Christmas is right around the corner, and while it’s widely celebrated, at the center of it all is the birth of Jesus Christ.
We are all familiar with the traditional Christmas narrative – the bright star shining over Bethlehem, the humble manger, and the miraculous birth of a child to a virgin mother, destined to become the redeemer and savior of mankind.
Yet, often overlooked is the grand cosmic backstory leading up to the birth of Christ. While we understand that His purpose was to offer salvation by sacrificing Himself for our sins, the question arises: why was this elaborate plan necessary?
It started with an argument.
It is common knowledge that God created the universe, the Earth, and all living creatures, a creation that left the angels in awe. Among these heavenly beings was Lucifer, the most esteemed of them all. Adorned with wisdom and beauty, he was considered the epitome of perfection, entrusted with the guardianship of Eden and all its inhabitants.
But then God did something that gave Lucifer pause. God created one more thing, a lowly creature, out of mere dust, and called it “man.” Then, stunning Lucifer, God said of these lowborn creatures, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Then, God proceeded to give these little, finite bits of humanoid dust dominion over all creation.
And then God said something that shocked Lucifer to his core. These feeble little creatures would become heirs to God’s kingdom, and one day, they would even rule over the angels themselves and be like the most High. They were imago Dei, the image of God.
Lucifer was struck by this, and at that moment, his pride began to take him. If Lucifer was the image of perfection, then how could these little creatures rule over him? It wasn’t right, and in order to secure his place at the top, Lucifer would take on an impossible task… he would prove God was mistaken.
Now, it has to be understood that Lucifer is not an idiot despite this being a very idiotic thing to think one can do. He was “full of wisdom,” and as you can see in the Bible, a very intelligent creature with perfect knowledge of scripture and cosmic law. The thing is, even the most wise are capable of committing acts that result in self-destruction. King Solomon, the wisest of all kings, is proof of that, but that’s another piece.
Lucifer knew that God’s justice was perfect, and all he needed to do in order to have humanity erased from its pedestal was to prove them imperfect by breaking God’s established rules. If he could do that, then God would be forced to destroy humanity, and the experiment would be done.
But more importantly, if he could prove God wrong, then that would mean Lucifer was wiser than God, and if he’s better than God… why shouldn’t he sit on the throne?
Lucifer’s opening move was to use God’s creation against him. In Eden, at the center of it, was a tree known as the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” God had expressly ordered his lowly little creatures, Adam and Eve, not to eat from that tree. As I discussed in a previous article, my theory is that we were eventually supposed to eat from that tree, but we were not yet mature enough as a species. If you’d like to read that, you can click on the link below.
All Lucifer had to do was to get one of them to eat from it, and he’d have won. God would destroy mankind in his justice, and that would be that. Sure enough, Lucifer, the would-be guardian, led them astray, and they ate. He had done it. One little bite had given Lucifer a victory that would reshape the universe, and it was one that was witnessed by the rest of the heavenly host. Now, God would be forced to act, and angels, with Lucifer at the top, would rule. It was only a matter of sitting back and letting events unfold.
When God eventually confronted Adam, you could imagine Lucifer’s shock when God created something else that had never been seen before.
Mercy. An innovation that would change everything.
Instead of destroying his beloved creation, God clothed them and sent them into the wilderness with punishments to contend with the Earth instead of living in harmony with it. God would also institute the practice of sacrificing animals as a way to pass the sin off the person, a practice that would come back into play later. This should have been Lucifer’s cue to stop there. The invention of mercy was proof that God wasn’t going to let us go and that He truly loved us, but pride drove Lucifer.
God rounded on him and punished him dearly for daring to place himself between us and God and harming God’s beloved creation. He was stripped of his title, his glory, and his favor. However, these events would cause other angels to see humanity as Lucifer did. A third of them joined Lucifer in his rebellion, angered that these creatures who are so easily led astray and prone to imperfection could one day rule it all.
They joined Lucifer (now going by Satan, the accuser) in his quest to prove God wrong, and together, they devised a plan to ruin humanity to the point where God would have no choice but to destroy them. These fallen angels were very good at their job, and they did what was necessary to make sure that humanity brought out the worst in itself over the following generations, including mating with human women to bring about angel/human hybrids known as “Nephilim,” who spread evil. Eventually, humanity became so repugnant and corrupted that God was forced to act, and he flooded the world, killing everyone.
But not everyone. God didn’t destroy humanity as Satan wanted, as this was more of a reset. He allowed the family of Noah to survive on an ark with what animals they were ordered to bring, and it was that family that would go on to repopulate the Earth.
