The pagan emperor of the world in Emmanuel’s land; imperial glory and authority an instrument in God’s hands
In the next chapter the scene changes. Instead of the relations of God with Israel according to grace, we see first the pagan emperor of the world-the head of Daniel’s last empire-exercising his power in Emmanuel’s land, and over the people of God, as though God did not know them. Nevertheless, we are still in presence of the birth of the Son of David, of Emmanuel Himself; but He is outwardly under the power of the head of the beast, of a pagan empire. What a strange state of things is brought in by sin! Take special notice, however, that we have grace here: it is the intervention of God which makes all this manifest. Connected with it are some other circumstances which it is well to observe. When the interests and the glory of Jesus are in question, all this power-which governs without the fear of God, which reigns, seeking its own glory, in the place where Christ should reign-all the imperial glory is but an instrument in the hands of God for the fulfillment of His counsels. As to the public fact, we find the Roman emperor exercising despotic and pagan authority in the place where the throne of God should have been, if the sin of the people had not made it impossible.
The world’s power set in motion that the Saviour-King might be born where God had decreed
The emperor will have all the world registered, and everyone goes to his own city. The power of the world is set in motion, and that by an act which proves its supremacy over those who, as the people of God, should have been free from all but the immediate government of their God, which was their glory-an act which proves the complete degradation and servitude of the people. They are slaves, in their bodies and in their possessions, to the heathen, because of their sins.1 But this act only accomplishes the marvelous purpose of God, causing the Saviour-King to be born in the village where, according to the testimony of God, that event was to take place. And, more than that, the divine Person, who was to excite the joy and the praises of heaven, is born among men, Himself a child in this world.
The state of things in Israel and in the world is the supremacy of the Gentiles and the absence of the throne of God. The Son of Man, the Saviour, God manifested in the flesh, comes to take His place-a place which grace alone could find or take in a world that knew Him not.
This registration is so much the more remarkable, in that, as soon as the purpose of God was accomplished, it was carried no further; that is to say, not till afterwards, under the government of Cyrenius.1
(1. I have no doubt that the only right translation of this passage is, “The census itself was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.” The Holy Spirit notes this circumstance to show that, when once the purpose of God was accomplished, the decree was not historically carried out till afterwards. A great deal of learning has been spent on what I believe to be simple and clear in the text.)
The Son of God born into this world finds no place there
The Son of God is born in this world, but He finds no place there. The world is at home, or at least by its resources it finds a place, in the inn; it becomes a kind of measure of man’s place in, and reception by, the world; the Son of God finds none, save in the manger. Is it for nothing that the Holy Spirit records this circumstance? No. There is no room for God, and that which is of God, in this world. So much the more perfect, therefore, is the love that brought Him down to earth. But He began in a manger and ended on the cross, and along the way had not where to lay His head.
The Son of God-a child, partaking in all the weakness and all the circumstances of human life, thus manifested-appears in the world.1
(1. That is to say, as an infant, He did not appear, like the first Adam, coming out, in His perfection, from the hand of God. He is born of a woman, the Son of Man, which Adam was not.)
The fulfillment of God’s counsels announced by angels; their heavenly chorus of praise
But if God comes into this world, and if a manger receives Him, in the nature He has taken in grace, the angels are occupied with the event on which depends the fate of the whole universe, and the accomplishment of all the counsels of God; for He has chosen weak things to confound things that are mighty. This poor infant is the object of all the counsels of God, the upholder and heir of the whole creation, the Saviour of all who shall inherit glory and eternal life.
Some poor men who were faithfully performing their toilsome labors, afar from the restless activity of an ambitious and sinful world, receive the first tidings of the Lord’s presence on earth. The God of Israel did not seek for the great among His people, but had respect to the poor of the flock. Two things here present themselves. The angel who comes to the shepherds of Judea announces to them the fulfillment of the promises of God to Israel. The choir of angels celebrate in their heavenly chorus of praise all the real import of this wondrous event.
“Unto you,” says the heavenly messenger who visits the poor shepherds, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” This was proclaiming good tidings to them and to all the people.1
(1. “All the people” (not, as in the Authorized Version, “all people”).)
