Now Christmas Day is over, what do we do now? I would like to make a pitch that we do not put all our joy and jingle bells away just yet. Well, maybe put the bells away. But not the general tenor of Christmas celebration. Namely, don’t let the end of Christmas be the end of your joy.
What are we celebrating over Christmas? The coming of Jesus into the world. And why is that good news? Because in him, there is no condemnation. He came to free us from the law of sin and death so that we can live to the glory of God and enjoy him forever. Which strikes me as not meaning that we enjoy him and his gifts once per year and no more.
I think it is problematic enough when Christians have more muted celebrations than the world around at Christmas. But it is just as problematic if we are calling people to the fullness of joy in Christ only to greet them with rules and misery 364 days of the year. We’ve had our fun at Christmas, now put the toys away, it’s duty time! This doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the gospel.
Just think of your own Christmas celebrations this year. Imagine you buy your kids a present. They love it and are bowled over. They can’t thank you enough. And you love that they love it. Then they take the gift, put it on a shelf and never use it. They say it’s too special to play with. They may play with it a bit on Christmas but then it must go away for the rest of the year. How would you feel?
Or imagine it’s your birthday. The kids have joined in with all the birthday celebrations and you have all enjoyed one another. You go to bed, wake up the next morning, and the kids are absolutely adamant there is nothing else to be enjoyed for the rest of the year. It’s 364 more days of drudgery until the next time they can enjoy a special day. How would you feel about that?
But that is what some of us seem to think God wants. Don’t enjoy stuff, don’t enjoy his gifts, don’t celebrate too hard or you might dishonour him, detract from his glory or just upset him. It’s probably alright on Christmas Day, but after that, no more fun! You’ve done enough enjoying; there’s work to be done!
But the Bible tells us we were created to glorify God and enjoy him forever! All of us are fine with the first bit. Seemingly quite a few of us struggle with the second. Whatever glorifying God and enjoying him looks like in practice, it can’t possibly mean not enjoying him and being miserable in case we detract from his glory. If this is what we are going to do forever, it seems unlikely we are expected to only limit ourselves to it one day per year.
1 Tim 6 says, God ‘richly provides us with everything to enjoy.’ Ecc 5 tell us, ‘This is what I have observed to be good… when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them… this is a gift of God’. We could look at loads of others but the point is clear enough. God is glorified when we enjoy him and his things. God has made an entire world for us to enjoy and he is glorified when we enjoy it.
So where does that leave us? First, when the world celebrates the birth of Jesus more fully than we do, when they enjoy themselves and God’s good gifts more than we do, is that a good reflection of our God? Are we really enjoying him and commending him to the world? Christians should be people who know how to have a good time. We should be people who know what it means to enjoy ourselves. We are freed from law-keeping, we are free from performance, to enjoy God and all his good gifts.
But second, though Christmas seems a good place to start, if we are to enjoy God forever, limiting our enjoyment of God to one day seems strange. If we’re freed from law-keeping to enjoy God fully, that should free us to have a truly enjoyable, wonderful Christmas. But it should also free us to fully enjoy God beyond Christmas. He has given us a whole world to enjoy to his glory and it speaks well of our glorious God when we enjoy, and are seen to enjoy, all he has made.
However you enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself fully and give thanks to God for freeing you to enjoy him in the Lord Jesus.
Thank you Stephen. A great challenge and aim for the next 364 days but how? If we want the world to see our enjoyment how does that manifest itself in practice? It is to some extent a caricature, but so many see enjoyment in wild living and all that goes with it and we need to be different. Some thoughts on that and how our enjoyment points to our Saviour would be helpful
That’s a great thought for a future post.
Whilst the caricature of wild living may be a danger, I genuinely believe our greater and more present danger is so seeking to avoid ‘wild living’ and ‘worldliness’ that we effectively become miserable legalists and judgmental killjoys.
We are also generally very bad with the concept of Christian freedom (I have written on this a number of times) and that tends in the same judgemental direction.
It’s not to say antinomianism isn’t a problem, I just don’t think in the reformed evangelical world that I inhabit, it is really our live and present one. We are generally not best known for our joy, which I think is a sad indictment of our view of Christ and his gospel.
Thank you.