The unique significance of the Nativity, the fact that distinguishes it from every other birth in all earth's history, is that the Babe, truly born of a human mother, was "The Word" who was "in the beginning with God, and was God"—Mary's Babe, but "Immanuel," begotten of the Holy Creator Spirit. In the providential ordering of human affairs, concerning whose ends the actors themselves frequently have no thought, all the world was taxed (or enrolled) that a Jewish maiden might be brought to Bethlehem in fulfillment of a prophecy uttered seven hundred years before.

Prophecy is always literally fulfilled. Isaiah had predicted that the Messiah should be born of a virgin, Micah that He should be born in a particular village, and Daniel that He should be born at a particular time. The slow centuries passed, but when the time came each prediction was fulfilled; not in some so-called "spiritual" sense, but with exact literalness.

The Lord of glory was cradled in a manger, the immediate reason being that the inn was overcrowded; the moral reason that the one universal Exemplar and Friend must begin His life under circumstances so lowly that no son of Adam could ever feel that Jesus was good because more fortunately circumstanced than he. He got underneath the most abject.

There was no room for Him in the inn. It was not hostility which excluded Him. The inn was preoccupied. It is so today with hearts, houses, time, business, pleasure—there is "no room;" every inch of space is filled. People do not hate Jesus—they have no room for Him.

The first to see and wonder were the shepherds, the simple ones; it required a star and a council of scribes to get the wise men to Jesus.

The wise men did very well so long as they followed the star, but when they came to Jerusalem they forsook the star to ask counsel of Herod and the Scribes. They found the Kind indeed, but at the cost of the slaughter of the innocents. And still many innocents are slaughtered by seeking the wisdom of God through mere knowledge.

He was born a Saviour. The epistles take up this saving work of Christ the Lord, and show that He is a Saviour in a three-fold sense—by His sacrificial death He saves His people from judgment because of the guilt of their sins. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

By His resurrection life imparted to His people through the new birth, by His intercession and shepherdly care and by the indwelling Spirit, He saves them from the power of sin, that is from the necessity of living in known sin. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

By his second coming, He will save His people from the presence of and conflict with sin. "For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

He took upon Himself the whole work of salvation and therefore salvation, from beginning to end, belongs to Christ and to Him alone. The sinner trusts, Christ saves; the saint yields, the Holy Spirit gives victory.

—C.I.S.