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Alright… Let’s Start Walking Towards Bethlehem
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Following the Light Toward The Firstborn
Each year, as we approach December, it feels like the world wakes up and starts walking… almost instinctively… toward Bethlehem again. Even if our feet never touch the soil there, our hearts remember that ancient story when shepherds pushed through frosty starlight to see the miracle with their own eyes.
They’d heard heaven itself proclaim, “For unto us a child is born.” And it’s that single sentence which has been echoing across centuries ever since. As carols drift through the air, we still join their chorus: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
But even today, if you lean in a little, you’ll notice something deeper stirring beneath the manger straw. Christmas isn’t just warm and tender nostalgia. It’s a heaven-splitting, trumpet blast of prophecy fulfilled, a world changed forever by the arrival of God’s Firstborn.
The Firstborn: A Divine Key to Christmas
St. Ephraim said, “Blessed be the Babe who made mankind young again.” Christmas still does that—renewing hearts, hope, and humanity.
And so, let’s pause here… because tucked right into Christmas is a truth the church today almost always forgets to unwrap. The doctrine of the Firstborn, which reveals Christ’s unique authority and inheritance. Paul breaks it wide open in his letter to the Colossians.
Right in the middle of hymns, angels, shepherds, and stables, he declares that the Father “delivered us from darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.” This highlights that Christmas is not just a celebration but a kingdom transfer, emphasizing Christ’s supreme role and our new identity in Him. (For gardeners, the word translated has the connotation of transplant… remove, and place or plant somewhere else. Interesting.
Through Christ, Paul says, we don’t just get forgiven. (That’s just the beginning.) We inherit something eternal, radiant, and indestructible. So then Christmas doesn’t just hand us stuff… it adopts us into an everlasting family. And when Paul calls Jesus “the firstborn of all creation,” he isn’t talking about a birth order book. He’s talking about rule, inheritance, supremacy, and a new humanity rooted in that Bethlehem night.
Before long, you start to see it: Christmas is the story of the Firstborn stepping into the world to make all things new.
When Traditions Drift—and Light Breaks Through
But here’s the problem. The church hasn’t always held this truth very close. Over time, some traditions softened their backbones, cutting away doctrines for the sake of blending in, looking relevant, or avoiding conflict. By the way, deplatforming is not new. It’s been going on for centuries. A friend told me one time that his own church denomination kept lowering its standards… drawing a line, then erasing it, then drawing it again a few feet back. Even the bold insistence on being born again… the very heart of new creation… slowly faded. Sounds like Hegel snuck his way in, right? Thesis-Antithesis = Synthesis.
Christmas, too, ends up feeling hollow if it’s boiled down to sentimentality, special offers, and snowflakes. This season matters precisely because it lifts us above the world’s drift and calls us back to the blazing center: the Firstborn who rescues us when the entire world around us has turned into a kind of Black Friday darkness.
The New Creation in a Bethlehem Cradle
Even a quick glance at Scripture reveals that the first Christmas was less about feelings and far more about an objective new creation. Under a sky bursting with angels, a new humanity arrived… Christ, the last Adam. The old order, weighed down by Adam’s curse and destined for exile and death, finally met its match. In Jesus, the Firstborn, we receive righteousness, eternal life, and a future that no darkness can touch.
Paul, too, refuses to let us miss the epic scale of this moment. “By Him were all things created,” he writes… everything from the swirl of galaxies to the quiet breath of a sleeping infant. Suddenly, the whole world becomes a Bethlehem manger, held together by Christ’s sustaining word. That makes Him more than just the head of the church. It makes Him the center of everything that exists.
Christmas, then, is the dawn of the new creation.
The Christmas Tree: A Living Picture of the Firstborn
Now here’s a surprising twist. The Christmas tree, many assume, has pagan roots, but actually symbolizes Christ the Firstborn, the true tree of life, eternally living and forever bearing fruit, and so, fits nicely into this story. Long before it became a cultural ornament, the evergreen was a vivid picture of Jesus, who is forever green and unchanging. Medieval Christians hung fruit on their trees as a proclamation:
Christ’s life is everlasting and never withers, echoing the promise of eternal life.
