WHEN LAW BECOMES LOUDER THAN INCARNATION
There are those who look upon Christmas with suspicion—not because they doubt Christ, but because they trust rules more than mystery. Their faith is carefully fenced; their theology measured with a ruler.
Salvation, to them, is clean, transactional, and efficiently explained. God saves by decree; man responds by compliance. Anything not explicitly commanded feels dangerous. Celebration itself becomes suspect.
And so Christmas, with its candles and carols, its joy and holy excess, is quietly escorted out of the sanctuary as though it were an undisciplined child.
They mean well. Legalism nearly always does. It wants to protect God from being mishandled and doctrine from being diluted. But in guarding the edges, it often loses the center.
Such aouls fear emotion as though joy were a heresy, forgetting that truth does not become false when it makes the heart burn. A faith which cannot tolerate wonder has mistaken precision for completeness. For when God entered time, He did not issue a regulation; He arrived as a baby.
The legalistic mind asks, Where is the command? Scripture answers with an event. “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people’” (Luke 2:10). Joy is announced, not regulated. Celebration erupts before any theology is fully formed. Shepherds do not consult a creed; they run. Wise men do not parse a calendar; they travel. Mary does not outline a doctrine of the Incarnation; she treasures and ponders (Luke 2:19). Heaven itself seems unconcerned with whether this moment fits neatly into a rulebook.
Legalism insists that anything not commanded must be forbidden. The Gospel replies that grace always outruns our categories. “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4). Not when humanity had perfected its obedience—but when it had exhausted itself trying.
Christmas declares that salvation is not God waiting for us to get it right, but God coming because we never could. To refuse celebration on the grounds of purity is to misunderstand holiness itself. Holiness, in Christ, moves toward sinners; it does not recoil from joy.
The same spirit which rejects Christmas will eventually struggle with grace. For if God may not be celebrated unless He is commanded, then love itself becomes suspect. And we should note the tragic irony: a system so focused on avoiding error that it misses the miracle standing in front of it. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God did not merely authorize salvation; He embodied it. The Incarnation is not an optional embellishment—it is the method.
So what is wrong with celebrating Christmas? Nothing—unless law has replaced love, unless fear has crowded out awe, unless salvation has been reduced to a checklist rather than a Child laid in a manger.
Christmas offends legalism because it insists that God saves not by tightening the rules, but by breaking into the world Himself—unexpected, unearned, and unimaginably near. “For by grace you have been saved through faith…it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
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Lord Jesus, free us from cold obedience that forgets to adore. Rescue us from a faith that fears joy more than sin. Teach us to rejoice in Your coming—not as a rule to follow, but as a grace to receive. Amen.
BDD
