In 1719, Isaac Watts published "Joy to the World" as an interpretation of Psalm 98, with references to Psalm 96 and Genesis 3. Somehow, it became a song usually associated with Christmas. But it’s not a Christmas carol or hymn. It’s not about Advent.
By the way, "advent" simply means the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. So "Joy to the World" isn’t about the arrival of Christ in the manger. Instead, it’s about the second Advent. It’s about the Second Coming of Christ.
We cannot isolate the humiliated Christ from the exalted Christ.
The first and second Advents are very different. We sometimes refer to the first coming of Christ as his “humiliation” because he condescended to us. He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. He was born into a lowly condition — a poor family in a tiny village no one cared about.
As Galatians 4 explains, he was made under the law. He experienced all the miseries, pain, and difficulties of this life. He walked much more than a mile in our shoes. He endured the wrath of God and the curse of death on the cross. Then, he was buried and, for a time, continued under the power of death.
Our God did that. The eternal Lord, the maker of all things. It was humiliating — and it would be tragic if the gospel story ended there.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. ... But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.
Christ didn’t stay in the grave. He was resurrected. This marked the beginning of what we call the exaltation of Christ — his rising from the dead on the third day, his ascending into heaven, his sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and his coming to judge the world at the last day.
Christ is no longer a little baby or a poor peasant. He is the exalted king of the world.
It has been my observation — and the observation of others — that many Christians, especially those of a liberal bent, tend to emphasize the humiliation of Christ: his accessibility, his humanity, his humility, his willingness to wash feet and eat with sinners, his willingness to die and lay down his life.
All those things are good and true when kept in their proper place. But we cannot isolate the humiliated Christ from the exalted Christ.
Unfortunately, that does happen in some circles.
There was a movement called the emerging church (or emergent church) that began in the late 1990s and became largely irrelevant by the mid-2000s. My wife, Emily, and I were loosely involved for a year or two. It questioned the shape of American Christianity, raising some good points. Personally, I was drawn to its critique of churches that prioritized performance over community.
The enthroned king, the coming judge, the one who demands every knee to bow — is not so easily reshaped into a liberal fiction.
But over time, it became clear that the movement was little more than a Trojan horse for liberalism. I remember attending a meeting of local pastors in early 2005 at the now-defunct Cincinnati Bible College. The gathering included Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists, Methodists, Churches of Christ, and others. It was a sort of ecumenical group.
One pastor there — a proponent of the emerging church — was pushing us to work more closely with other religions. Thankfully, no one agreed. The group pushed back hard, affirming that Jesus is the only way to God the Father. It was a good moment.
At one point, this pastor said something like, “You guys only want to talk about the exaltation of Christ, not the incarnation of Christ.” I didn’t fully grasp the significance of that remark until later, when I discussed it with a pastor I respected.
He connected the dots for me. Christ in his humility is easier to treat like a mere man, like an equal. He can be twisted into a “nice guy” who says, “Come as you are,” accepts everyone just as they are, and serves merely as an example of servanthood. But the exalted Christ — the enthroned king, the coming judge, the one who demands every knee to bow — is not so easily reshaped into a liberal fiction.
This pastor wanted to downplay the exaltation of Christ to emphasize a distorted version of his humiliation. But the first and second Advents cannot be separated. They are intrinsic to God’s plan of salvation and essential to the gospel message.
Listen to how Hebrews 4 ties together Christ’s humiliation and exaltation:
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
It’s Christ’s humiliation that gives us confidence, he can sympathize with us. It’s Christ’s exaltation that assures us, he can deliver mercy and grace in our time of need.
These truths are inseparable and intertwined in the gospel message.
This connection helps us understand why "Joy to the World" became associated with Christmas. It’s a song celebrating the eventual victory of what began in Bethlehem.
Christmas finds its ultimate fulfillment in all creation singing the praise of the exalted and victorious savior-king.
Today is the beginning of Advent, the Christian season of preparation and anticipation leading up to Christmas.
For most Christians, Advent is a time to slow down, to spend time with God and community, to serve others, and to prepare oneself for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. This is good and right.
But focusing only on the birth of Christ robs us of Advent's full meaning.
The word "Advent" is derived from the Latin word adventus, which can be translated as "arrival" or "coming." The word adventus, moreover, is used to translate the Greek word parousia, the word used in the Greek New Testament to refer to the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Why is this important?
