Our thoughts are turning with gladness to the first coming of Jesus. The light that shone over the plains is shining around us; the songs which the shepherds heard, we also hear; and the New Hope that filled the hearts of the shepherds and wise men in the eastern land at the advent of Jesus is in our hearts at this time.
Yet we are all conscious that nothing is perfect, that much of which he came to do is not yet done, and that the works of the devil are not finally destroyed, that sins are not yet experimentally taken away, that in the spiritual consciousness of the race, God is not yet perfectly known. As scripture has said, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” (Hebrews 2:8). The victory seems not to be won; there seems to be very, very much still to do. Or, if I may put this in another form, it is impossible to read the story of the first advent and to believe in it and to follow the history of the centuries that have followed it without feeling in one’s deepest heart that something more is still needed. The first advent demands a second advent.
We stand tonight between the advents. Our relation to the first creates our relation to the second. To receive him as rejected is to be received by him at his coronation. To accept his estimate of sin and share in the value of his atoning work is to enter into his coming administration of righteousness. To trust in the first is to wait for the second.
How does it stand between my soul and the advents, first and second? I am not trying to cast a cloud over the merriment of Christmas time. But have a reason for your merriment, and in God’s name cease your merriment if the child who was born, and of whom you sing, is excluded from your heart and hearth and home. The blasphemy of it! The tragedy of it! The shame of it! People who by persistent sin are crucifying this Christ afresh every day, yet make merry this Christmas time.
If you have admitted him and found room for him for whom there was no room in the inn, if you have handed him the Kingdom of your life though the world still rejects him as in the days of old, then make merry. Let your songs abound. Let your hearts be glad. Give the children a good time. But I warn you against all merriment if you have shut him out, for he comes again, and if, in spite of the light of the first advent, you have rejected him, he must, on the basis of eternal justice, reject you. He is coming. May we so trust him as to the meaning and merit of his first advent as not to be ashamed of him when he comes again!
G. Campbell Morgan (Updated for today’s reader)
The Fight of Faith 