christmas; Despising
the Down Payment; Happy
Birthday to Me