The fullness, sovereignty and perfection of God’s grace magnified by sin
But in the birth of the Son of Man, God manifest in the flesh, the accomplishment of the incarnation had far deeper importance than this. The fact that this poor infant was there, disallowed and left (humanly speaking) to its fate by the world, was (as understood by the heavenly intelligences, the multitude of the heavenly host, whose praises resounded at the angel’s message to the shepherds), “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good pleasure [of God] in men.” These few words embrace such widely extended thoughts that it is difficult to speak suitably of them in a work like this; but some remarks are necessary. First, it is deeply blessed to see that the thought of Jesus excludes all that could oppress the heart in the scene which surrounded His presence on earth. Sin, alas! was there. It was manifested by the position in which this wondrous infant was found. But if sin had placed Him there, grace had placed Him there. Grace superabounds; and in thinking of Him, blessing, grace, the mind of God respecting sin, that which God is, as manifested by the presence of Christ, absorb the mind and possess the heart, and are the heart’s true relief in a world like this. We see grace alone; and sin does but magnify the fullness, the sovereignty, the perfection of that grace. God, in His glorious dealings, blots out the sin with respect to which He acts, and which He thus exhibits in all its deformity; but there is that which “much more aboundeth.” Jesus, come in grace, fills the heart. It is the same thing in all the details of Christian life. It is the true source of moral power, of sanctification and of joy.
“Glory to God in the highest” shown in the child born on the earth
We see next that there are three things brought out by the presence of Jesus born as a child on the earth. First, glory to God in the highest. The love of God-His wisdom-His power (not in creating a universe out of nothing, but in rising above the evil, and turning the effect of all the enemy’s power into an occasion of showing that this power was only impotence and folly in presence of that which may be called “the weakness of God”)-the fulfillment of His eternal counsels-the perfection of His ways where evil had come in-the manifestation of Himself amid the evil in such a manner as to glorify Himself before the angels: in a word, God had so manifested Himself by the birth of Jesus that the hosts of heaven, long familiar with His power, could raise their chorus, “Glory to God in the highest!” and every voice unites in sounding forth these praises. What love like this love? And God is love. What a purely divine thought that God has become man! What supremacy of good over evil! What wisdom in drawing nigh to the heart of man and the heart of man back to Him! What fitness in addressing man! What maintenance of the holiness of God! What nearness to the heart of man, what participation in his wants, what experience of his condition! But beyond all, God above the evil in grace, and in that grace visiting this defiled world to make Himself known as He had never yet been known!
“Peace on earth”: Jesus the surety of the eventual fulfillment of the promise
The second effect of the presence of Him who manifested God on the earth is that peace should be there. Rejected-His name should be an occasion of strife; but the heavenly choir are occupied with the fact of His presence, and with the result, when fully produced of the consequences, wrapped up in the Person of Him who was there (looked at in their proper fruits), and they celebrate these consequences. Manifested evil should disappear; His holy rule should banish all enmity and violence. Jesus, mighty in love, should reign, and impart the character in which He had come to the whole scene that should surround Him in the world He came into, that it might be according to His heart who took delight therein (Prov. 8:3131Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:31)).1 See, as regards a smaller scale, Psalm 85:10-1110Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. 11Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. (Psalm 85:10‑11).
(1. This quotation leads to a glorious apprehension, both of what was then doing and of our blessing. The special interest of God is in the sons of men; wisdom (Christ is the wisdom of God) daily Jehovah’s delight, rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth, before creation, so that it was counsel, and His delight in the sons of men. His incarnation is the full proof of this. In Matthew we have our Lord, when He takes His place with the remnant as this is, fully revealed, and it is in the Son’s taking this place as man and being anointed of the Holy Spirit, that the whole Trinity is fully revealed. This is a wonderful unfolding of God’s ways.)
The means of this-redemption, the destruction of Satan’s power, the reconciliation of man by faith, and of all things in heaven and earth with God-are not here pointed out. Everything depended on the Person and presence of Him who was born. All was wrapped up in Him. The state of blessing was born in the birth of that child.
Presented to the responsibility of man, man is unable to profit by it, and all fails. His position thereby becomes only so much the worse.
But, grace and blessing being attached to the Person of Him just born, all their consequences necessarily flow forth. After all, it was the intervention of God accomplishing the counsel of His love, the settled purpose of His good pleasure. And, Jesus once there, the consequences could not fail: whatever interruption there might be to their fulfillment, Jesus was their surety. He was come into the world. He contained in His Person, He was the expression of, all these consequences. The presence of the Son of God in the midst of sinners said to all spiritual intelligence, “Peace on the earth.”
“The good pleasure of God in men”: God’s glorious counsels accomplished in Jesus
The third thing was the good pleasure1-the affection of God-in men. Nothing more simple, since Jesus was a man. He had not taken hold of angels.
(1. This is the same word as when it is said of Christ, “In whom I am well pleased.” It is beautiful to see the unjealous celebration, by these holy beings, of the advancement of another race to this exalted place by the incarnation of the Word. It was God’s glory, and that sufficed them. This is very beautiful.)
It was a glorious testimony that the affection, the good pleasure, of God was centered in this poor race, now far from Him, but in which He was pleased to accomplish all His glorious counsels. So in John 1 The life was the light of men.
