by Keith Bassham
Lowest? Are you sure? Doesn’t it go more like “Glory to God in the highest?” Yes, that is what the heavenly host said when they appeared to the shepherds the first Christmas, but one essential part of the Christmas story is how God turns things upside down, and in effect shows His glory to the lowest.
Plymouth Brethren teacher and author William MacDonald describes the Christmas upside down effect:
“It is wonderful to think that the Great God, who fills heaven and earth, should compress Himself into a human body. As men looked at Him, they could say accurately, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily.” From the palace of heaven to a cattle shed, a stable, a manger! The omnipotent one became a helpless baby. It is no exaggeration to say that He whom Mary held in her arms held Mary, for He is the sustainer as well as the Maker. The omniscient one is the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge, and yet we read of Him that as a child, He increased in wisdom and knowledge.
These are all truths of the incarnation. It’s perhaps the greatest paradox of our faith, but it’s proclaimed as absolutely true in the Word of God. Fully God and fully man. The Master came into the world as servant. The Lord of glory veiled that glory in a body of flesh. The Lord of life came into the world for the express purpose of dying. The Holy One, who cannot look upon sin, came into this jungle of sin called earth. The object of the Father’s delight, and of angelic worship, hungered, thirsted, sweated, hurt, was weary, slept, He wandered as a “homeless stranger in the world His hands had made.”
Gilbert K. Chesterton (see the note about Mr. Chesterton at the end of this article) wrote something similar in his essay, “The God in the Cave.” He, just as Mr. MacDonald, calls it a paradox “that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle” and he says that the story of Christmas is “something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true.”
Mr. Chesterton would know. An acknowledged master of the art of literary paradox, he called it “truth standing on her head to get attention.” And if anything is happening at Christmas, things are surely being turned on their head and upside down. See how the idea is reflected in the Bible narrative as here in Mary’s song to Elizabeth in Luke 2:46-55:
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
No wonder God came into the world the way He did. It was, among other things, a way for Him to show what he thinks of the world’s system of power and authority, palaces and seats of government, wealth and greed as He sidestepped all these conventional forms to present the world with a different kind of King and a salvation that would extend to the lowest among us.
Mary had been told that her son would receive “the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). The shepherds were told that the child they would visit was “Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11; the word Christ and the Hebrew equivalent Messiah both have aspects of kingship attached). Magi from the East, convinced that “the King of the Jews” was making his appearance, made a long journey to do him honor (Matthew 2:1-12). It had all the makings of a thunderous and glorious presentation. However, though the heavens do open for a spectacular light show appropriate for a royal announcement about salvation breaking into the world through the nativity, it is performed in a field outside of town where sheep outnumber people by hundreds to one, while the King himself is actually being birthed in a stable or cave, witnessed only by a few, or perhaps only two, Mary and Joseph. So while the heavenly host says, “Glory to God in the highest,” Chesterton points out in a poem what was happening was …
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The truth contained in the picture of the ruler of the universe coming into the world on the floor of a stable could hardly be more upside down, and thus, a paradox, and one that would extend beyond the Christmas narrative as we hear in the subsequent teaching of Jesus.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
(The Sermon on the Mount)
That is paradox. In another place Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12:24-25).
That is another paradox, as is “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26), and in Luke 18:14, Jesus ends a parable with these words: “… for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted,” and that parable itself shows the upside down-ness of the gospel. In it, Jesus describes two men at prayer. One is a man who is busy thanking God, something people should do, but look at his thanksgiving list: “I don’t extort, I’m not unjust, I don’t commit adultery, I fast, I tithe,” and everything he says is true. However, the other man just cries out to God, “Be merciful to me, a sinner,” without even so much as lifting his eyes. The latter man, the one who would not exalt himself, Jesus says, went home justified, in a right relationship with God, rather than the one who had so much going for him (at least in his own mind). That is a paradox.
The paradoxes continue throughout the New Testament.
In his version of the Christmas narrative, Paul calls attention to the upside down journey the Lord made when he writes that Jesus “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). Taking his cue then from what he knows about the coming of Jesus, he seeks to imitate the Lord’s descent; for Paul, “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21), and he refers to himself at one point as “having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 6:10), and speaking of his past life, “what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Philippians 3:7). As his ministry expands, Paul exults in the very thing that binds and tortures him, telling us that God chose to leave the “thorn” in Paul, and he testifies that God “said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 2:9-10).
These all constitute a paradox. And you find paradoxical teaching throughout Scripture: he came unto his own and his own received him not, love your enemies, the first shall be last, man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart, small seeds become large trees, the kingdom is already here but not yet, my burden is light, abundant grace is shown to terrible sinners, God in three persons, foolish wisdom, beauty still present in a sin-marred world, ruined creation groans for redemption, sin is atoned for but not yet eradicated, we are saved but we still struggle with our natural inclinations — all these are paradoxes, and yet they reflect the reality of God.
Christmas, with the love of God shown in his paradoxical approach, reflects a reality that Max Lucado says, “is inexplicable. It doesn’t have a drop of logic nor a thread of rationality. And yet, it is that very irrationality that gives the gospel its greatest defense. For only God could love like that.”
It is difficult for a rational and normal mind to take it all in. But just as God has taken the form of humanity, we who are the redeemed of God will someday be fully transformed into His image, and we will live and see reality as completely and fully as He does. Until then, we have the picture of the babe in the manger to help us grasp the truth of Christmas, Glory to God in the Lowest.
Note: Readers not familiar with Mr. Chesterton should know that he was a Catholic believer. However, evangelicals have found his works useful for apologetics, and I have personally enjoyed both his fiction and essays. Certainly, I differ with him theologically, but truth is truth no matter its source, and you may find these Chesterton quotes interesting and entertaining:
“Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.”
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”
“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”