The Rich Theology of Christmas Hymns and Carols

One of my favorite things about this time of the year is the rich theology that you often get in hymns and carols that extol the wonder of the Incarnation, the Son of God's assumption of humanity. The Incarnation was one of the key events in humanity's redemption because when God united humanity to Himself, He was opening the door for our glorification. Many of the Church Fathers expressed this in the dictum: “God became man, so that man might become God.” That statement was never meant to suggest that we somehow break the barrier between the Creator and the creature, but in the words of St. Peter, in 2 Peter 1:4, “God has granted to us His precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.”

When the Word united our human nature to Himself, He was enabling us to become partakers of His divine nature. These are really some of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith, and often it's better for us to adore the mysteries God has revealed to us in His Word through songs and hymns than it is for us to try to speculate about them.

In this video, I want to highlight some of my favorite lines from popular Christmas hymns and carols, and unpack the rich theology that they communicate to us.

Number one on my list, a personal favorite: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." This is a Latin hymn dating back to the ninth century, and if you're like me and you like those sorts of haunting tunes, you'll love this one. It's really a hymn of invocation, calling on Emmanuel to come and redeem His people. It has these themes of expectation and hope.

Now, by the way, the name Emmanuel comes from the prophecy found in Isaiah 7:14. When Jesus was to be born, an angel appeared to Joseph and told him that the child conceived in Mary would be named Jesus, and that He would save His people from their sins. Then the angel quoted from that text in Isaiah, saying, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel."

Now I want to focus on the second verse of this hymn and what it tells us about the preexistence of the Messiah: "O come, o come, Thou Lord of might, who to Thy tribes on Sinai's height in ancient times didst give the law in cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel." One of the things I love about this line is that it highlights the fact that the ministry of the Word did not begin at His Incarnation.

Jesus was there at the very beginning of creation—John 1:1—and He was the one who sustained Israel throughout the Old Testament. In ancient times, He was the heavenly lawgiver on Sinai. One verse that I've always loved in the New Testament that makes this point is Jude 5. Listen to this: "Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe." This highlights again for us one of the wonders of the Incarnation: the preexistent Son of God who gave the law on Sinai was Himself, in the fullness of time, born of a woman, born under the law. The same law that He gave, He's now born under it, as Galatians 4:4 says.

Number two: "O Come, All Ye Faithful." This hymn was written by a man named John Francis Wade in the 1700s. Wade was a layman in his early thirties when he wrote the hymn, which is pretty amazing, and it's probably one of the most well-known Christmas hymns today.

I want to draw your attention to the second stanza, which draws heavily from the words of the ancient Nicene Creed: "God of God, Light of Light, lo, He abhors not the Virgin's womb; very God, begotten, not created. O come, let us adore Him."

The Nicene Creed as it's confessed today is actually the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 AD. The original council came together in 325 AD to address the Arian heresy. The Arians, if you're wondering who they were, rejected the eternality of the Son, Jesus, and argued and said that Jesus was divine, sure, but that He was still the first created being of the Father. In other words—and here's a big theological word for you—Jesus and the Father were not consubstantial. According to the Arians, for example, they were not of the same substance. This is where the Orthodox Christians pushed back heavily on the basis of the teaching of the Bible.

The Nicene Creed essentially helped to summarize the Orthodox and biblical view. The second part of the Creed reads: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man." So beautiful, you almost want to turn it into a song. And that's precisely what they did with "O Come, All Ye Faithful."

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is identified as the light that shines in the darkness. Hebrews 1:3 says, "He is the radiance of the glory of God," which is precisely what is meant by the phrase "Light from Light." Jesus is the eternal light of God the Father, and in the same way that you cannot separate the sun from its rays, you cannot have a Father without the brilliance of His eternal Son.

Number three: "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." You know, there's that great scene at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life" where all of George Bailey's friends come in clutch and help him out, and then they all start singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." It gets me every single time. The hymn was written by Charles Wesley, who wrote a ton of wonderful hymns.