In a word, it was the power of God present in grace in the Person of the Son of God taking part in the nature, and interesting Himself in the lot, of a being who had departed from Him, and making him the sphere of the accomplishment of all His counsels, and of the manifestation of His grace and His nature to all His creatures. What a position for man! for it is indeed in man that all this is accomplished. The whole universe was to learn in man, and in what God therein was for man, that which God was in Himself, and the fruit of all His glorious counsels, as well as its complete rest in His presence, according to His nature of love. All this was implied in the birth of that child of whom the world took no notice. Natural and marvelous subject of praise to the holy inhabitants of heaven, unto whom God had made it known! It was glory to God in the highest.
The faith and joy of the shepherds
Faith was in exercise in those simple Israelites to whom the angel of the Lord was sent; and they rejoiced in the blessing fulfilled before their eyes, and which verified the grace that God had shown in announcing it to them. The word, “As it was told unto them,” adds its testimony of grace to all that we enjoy by the loving-kindness of God.
The name of the child; His circumcision under the law; Mary’s poverty
The child receives the name of Jesus on the day of His circumcision, according to Jewish custom (see chapter 1:59), but according to the counsels and revelations of God, communicated by the angels of His power. Moreover, everything was performed according to the law; for historically we find ourselves still in connection with Israel. He who was born of a woman was born under the law.
The condition of poverty in which Jesus was born is also shown by the sacrifice offered for the purification of His mother.
The child recognized by the godly remnant
But another point is here made prominent by the Holy Spirit, insignificant as He may apparently be who gave occasion to it.
Jesus is recognized by the godly remnant of Israel, so far as the Holy Spirit acts in them. He becomes a touchstone for every soul in Israel. The condition of the remnant taught by the Holy Spirit (that is, of those who had taken the position of the remnant) was this: They were sensible of the misery and ruin of Israel, but waited upon the God of Israel, trusting to His unchangeable faithfulness for the consolation of His people. They still said: How long? And God was with this remnant. He had made known to those who thus trusted in His mercy the coming of the promised One, who was to be the fulfillment of this mercy to Israel.
Thus, in presence of the oppression of the Gentiles, and of the iniquity of a people who were ripening or rather ripened in evil, the remnant who trust in God do not lose that which, as we saw in the preceding chapter, belonged to Israel. In the midst of Israel’s misery they had for their consolation that which promise and prophecy had declared for Israel’s glory.
The revelation made to Simeon; the threefold character of his praise
The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he should not die until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. That was the consolation, and it was great. It was contained in the Person of Jesus the Saviour, without going further into the details of the manner or the time of the accomplishment of Israel’s deliverance.
Simeon loved Israel; he could depart in peace, since God had blessed Him according to the desires of faith. The joy of faith ever dwells on the Lord and on His people, but sees, in the relationship that exists between them, all the extent of that which gives rise to this joy. Salvation, the deliverance of God, was come in Christ. It was for the revelation of the Gentiles, till then hidden in the darkness of ignorance without a revelation; and for the glory of Israel, the people of God. This indeed is the fruit of the government of God in Christ, that is to say, the millennium. But if the Spirit revealed to this pious and faithful servant of the God of Israel the future which depended on the presence of the Son of God, He revealed to him that he held the Saviour Himself in his arms; thus giving him present peace, and such a sense of the favor of God that death lost its terrors. It was not a knowledge of the work of Jesus acting on an enlightened and convicted conscience; but it was the fulfillment of the promises to Israel, the possession of the Saviour, and the proof of the favor of God, so that the peace which flowed from thence filled his soul. There were the three things: the prophecy that announced the coming of Christ, the possession of Christ, and the effect of His presence in the whole world. We are here in connection with the remnant of Israel, and consequently find nothing of the church and of purely heavenly things. The rejection comes afterwards. Here it is all that belongs to the remnant, in the way of blessing, through the presence of Jesus. His work is not the present subject.