Not that this deterred Satan. After generations passed and mankind continued to fail to live up to God’s image, Satan hotly debated with God over mankind’s worthiness in front of the Heavenly host, pointing out that all it takes is misfortune and pain to make them turn away, and this went for even the most righteous. God proved Satan wrong in the man Job, who resisted cursing God despite emotional and physical torture. It’s my theory that if Job had failed and proved Satan right, then God would have no basis for a covenant with humanity, as it’s incapable of salvation.
I can’t help but wonder if Job had unwittingly spared mankind from full destruction by just being loyal to God during tribulations and proving Satan wrong about us. Job proved there was hope and we could live up to God’s expectations. Most importantly, Job proved God was right, which was a heavy blow to Satan’s arguments. The angels who watched these events unfold and who stayed with God must have had morale return to them.
But hope wasn’t enough. God knew He had to save His creation from sin forever, and He developed a long-term strategy in the tribe of Abraham. It’s here where God truly begins to set up the defeat of Satan and the salvation of humanity.
God made a covenant with an old man named Abraham that would establish his family as blessed and bountiful. This would set the stage for a long-game play that would see God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, multiply and become numerous, yet endure hardships that would give rise to promises of salvation. Generations would pass, and a man named Moses would lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and into the land of Israel, where, amid their journey in the wilderness, God would make another play for humanity.
He would give Moses ten commandments for His people to follow to demonstrate his holiness, but more importantly, show that it was impossible to live up to just these ten rules. Breaking these laws required sacrifice, as something needed to take the punishment for sin in place of the sinner. One thing was made clear to the Israelites: They needed God’s mercy and to be saved because they weren’t capable of doing it themselves. As time went on, prophets began speaking of the coming of someone who would do just that. A Messiah was on His way, and he would wipe away the sin of the land in a single day.
The Ten Commandments were more than moral guidelines; they were a cosmic framework. Through them, God bound sin to disobedience, creating a divine legal order that exposed humanity’s need for salvation.
This meant that if someone was sinless and fulfilled the law, but was sacrificed in the name of forgiving sin after taking the blame for sin unto Himself, then sin itself would break, and cosmic law would dictate that all sin is forgiven, past, present, and future.
Satan was aware of all of this. God moved in the open, and I imagine upon hearing the Angel of the Lord — whom I theorize was Christ’s avatar before he received his human form — declare he would destroy sin in a day, Satan was apoplectic. He saw God’s plan. He would come down Himself, take on a human form, fulfill the law, sacrifice Himself, and destroy everything Satan had worked for.
Satan would be wrong. He would lose the argument.
One day, it happened. A star appeared in the sky over the town of Bethlehem. Satan could only react, utilizing King Herod’s immense paranoia and pride to send soldiers out into the land to slaughter every male child below the age of two. However, an angel appeared and told Joseph to flee to Egypt, a place outside Herod’s jurisdiction.
Satan had unwittingly fulfilled two of God’s prophecies. That of Rachel (the wife of Israel) weeping for her children in Ramah (a town in ancient Israel near Bethlehem), and the other, that He would call his son “out of Egypt.”
Satan saw the prophecy fulfilled and realized his hand in it, but instead of backing down, he would make moves of his own. He knew God had arrived as a human, but if there’s one thing Satan was good at, it was tempting humans and ushering them into guilt. All he needed to do was cause God to fail in his human form, and he would finally have his victory. He would win the argument and reclaim his authority in Heaven, and possibly rule over all of it.
And it’s from here that this epic struggle over you, your destiny, and your rightful inheritance reaches its peak… but that’s another story.
In fact, the struggle was far more detailed and in-depth than even this article can convey. I could only touch on the highlights because if I actually went deeper into every significant event and gave you my theories around them, you wouldn’t have an article; you’d have a book.
But I’ll end with this: The birth of Christ is an incredible moment in history, not just because it’s the arrival of our savior on Earth, but because His birth is proof of God’s long, complicated, and heartbreaking fight for us, and one that’s been ongoing since the beginning of time. If you look at just how much God has had to struggle on our behalf, how many events He had to put in order, and how much pain He had to endure, it puts John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” into a much brighter light.
The story of Christmas is a chapter in the ongoing tale of a brutal cosmic war through space and time, and how one loving Father fought tooth and nail against a highly skilled adversary to protect and save His children from what was nearly certain destruction.
If this story resonated with you and gave you some context for a globally observed holiday you didn’t have before, consider sharing it around. I think many people know these events from the Bible but don’t fully understand how they’re connected or how they led up to an event we now call Christmas. To be clear, I love this kind of stuff and I don’t understand the full context either. I don’t think any of us will until we’re standing in front of Him and hearing the story from Him directly.
I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and that you and your family get to experience at least a little bit of the love God has for us through each other.
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