It means that Advent is not only a season of anticipating the arrival of Jesus — the long-awaited and hoped-for Messiah — but it's a season to anticipate and prepare for Christ's return.
Let us prepare our hearts not only for the Incarnation, but for the triumphal return of Christ and the consummation of all creation.
During Advent, we should reflect on how the two arrivals of Jesus are, according to Bible scholar Dr. Jonathan Gibson, "distinctly contrasted" but "inseparably connected."
"If he came the first time in quiet humility to the few, he will come the second time in rapturous glory to the many. If in the first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes and attended by animals, in the second he will be wrapped in blinding light and attended by angels. In his first coming, he was seen in a lowly manger by the magi; in his second coming, he will be seen on an exalted throne by the multitudes," Gibson observes.
Why is this important? Because, as Gibson explains, the first and second coming of Christ "bookend" His redemptive work.
"In his first coming Christ came to inaugurate his kingdom (Mark 1:15) and secure redemption for his people (John 6:39). But the kingdom was only provisionally realized; the redemption only partially applied in that first coming. The consummation of the kingdom will only be fully realized (2 Timothy 4:1) and the completion of redemption only be fully applied (Philippians 1:6) in Christ’s second coming," Gibson explains. "What Christ began to do in his first coming, he will return to complete in his second coming."
The season of Advent, then, is full of temporal tension.
As we remember Christ's first coming and prepare for His second, we get to embrace living in the "already but not yet." That means letting the hope of Christ's return and His impending triumph over all creation shape how we live today.
At the same time, Advent is a time to cultivate joyful expectation. God is faithful, and Christ will return to make all things right. Though we have long awaited His return, the faithfulness of God gives us hope and strength to persevere as we continue to wait for that glorious day.
So as we light Advent candles, open Advent calendars, and sing Advent hymns, let us remember the full meaning of the Advent season. Let us prepare our hearts not only for the Incarnation, but for the triumphal return of Christ and the consummation of all creation.
From the Book of Common Prayer.
Almighty God,
Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
Old Testament readers will notice that the significance of a character can commonly be found even in that character’s name. The names Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, and many others carry with them some kind of verb or noun that connects to their origin, demeanor, or purpose.
And every once in a while, the name of a character is announced before the birth. When that happens, the reader can be especially intrigued because announcing a person’s name ahead of time raises our expectations for what that character will be and do.
Mary and Joseph were to name the child Joshua because, through the birth of this child, salvation had come.
When the virgin Mary was in Nazareth, the angel Gabriel revealed to her that she would have a son and that her son would be the promised king who would rule on David’s throne (Luke 1:30–33). She would give birth to the Messiah.
Gabriel told her, “You shall call his name Jesus” (Luke 1:31). He told Joseph the same thing: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). What’s interesting in Joseph’s case is that Gabriel explained the name: “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21).
The angel not only made an announcement, he also gave an instruction.
Joseph and Mary could not name the child whatever they liked. The son would have a name that connected to his mission. Naming the child Jesus would be an act of obedience on their part.
The name “Jesus” in Greek is the equivalent of the name “Joshua” in Hebrew. And the name Joshua was a familiar one to readers of the Old Testament. The book called Joshua is named after the ancient successor to Moses. That Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the promised land for the conquest. Through Joshua’s leadership and faithfulness, the Lord gave the Israelites victory and their inheritance.
Jesus — or Joshua — means “Yahweh is salvation.”
In the Old Testament, deliverance or salvation took different forms. An individual, like the psalmist, could celebrate God’s salvation from a threatening illness. A nation could receive deliverance from an external enemy — like the Philistines or the Amalekites. A penitent sinner could be delivered from divine discipline for transgressions.
Why is Jesus named “Yahweh is salvation”? Because he would accomplish the greatest and most far-reaching deliverance possible. He “would save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
Jesus is a true and greater Joshua because he brought a greater salvation. Mary and Joseph were to name the child Joshua because, through the birth of this child, salvation had come. Salvation had a name.
Hear the angel say, “You shall call his name Joshua,” for that name will most easily connect us to the Old Testament background. Jesus didn’t come merely to promise deliverance or to sustain the hope for deliverance or to point us to some other source for deliverance. He came to be our deliverance. His name means “Yahweh is salvation,” and he is the deliverance we need.