Simeon’s testimony in Israel to the Messiah
What a beautiful picture, and what a testimony rendered to this child, by the manner in which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, He filled the heart of this holy man at the close of his earthly life! Observe also what communications are made to this feeble remnant, unknown amid the darkness that covered the people. But the testimony of this holy man of God (and how sweet it is to think how many of these souls, full of grace and of communion with the Lord, have flourished in the shade, unknown to men, but well-known to and beloved of God; souls who, when they appear, coming out of their retreat according to His will in testimony to Christ, bear so blessed a witness to a work of God which is carried on in spite of all that man is doing, and behind the painful and embittered scene that is unfolding on the earth!), Simeon’s testimony here, was more than the expression of the deeply interesting thoughts which had filled his heart in communion between himself and God. This knowledge of Christ and of the thoughts of God respecting Him, which is developed in secret between God and the soul, gives understanding of the effect produced by the manifestation to the world of Him who is its object. The Spirit speaks of it by the mouth of Simeon. In his previous words we received the declaration of the sure fulfillment of God’s counsels in the Messiah, the joy of his own heart. Now it is the effect of the presentation of Jesus, as the Messiah to Israel on the earth, which is described. Whatever may have been the power of God in Christ for blessing, He put the heart of man to the test. He should thus be, by revealing the thoughts of many hearts (for He was light), and so much the more that He was humbled in a world of pride, an occasion of falling to many, and the means of rising to many from their low and degraded condition. Mary herself, although the mother of the Messiah, should have her own soul pierced through by a sword; for her child should be rejected, the natural relationship of the Messiah to the people broken and disallowed. This contradiction of sinners against the Lord laid all hearts bare as to their desires, their hopes and their ambition, whatever forms of piety might be assumed.
Such was the testimony rendered in Israel to the Messiah, according to the action of the Spirit of God upon the remnant, amid the bondage and misery of that people: the full accomplishment of the counsels of God towards Israel, and towards the world through Israel, for joy of heart to the faithful who had trusted in these promises, but for a test at that moment to every heart by means of a Messiah who was a sign spoken against. The counsels of God and the heart of man were revealed in Him.
Malachi’s prophecy of God’s hidden people; Anna at the throne of God
Malachi had said that those who feared the Lord in the evil days, when the proud were called happy, should often speak together. This time had arrived in Israel. From Malachi to the birth of Jesus, there was but the passage of Israel from misery to pride-a pride, moreover, that was dawning even in the days of the prophet. That which he said of the remnant was also being accomplished; they “spake together.” We see that they knew each other, in this lovely picture of God’s hidden people: “She spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Israel.” Anna, a holy widow, who departed not from the temple and who deeply felt the misery of Israel, had besieged the throne of God with a widowed heart, for a people to whom God was no longer a husband, who were really widowed like herself; and she now makes known to all who pondered on these things together that the Lord had visited His temple. They had looked for redemption in Jerusalem; and now the Redeemer-unknown of men-was there. What a subject of joy to this poor remnant! What an answer to their faith!
The return to Nazareth; the Lord’s perfection of obedience as a child and as a man
But Jerusalem was not, after all, the place in which God visited the remnant of His people, but the seat of pride of those who said “the temple of the Lord.” And Joseph and Mary, having performed all that which the law required, return with the child Jesus to take their place together with Him in the despised spot which should give Him its name, and in those regions where the despised remnant, the poor of the flock, had more their place, and where the testimony of God had announced that the light should appear.
There His early days were spent in the physical and mental growth of the true humanity which He had assumed. Simple and precious testimony! But He was not less conscious, when the time was come for speaking to men, of His real relationship to His Father. The two things are united in that which is said at the end of the chapter. In the development of His humanity is manifested the Son of God on earth. Joseph and Mary, who (while marveling at all that happened to Him) did not thoroughly know by faith His glory, blame the child according to the position in which He formally stood towards them. But this gives occasion to the manifestation of another character of perfection in Jesus. If He was the Son of God and had the full consciousness of it, He was also the obedient man, essentially and ever perfect and sinless-an obedient child, whatever sense He also had of another relationship unconnected in itself with subjection to human parents. Consciousness of the one did not injure His perfection in the other. His being the Son of God secured His perfection as a man and a child on the earth.
The Lord’s relationship to His Father
But there is another important thing to remark here; it is that this position had nothing to do with His being anointed with the Holy Spirit. He fulfilled, no doubt, the public ministry which He afterwards entered on according to the power and the perfection of that anointing; but His relationship to His Father belonged to His Person itself. The bond existed between Him and His Father. He was fully conscious of it, whatever might be the means or the form of its public manifestation, and of the power of His ministry. He was all that a child ought to be; but it was the Son of God who was so. His relationship to His Father was as well-known to Him as His obedience to Joseph and to His mother was beautiful, becoming and perfect.
The unique and incomparable course of the divine Saviour, the Son of Man
Here we close this touching and divine history of the birth and early days of the divine Saviour, the Son of Man. It is impossible to have anything more profoundly interesting. Henceforward it is in His ministry, in His public life, that we shall find Him, rejected of men, but accomplishing the counsels and the work of God; separate from all, in order to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit, given to Him without measure, to fulfill that course with which nothing can be compared, with respect to which it would be lowering the truth to call it interesting. It is the center and the means, including His death, His offering Himself without spot to God-and the only possible means-of all relationship between our souls and God; the perfection of the manifestation of His grace, and the foundation of all relationship between any creature and Himself.