Around this time of year, it’s customary in many places for people to exchange greetings and gifts in an atmosphere of general goodwill rather than any Christian context. Christmas has become increasingly secular over the years. It seems that some people are keen to remove Christ from life more broadly, such as we see in the advocacy of “Before Common Era” (BCE) in place of “Before Christ” (BC) and “Common Era” (CE) in place of “Anno Domini” (AD, denoting “the year of our Lord”). As others have noted, if we’re going to advocate religious neutrality consistently then we’d also need to rename the days of the week—many of which are named after Norse deities—and possibly other things. (Incidentally, as one notable example, Japan uses the current Japanese Emperor’s ascendancy to the throne as a reference point in its system of time.)
If there’s any recognition of the true meaning of Christmas these days, I’d hazard a guess that the question is along the lines of “what do you think about Christ?”
Today, let’s turn that question around: “what does Christ think about you?”
Over the years, many people have asked, “are you a Christian?” Answering that question used to seem straightforward, but then I started to appreciate that what others think a Christian is (or might be) needn’t necessarily be the same as what I thought. Someone could define being a Christian by what box is ticked as one’s religion in the census form, or one’s frequency of church service attendance, or even simply one stating oneself to be a Christian. The issue with these definitions is that they depend on what one says or does, without reference to how the Lord Jesus Christ might see the situation.
The Bible tells us, in Matthew 7:21–23: “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”
It should be clear that this is a very sobering passage for anyone who would claim to be a Christian!
On the Day of Judgement, I don’t think the Lord will simply be checking some record of what we ticked on our census forms, or how frequently we attended church services, or what we said to other people. In mathematical lingo, such things might be called ‘necessary but not sufficient’—if one is a Christian, one will probably be ticking that box on the census form, but merely ticking a certain box on a form does not necessarily indicate that one is what one claims to be.
We all have our own thoughts about Christ, and so we should on Christmas Day. Today might be the day to also reflect: “what does Christ think about me?”