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Advent Devotional - December 4, 2014

“Why lies He in such mean estate, / Where ox and beast are feeding? / Good Christians, fear, for sinners here / The silent Word is pleading. /Nails, spear shall pierce Him through / the cross be borne for me, for you. / Hail, hail the Word made flesh / the Babe, the Son of Mary”

-What Child is This

The image of the manger is rather common at Christmas time. We sing of the manger. We highlight it in our Christmas Eve reading of Luke 2. We recreate the nativity scene with little figurines on our mantles or coffee tables. There is a great deal of emphasis on the manger at Christmas time – as there should be. But as we celebrate the birth of Christ, we cannot separate what took place outside the inn in Bethlehem from what took place on a hill outside Jerusalem some thirty-three years later. The link between the two is so inextricable that we cannot have one without the other. There is no significance in the cradle of Christ if there is no cross of Christ. We are a people who celebrate Christmas with an eye on Easter.

That is precisely what we have here in the two halves of this verse of “What Child is This.” Even as we reflect on the lowly and humble birth of Christ in a hay-scattered stall, the song directs our attention to the crucifixion of Christ. Long before Christ was to come, and long before the cross was in view (in the minds of men), the prophet Isaiah foretold Christ’s death. Isaiah 53:5, “But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” Even as an infant in the manger, Christ was bound for a gruesome death on the cross in our stead.

Our song picks up on this enormous truth, and so must we. As we exult in the Savior’s birth, as we set up our nativities, let us be ever mindful that a cross is on the horizon. Indeed, the cross that was borne for me, for you. “Hail, hail the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary!”