We need to be saved from our sins, so we need the one whom the angel called “Jesus” — the new Joshua to lead the people of God into a land of everlasting life.
This essay was originally published at Dr. Mitchell Chase's Substack, Biblical Theology.
As we enter the season of Advent, let us reflect on Jesus’ work, through his incarnation, of restoring God’s image within his followers.
Psalm 115:2 asks: Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?” The reply? “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (v. 3).
Indeed, Yahweh is “Maker of heaven and earth” (v. 15). By contrast, the gods of the pagan nations are lifeless:
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but they cannot hear; they have noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but they cannot feel; they have feet, but they cannot walk; they cannot make a sound with their throat (vv. 4-7).
Then we come to the arresting line: “Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them” (v. 8).
New Testament scholar G.K. Beale notes in his book "We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry" that as we compare such a text with Genesis 1, we find ourselves encountering a key theme in biblical theology: God created humans as “imaging beings who reflect his glory.”
Christ, who is the very image of the invisible God, came to restore that image that had been tarnished and obscured by sin.
As we see in Psalm 115, humans’ failure to commit themselves to God will result in their reflecting not him but something else in creation. We’ll either reflect the Creator or the creature. Idolaters resemble what they worship: “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.”
In Martin Luther’s Large Catechism, he writes:
A god is that to which we look for all good and where we resort for help in every time of need; to have a god is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart. As I have often said, the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and confidence are right, then likewise your God is the true God. On the other hand, if your confidence is false, if it is wrong, then you have not the true God. For the two, faith and God, have inevitable connection. Now, I say, whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god.
Where we find our ultimate security and whatever claims our deepest loyalty, that is our god.
According to Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright in his book "The Mission of God," gods and idols may be gateways to the demonic world, but primarily the Scriptures view them as “the work of human hands, constructs of our own fallen and rebellious imagination.”
Wright adds: “The primal problem with idolatry is that it blurs the distinction between the Creator God and the creation. This both damages creation (including ourselves) and diminishes the glory of the Creator.”
Concerning Exodus 20:3-6, Beale asks: Do we have two commands or just one?
After all, having “no other gods” before the Lord meant not making “an idol, or any likeness” of anything in the world in order to be worshipped “since it was believed that the divine presence was to be contained in that image.” And even an image that represented the Lord — like the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-9) — was an assault on the Creator-creature distinction; such images were prohibited in order to “maintain a continuing consciousness among God’s people that there is a distinction between the Creator and the finite creation.”
To represent God in creaturely form was to idolatrously misinterpret him. God’s presence couldn’t be localized in an object; any attempt to do so diminished his incomparable glory (Isaiah 42:8).
This brings us to the point of the Incarnation and the mission of God.
In Wright’s words:
Since God’s mission is to restore creation to its full original purpose of bringing all glory to God himself and thereby to enable all creation to enjoy the fullness of blessings that he desires for it, God battles against all forms of idolatry and calls us to join him in that conflict.
Thus, we “need to understand the whole breadth of the Bible’s exposure of the deleterious effects of idolatry in order to appreciate its seriousness and the reason for the Bible’s passionate rhetoric about it.”
The church father Irenaeus wrote: “He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man … might become the son of God.” That is, Christ, who is the very image of the invisible God (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15), came to restore that image that had been tarnished and obscured by sin. He is the most true human, the very archetype of humanity — the second Adam who came to undo the damage of the first Adam.
His incarnation, death, and (especially) resurrection have ushered in a new creation. As a result, we who have put on the new self are “being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of [Christ]” (Colossians 3:10).
As Advent is upon us, we are reminded of these themes. Charles Wesley’s hymn “Since the Son Hath Made Me Free” puts it this way:
Heavenly Adam, life divine,
Change my nature into thine;
Move and spread throughout my soul,
Actuate and fill the whole;
Be it I no longer now
Living in the flesh, but thou.
And in his “Let Heaven and Earth Combine,” he writes:
He deigns in flesh to appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.
And again in “All-wise, All-good, Almighty Lord”:
Didst thou not in thy person join
The natures human and divine,
That God and man might be
Henceforth inseparably one?
Haste then, and make thy nature known
Incarnated in me.
This article is adapted from a post that originally appeared on the Worldview Bulletin Substack.
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