History marched toward his birth; that baby’s life would march to his death,
all so grace would march, with life and hope, into our lives.

I don’t know whether you ever thought about this, but your Bible isn’t arranged by topic. You might find that frustrating at times. You wish that the Bible were arranged by topic so that you could go directly to your subject of interest—if your Bible had topic tabs on the side of the page, that would be cool too. It’s important to understand that your Bible is arranged the way it is not because of divine editorial error, but because of divine intention.

The Bible was never intended to be a systematic theology text, a compendium of helpful hints for everyday living or comforting maxims to carry you through your day. Your Bible isn’t a collection of biographies that God uses as moral case studies. It isn’t even proper to say that the Bible is a collection of historical stories of redemption. The core content of your Bible is one single story, a grand redemptive story. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it this way: the Bible is one grand, theologically annotated story. The core content of the Bible is God’s march of redemption accompanied by God’s essential explanatory notes. The story of the Bible wasn’t written as a reaction but as God’s intention before the foundations of the world were set in place. God knew Adam and Eve would step outside his wise and loving boundaries, and he knew what his response would be. You can see the seeds of that response in Genesis 3. What the Old Testament gives us is the history of God marching his world to the moment when the conditions were just right for the coming of Jesus. God calls Abraham and makes an eternal covenant with him. Out of Abraham God grows a nation, and out of the nation God sends the promised Messiah, Jesus. God promises to David a kingdom that will never end, and then Jesus as the final King. Even though his people are rebellious and disloyal, God will not forsake his grand redemptive plan. With sovereign authority and the unstoppable zeal of his grace, he harnesses the natural forces of the world he created and carefully controls the events of human history to march the world to the moment when Jesus would be born: Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God. But Jesus’s life was a march too. The destination of that march was written into the plot of God’s redemptive story. Jesus knew where the march would take him, and he never debated, he never resisted, he never rebelled, and he never, ever questioned the plan. Every day of his thirty-three years of life he purposefully and willingly marched toward the cross of his death. He lived, loved, and taught with the pain of the horrible injustice in view. He marched with joy to his cross of shame, injustice, torture, and worst of all, separation from his Father because he knew what the results would be. He knew he was born to be the Lamb of sacrifice. He knew there were whips, nails, thorns, and swords in his future, all to be used as instruments of his suffering and death.

Who would knowingly and willingly take such a march? What innocent man would be willing to suffer in this way? Who in the world would be willing to do this for his enemies? Who would have such character? Who would be filled with such love? Who would be motivated by such grace? There is only one answer: Jesus. He is the One who occupies center stage in the grand redemptive drama. The march of redemption requires his march to his death, and he was willing.

Why was he willing? He was willing because he knew that his march to death was the only way to march life and hope into our lives. He knew that his painful, tortuous disgrace was the only way for redeeming grace to march with saving power into our lives. He knew the rescuing, restoring, and delivering power of that grace. He knew his march would result in a company of people, more than any human could number, who would give their lives to him and would in eternity bow in a chorus of worship of him forever.

So for the Bible to be something more than interesting stories and provocative sayings, it had to contain the real, historical march of history to the coming of Jesus, the march of Jesus to the cross and empty tomb, the march of grace into the hearts of countless sinners, and the march of those redeemed ones into an unending relationship of loving worship of the One who ordained the march before time began.

The Christmas story loses its meaning and beauty when it is ripped out of the great redemptive and historical march. It is more than a story of a family with nowhere to stay, singing angels, amazed shepherds, searching wise men, and a jealous monarch. If it were a made-up fable with all of these interesting elements, in the final analysis it would help no one. The Christmas story is not intended to teach you a bunch of moral lessons that require no history to be helpful. It’s a story that is rooted in real history, real acts of God that are intended to provide for you and me the one thing we desperately need: moral rescue. The Christmas story is about a God of glorious grace on the march, invading human history with the grace of redemption. What was the cost of that grace? Well, the price was the death of his Son. What the birth of Jesus tells us is that, in love, both the Father and the Son were willing.

For further study: Galatians 4:4–7

For parents and children:

Central theme: Marching

Get your children to talk about what a march is and why people march. Help them to understand how God was marching the events of the world toward the coming of Jesus, and how from his birth in the manger the life of Jesus was marching toward his death on the cross to purchase our forgiveness.