Honestly, it's hard not to want to comment on all three verses of this great hymn because it's so rich, with lines like "God and sinners reconciled" and "Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity." It really doesn't get better than this, but let's focus on the third verse: "Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth."

Okay, here's a quick quiz: What did the Son of God lose in the Incarnation? It's really a trick question, because in the Incarnation, the eternal Son of God became what He was not without ever ceasing to be what He always was—namely, the eternal Word and God. In Philippians, Paul describes how Jesus emptied Himself in the Incarnation, and the way He did this was by assuming our humanity. So it was actually more of an addition than a subtraction. And in this addition, He veiled His glory, as it were. This is why Jesus can say in His high priestly prayer, John 17: "And now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed." That's John 17:5. It's this glory that Peter, James, and John got a full taste of on the Mount of Transfiguration.

And so what I love about this hymn is the recognition of the fact that the incarnate Deity, who is the Lord of all creation, emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant so that through His birth He might open the door for us to be born again.

Number four: "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence." Oh, two things: we sing this hymn throughout the year at our church because it's just so good, and originally it comes from the fifth-century liturgy of St. James. Lots of churches will sing this hymn around Christmas time because of the language of Christ's descent from heaven to earth. But it's really a Eucharistic hymn as well, emphasizing that Jesus gives us His very body and blood in the Lord's Supper. We receive it by faith.

If you've never heard this hymn, Fernando Ortega has a great version of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" on his "Storm" album that I can't recommend highly enough. Here's the second stanza: "King of Kings, yet born of Mary, as of old on earth He stood, Lord of lords in human nature, in the body and the blood, He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food." I love the emphasis here on the earthiness of the Incarnation. He came in the body and the blood.

You know, there was an ancient heresy known as Docetism. It gets its name from the Greek word "dokein," which means "to seem," because these heretics taught that Jesus only seemed to be human. Many ancient heretical groups like the Docetists and the Gnostics found it very hard to believe that God could become a man because they had a very negative view of matter. Spirit is good, body is bad—at least that's how they thought. So it was inconceivable that the Son of God would actually come in the body and the blood, that He would take to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul.

And this was no minor error, because the Orthodox Church always taught that whatever was not assumed in the Incarnation could not be healed. In other words, if Jesus didn't come in the body and the blood, then there's no hope for our bodies. If He didn't assume a reasonable soul, then our souls are damned. "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is a dagger in the heart of the heresies of Docetism and Gnosticism, and I can't get enough of it.

Okay, one more hymn. Number five: "Joy to the World." Now, my kids love this hymn, especially my 9-year-old Aurelius. Sometimes we'll just sing it at home, and I think it really captures the joy that is meant to attend the message of Christmas. It was written by Isaac Watts in the 1700s. This is another one of those hymns that is just full of great lines, stressing the universal reign of Christ and the reversal of Adam's curse. But I want to draw your attention to the first verse: "Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing."

You know, Advent comes from the Latin word "adventus," which means "coming." It's a time where many churches and Christian traditions prepare for Christmas by focusing on Christ's coming to earth—and not just His first coming, either. Typically, there are three comings that are focused on in the Advent season. Number one is the Second Coming—in other words, the eschatological hope: Jesus is going to come back again a second time to judge the living and the dead.Then there's the focus on His birth, which is typically what we think about around Christmas time, right? The Incarnation, His first Advent, whereby He came to redeem us. But also—and this is the third one—His coming now by the power of the Holy Spirit. How does Jesus come to us today? Well, for sure, we can't confuse this with His coming on the last day, His Second Coming, but Jesus does meet with us through the preaching of the Word and the ordinances of grace that He left for the Church to observe: baptism and the Lord's Supper.

And so we humble ourselves to receive Christ, the Incarnate Word, through the preaching of the Holy Gospel. Let every heart prepare Him room, and this Christmas season, I hope that your heart remains open to the One who came to lift us up from earth to heaven.

What are some of your favorite Christmas hymns and carols? I'd love to hear them in the comments.