The Contrasts of the Christmas Story

Jeanette Winterson, in a very perceptive little piece in The Times on 16th December 2006, noted how the Christmas story "begins with a demand ...; and ends with a gift." The Christmas story as told in Luke 2 and Matthew 2 is full of wonderful contrasts!  Here are six to ponder:

1. The contrast between the decree of Caesar Augustus and the LORD’s decree

On the one hand there is the strutting arrogance of Caesar Augustus, issuing his decree that "all the world should be taxed." But on the other hand, unbeknown to Caesar Augustus, a far greater Power than he has issued an infinitely more important decree, which now is coming to pass. We read of it in Psalm 2:7:

"I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession."

The Eternal Word was made flesh and born as a helpless baby at Bethlehem for us and for our salvation in fulfilment of his Father’s decree.

2. The contrast between the servants of Caesar and the Heralds of the Glad Tidings

The herald of the King of Heaven's decree who announces Christ’s coming is an infinitely more glorious being than any of Caesar Augustus' petty officials sent out to proclaim his census and grubby tax demand.

The glorious Angel of the Lord, none else, is the herald of the Lord's decree, and, in the night sky over Bethlehem, his proclamation of its fulfilment is accompanied by a whole company of angels in chorus and is attended with the bright shining of the glory of God.

3. The contrast between King Herod and the Wise Men from the East (the Magi)

Caesar's servile underling in Judea, was the hated Edomite, Herod, who lorded it over the Jews as a puppet king of the Romans. His life's work was to trying make himself appear to be the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy, so that the Jews needed to seek no further than himself for the fulfilment of their expectations of a glorious future.

Herod's counterpoint is thus found in the prescient magi. Tradition says that the magi were kings. To my mind, the magi were sages of the Jewish Diaspora in the East, whose diligent reading of the Old Testament Scriptures had led them to expect some celestial sign presaging the birth of Messiah (the One whom the Jewish rabbi's called 'the Son of the Star', from Num. 24:17). Note that they said it was not just "a star" but "his star" which they had seen in the East. A careful pondering of Daniel 9:24-27 and calculation of the times may well have led them to conclude that his coming was imminent. Herod’s interest in the Messiah was in order to fall upon him and exterminate him: The Wise Men sought him that they might fall down and worship him!

Their question to Herod (in Matt. 2:2) about the whereabouts of the infant king, does not imply they were ignorant of Micah 5:2. But they expected him by now to have been already welcomed into Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, by the leaders of the people.

Herod’s devious plan to find the infant Christ and destroy him, is defeated by the warning God gave to the magi in a dream, causing them to depart to their own country by another route, without returning to Herod, and by the Lord’s instructing Joseph in a dream to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.

4. The contrast between the Jewish Leaders and the lowly Shepherds

When the magi came, asking “Where is he that is born, King of the Jews?”, it was not only Herod who was troubled, we read, but “all Jerusalem with him.” – "the chief priests and the scribes of the people". The Jewish religious and political leadership responded then in just the same way as they would do later, when, during his public ministry, they opposed Christ at every turn. Cf. John 11:47-50. Such were the ‘thieves and robbers’ of which Jesus spoke in John 10, the false shepherds of God’s people, who were interested only in feeding themselves, not the flock (Ezekiel 34). These self-proclaimed ‘shepherds of Israel’ were pre-occupied with maintaining at all costs their own social and religious status and the wealth and privilege that attended it. They offer a striking contrast to the humble, literal shepherds, huddled out on the Judean mountains around Bethlehem, keeping watch over their flocks by night. To these poor and lowly shepherds is granted the privilege of hearing from the lips of angels the proclamation of the Messiah of Israel’s birth.

The Jewish leaders, despite their knowledge of Micah’s prophecy that out of Bethlehem was to arise the One who would be Ruler in Israel, showed no interest in going to there to find him for themselves. The lowly shepherds, in contrast, having heard the angelic announcement, went with haste to Bethlehem, and then, having seen him, they went and spread the word which had been told them concerning the child.

5. The contrast between Jerusalem and Bethlehem

Jerusalem, the City of David, the capital of the ancient kings of Judah, boasted still the remnants of Solomon’s temple, and upon its great foundation stones had been erected the (inferior) Second Temple. It contrasts with rural Bethlehem, which as Micah put it, was “too small to counted among the clans (or leaders) of Judah.”

Ephrathah was distinguished of old only by its being the birthplace of Benjamin (Genesis 35:16-21) and the rural home of David (1 Sam. 17:12). Micah’s prophecy (5:2) declares that Bethlehem-Ephratah will one day be distinguished again by a birth - a much more significant birth than that of Benjamin, that of the Ruler in Israel who is to arise, who is King Messiah.

Bethlehem was of no account in earthly terms, but He whose way it is to achieve great things by imperceptible means (as D’Aubigné describes it) chose Bethlehem-Ephrathah to be the place where He would make his entry into the world. Jerusalem, the City of David, the capital city of the Kings of Judea, which fell to the Babylonians in 587/6 BC, is indeed to be redeemed, but that redemption will come about by the Ruler who is to arise from the comparative obscurity of Bethlehem-Ephrathah.

6. The contrast between the demand of Caesar and the gift of God

Caesar's demand was for what the power-mongers of every age usually want - taxes to spend on grandiose projects which will ensure their lasting fame, money to support an extravagant lifestyle for themselves, wealth to consolidate their grip on the levers of worldly power!

As Jeanette Winterson puts it, "Then, as now, their rulers wanted taxes and every man had to be counted. Out of this exercise in weary bureaucracy - numbers, statistics, the recorded, the quantifiable - comes the very thing that cannot be quantified - the unexpected event that will explode the careful systems of Romans and Jews alike."

That “unquantifiable thing”, as Winterson calls it, is God’s gracious, unspeakable gift, His dearly beloved Son – a Saviour for lost mankind.

“God so loved the world, that He gave His Only-begotten Son.”