Revelation even speaks of the tree of life bearing fruit in every season. So when ornaments glitter in the lamplight, imagine each one as a small herald of grace… a tiny sermon hanging on branches that point us back to the One who is forever faithful.
Gifts of Grace: The Early Church’s Echo of Bethlehem
Tracing things back a bit further, early church fathers like St. Ephraim of Syria wrote about Christmas as a day of gifts… not because anyone earned anything, but because God delighted in giving everything. “Although we asked it not… a gate on high opened for us,” he said. Heaven flung its doors wide, and the church responded by giving to the poor, then to children, in joyful imitation of God’s extravagant generosity.
Ephraim also wrote, “Blessed be the Babe who made mankind young again today.” That line still hums with truth. Christmas is God’s invitation to start fresh… new hearts, new hope, new humanity.
The Firstborn Feast: A Celebration of New Beginnings
It’s true, early Christians called Christmas “the feast of the Firstborn,” a celebration that gathered up prophecy, promise, and redemption into one blazing moment. Even the earliest traditions of gift-giving and hanging fruit on trees grew from this feast’s rich theology. Everything pointed to Christ’s supremacy and priority… His right as the Firstborn over all creation.
And the word “firstborn” naturally connects with another biblical idea: “first fruits.” In worship, believers offered the first fruits of their harvest… grain and grapes… as a sign of giving Christ our first and best. Tying fruit on a Christmas tree wasn’t just festive; it was a theological reminder that our gifts and lives should honor Christ’s supremacy and priority over all creation.
Christ Supreme: Holding All Things Together
Paul doesn’t shy away from bold language. In Colossians, he says plainly: Christ is preeminent. Not first in sequence, but first in rank, authority, and glory. Scholar F.F. Bruce captured it beautifully: “Christ is the sphere within which all creation takes place.” That means every aspect of life… home, work, families, nations, and communities… finds meaning only through Him.
And when Scripture calls the church the “ecclesia,” it isn’t talking about a choir or a building. It means “assembly,” a gathered people under the reign of the Firstborn. This makes Christmas less about escaping the world and more about bringing all spheres of life under Christ’s joyful lordship.
Depending Fully on Christ: Source of Life and Light
Ultimately, Christmas makes one truth impossible to ignore: everything depends on Christ. A nation can lose its head or a church can lose its pastor and still stand, but creation itself collapses without the One who spoke it into existence. Our breath, our hope, our joy, our redemption… they’re all rooted in the Firstborn who lay in that manger.
Seems like we don’t even know how to talk about this anymore. Seems like everything discussed today is rooted in politics and power. It makes Christ peripheral and proximate. Now, the Pilgrims understood this well. (Nothing quite like having your ears cut off or your nose split because you didn’t buy the government narrative.) They left England as preeminence moved from Christ to the state. So they came here, the Firstborn as their Captain… with the desire to build a new city… one built on a different hill.
Alright, Christmas is still a ways off, but as it approaches, let’s resist dividing life into “spiritual” and “ordinary.” All of it belongs to Christ. Christ sustains all of it. The right of the Firstborn is a call to place Him first in every thought, task, hope, and heartbeat.
The Unending Gift of the Firstborn
As the season’s glow begins to warm the edges of our days, remember that your life… down to the smallest detail… is wrapped up in Christ’s eternal purpose. Christmas invites us into joy, faithfulness, and victory, all anchored in the Child who came to make all things new.
So let’s get our motors running and start walking toward Bethlehem with steady hearts, embracing the Firstborn who brings light, life, and redemption. And this year, let’s not simply revisit the story… but step right into the heart of it, rejoicing in the eternal hope wrapped in swaddling clothes.
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