I love a good quote about the Bible.
Here’s one:
“The Bible is a book about God”
(Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word).
God’s Word is God’s autobiography.
Therefore, the story of Christmas as told in the Bible is a story primarily about God. To understand its meaning, we do well to ask questions of the text, such as “What does this passage teach me about God?” and “What can I learn from these verses about the character and attributes of God?”
Let’s take this approach when reading Luke 1:46-55, Mary’s song of praise after the angel Gabriel gave her the news that she will give birth to the Messiah, “the holy one,” the Son of God (Luke 1:35).
We can learn much about God in Mary’s hymn because at least four of his attributes are mentioned:
The holiness of God (Luke 1:49)
The mercy of God (Luke 1:50, 54)
The power of God (Luke 1:49, 51)
The joy of God (Luke 1:47)
This December I’m focusing on God’s reasons for the birth of Jesus. I need to do this because every day I am inundated with the world’s reasons for Christmas, which sadly focus on the pursuit, acquisition, and accumulation of material possessions. I want to spend time meditating on what God says about Christmas. To that end, last week’s post was about The Birth of Jesus and the Holiness of God and we saw how God’s holiness prompted him to send Jesus to earth.
This week, we will see the role of the mercy of God in the incarnation of the Son of God.
God’s mercy was on Mary’s mind when she composed this sacred hymn – she refers to it twice. Note verse 50: “his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.” Note also verse 54: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy.”
What is the mercy of God?
I like Wayne Grudem’s definition: the mercy of God is “God’s goodness toward those in misery and distress” (Systematic Theology). And A.W. Tozer writes that “Mercy is an attribute of God, an infinite and exhaustible energy within the divine nature which disposes God to be actively compassionate . . . Forever His mercy stands, a boundless, overwhelming immensity of divine pity and compassion . . . Mercy is the goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt . . . It is human misery and sin that call forth the divine mercy” (The Knowledge of the Holy).
Mercy, then, is the goodness and compassion of God toward guilty sinners who are in a most miserable condition. Because of our transgressions, we’ve made a mess of our lives and this planet. We are therefore in need of divine pity to get us out of the muck and mire caused by the sin that holds us captive and keeps us there.
Just how miserable is our situation? It’s like this . . .
You and I and the rest of the human race are on the Titanic, and we are going down with the ship. We are desperately looking for help, but cannot find any. There are no life preservers, no lifeboats, no helicopters. There is no one who can get us off that ship or get us out of the water and take us to safety. We are doomed to die. We are going to drown or we are going to freeze to death. Take your pick. There is no hope.
That is what it means to be “in misery and distress.”
Oh, it’s wise to emphasize again that we are in this predicament because of what we have done. We caused the ship to sink. It’s our fault that this vessel rammed into an iceberg. We are responsible for this mess. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
That is what it means to be “dead in our trespasses” (Ephesians 2:5), “having no hope” (Ephesians 2:12), and “a slave to sin” (John 8:34).
It is this condition of hopeless misery that prompted God to take action on our behalf. The two sweetest words in the Bible are “But God.” And the four words that come next are also sweeter than honey.
“But God . . . being rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4).
God is merciful because he is “rich in mercy.” Don’t you love hearing those words? I do.
God has an unfathomable abundance of goodness and kindness toward us. His mercy disposes him to be “actively compassionate.” His mercy causes him to take action to relieve our misery, to provide a solution to our Number One problem of sin and all its life-destroying consequences in both this age and the next.
Mary sang that “in remembrance of his mercy” (Luke 1:54) God has provided a Savior, “my Savior” (Luke 1:47), the Lord Jesus Christ, to come and save us from the eternal misery of sin and the hell we deserve because of it. Our Savior Jesus comes and picks us up off the deck of that sinking ship. He appears and scoops us out of the freezing water and takes us to be with himself.
We celebrate Christmas because “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8). We celebrate Christmas because God is rich in mercy, and therefore “the Father has sent his Son to the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14). We celebrate Christmas because this baby was born to die as the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). And because Jesus died, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5).
Take time this Christmas season to praise and thank God for his bountiful mercy. It is one of the most precious reasons for the season. And this mercy is for you, if you “fear him” (Luke 1:50) by forsaking your pride and humbling yourself before him. “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13).
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