Advent Devotional - December 2, 2014

“Hark the herald angels sing / Glory to the newborn King! / Peace on earth and mercy mild /     God and sinners reconciled”

-Hark the Herald Angels Sing

An unbridled joy is present in “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The angels burst forth onto the scene with singing, glory is radiant in a new King, and peace and mercy abound on Earth. Yet the crescendo is found in the final line: God and sinners reconciled! How can it be?

Reconciliation is one of the major themes of the gospel. Paul reminds us in Romans 3 that because there are none who are righteous, none who understand God, and none who do good, we are separated from God. In Ephesians 2 we are confronted with the harsh reality of our sin condition: we are dead in our trespasses. This was our state: separated, alienated, and isolated from the source of life. And when you are separated from life, you are dead.

But in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we “who were once alienated and hostile in mind, Christ Jesus has reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present us holy and blameless and above reproach” before God (Colossians 1:21-22). Paul writes similarly in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”

In this newborn King, we are offered our only hope. In Jesus Christ, God took the form of man so as to offer Himself as the sacrifice that we with our filthy rags could never make. In Jesus Christ, we who were once far off have been brought near by His blood (Ephesians 2:13). Jesus Christ is our reconciliation, and so we join the angels in singing.