SATURDAY 12/21/13 Daily Readings for Advent...Advent is for adoring Jesus

SATURDAY 12/21/13 Daily Readings for Advent...Advent is for adoring Jesus

THE BIRTH OF THE ANCIENT OF DAYS

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus 

answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose 

I was born and for this purpose I have come into the 

world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is 

of the truth listens to my voice.” —John 18:37

This is a great Christmas text even though it comes from 

the end of Jesus’s life on earth, not the beginning. 

The uniqueness of his birth is that he did not originate 

at his birth. He existed before he was born in a manger. The 

personhood, the character, the personality of Jesus of Naz

areth existed before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born. 

The theological word to describe this mystery is not cre

ation, but incarnation. The person—not the body, but the 

essential personhood of Jesus—existed before he was born 

as man. His birth was not a coming into being of a new per

son, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person. 

Micah 5:2 puts it like this, 700 years before Jesus was 

born:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little 

to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come 

forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose 

coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. 

The mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was 

born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to wit

ness to an even greater one—namely, that the child born 

at Christmas was a person who existed “from of old, from 

ancient days.”