Impressing heavenly patterns into time

Refusing to celebrate holidays like Christmas is a functional denial of Christ’s lordship over time, of the church’s right to establish his rule in the Great Commission—and a 1CV and 4CV.

We know that the physical world means things, and that how we go about life is always going to reflect spiritual patterns. There is no way to avoid that. You can’t escape it.

We also know that spiritual patterns are not neutral, and they are certainly not always good. We are engaged in spiritual warfare against powers who would subvert and subjugate the world to their own ends. Satan and his angels are always trying to impress their rules, their liturgical practices, their spiritual patterns into the world, to conform the rhythms of our culture to their diabolical patterns. They would love us to go back to all the old pagan observances, for instance — the pagan feasts. That is how the world used to be ordered before God came in the flesh. Paul describes this time to the Galatians saying that, not having known God, they were enslaved to those not by nature gods. But because of the Lordship of Christ, that can no longer be the case. Now, having known God, and rather being known by God, he asks:

How turn ye again unto the weak and poor elements, to which ye desire to be enslaved anew? Days ye observe, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest in vain I did labor towards you. (Galatians 4:8-11)

In the same way, he tells the Colossians,

Let no one then judge you in eating, or in drinking, or in respect of a feast, or a new moon, or of sabbaths. If then ye did die with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances? (Colossians 2:16-20)

Not only does Paul instruct us this way — and I will return to this point to expand on it in a little while — but his spirit has been at work in his church throughout history to ensure that these instructions are actually followed. Our entire calendar is now arranged around Christ, and the holy days of his church are the holidays of our culture. There’s as much chance of the world going back to pagan observances as there is of Christ’s reign being broken. We have died with Christ to those elemental spirits that once had rule over the nations, and we have been raised into the heavenly places far above them, to where Christ himself sits in dominion over the nations.

Of course, we do not yet see all things put beneath his feet — but the process has clearly begun. Liturgical conquest is well underway. You can see this readily in how the rulership of Christ has changed the strategies of the spiritual forces of darkness that we wrestle with on his behalf. Once upon a time, they commanded open obedience. They set the times and the seasons, liturgical festivals and their forms. But do they do this any longer? Not in the West. Now they have to piggyback off the holidays of the church. Oh, Christmas has become so commercialized it’s not even a Christian holiday anymore. Of course! Whose idea do you think that was? Satan knows he can’t get rid of Christmas. With Christ as Lord, no one has the power to reorganize the calendar so that we don’t celebrate his birthday. The only thing Satan can do is try to subvert that celebration. He can’t get rid of it. He isn’t in charge of the calendar anymore. But he can twist it. He can turn our hearts to other things on Christmas. He can try to destroy the holiday through sin, since he cannot remove it entirely.

Now, because of the weakness of the church in the modern day, his efforts have been very successful. His general strategy seems to be to convince Christians to abandon timekeeping, to abandon the idea of a Christian calendar; to convince us that actually it is not a holy thing to have holy days. Satan wants Christians believing they should not be observing liturgical festivals anymore. But because different Christians have different theological weaknesses and different ways of being foolish, he is very crafty in how he adapts his strategy to different regions of the church. He has come up with several very effective ways to convince different types of Christians that things like Christmas are unholy.

In my experience, there are three big ones going on right now.

1. “Christmas is pagan”

The first stategy is aimed at the type of Christian who responds readily to conspiracy theories. I use this term neutrally, not pejoratively, since at the rate most conspiracy theories are coming true, we’ll run out of them by 2030. This kind of Christian is always looking for evidence that history is not what it seems; always wanting to be in the know. He has a weakness, which is his pride about how awake he is compared to other people. Satan knows how to use this pride like a bridle — a pridle, if you will — to turn him to the most foolish beliefs imaginable. So this kind of man is eager to hear that Christmas is not actually a festival of truth and peace, but really a satanic thing because — dun-dun-dun — it has pagan origins.

You’ll hear different stories about these pagan origins. It doesn’t really matter what the story is. I guess you’ve heard the one about Christmas being invented by Constantine when he renamed the pagan feast of Sol Invictus, putting a Christian name to a pagan celebration. That’s one example. But the real question about this, to me, is not actually whether it is true, but why that would be an argument against Christmas.

Take an analogy. Think about this in terms of space instead of in terms of time. If a God-fearing warrior king came to a pagan land called — I don’t know — Canaan, and conquered it for God and renamed it — let’s say — Israel, would it make any sense for later believers in Israel to say, Oh no, worshipping in Jerusalem is pagan, that’s the place that the pagans used to worship!

Of course not.

But that is apparently why we can’t celebrate Christmas on December 25th — because that’s the “place” in time that the pagans allegedly used to worship. We kicked them out, but their magic was too strong for Christ to redeem that part of time for himself. It’s permanently tainted.

No, I don’t think so.

Now, the story about Sol Invictus isn’t true — it’s actually the other way around as far as any trustworthy historians seem to be able to tell. Sol Invictus was an attempt by pagans to retake Christmas, and we see how that worked out. But the point is it doesn’t matter. So what if it was pagan? What if some other Christian holiday started as a pagan holiday? It’s certainly possible that could happen. After all, lots of pagan festivals fall into the natural rhythms that God built into time — and so do lots of Christian ones. Solstices and equinoxes, sowing and harvest. That’s because pagans live in God’s world just like we do. God made those rhythms. That’s why he set up Israel’s calendar using the same rhythms. But he intends to integrate those rhythms into Christ. He isn’t abandoning them. He’s redeeming them. So we can celebrate solstices because God made them. We can have a harvest festival like Thanksgiving because God created the time of harvest. We can have a midwinter feast because God created midwinter. Whatever midwinter means, God assigned that meaning — not pagans.

If anything, we should be thinking about how to reform our calendar to more closely match the cycles of creation that God made. We in the Southern Hemisphere, here in New Zealand, should especially be asking how we should be going about celebrating these festivals that all originate in the Northern Hemisphere, where much of the symbolism is perfectly inverted. It’s completely the opposite of what we experience.

Xmas special #3: Doing Christmas left-handed

However we go about this though, we will do it in the name of Christ because we are Christians. We are functioning as his body, as the means by which he exerts power in the world and impresses spiritual patterns into the physical forms of creation, so that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” — not just in space, but in time.

2. “Christmas is papist”

This brings me to the second way that Satan has convinced Christians to abandon Christmas, and that is by taking them back to the state of being children and slaves.

This is a strategy that he uses on folks who like to think of themselves as “truly reformed.” Their weakness is an inability to read the patterns of scripture, thinking that they are being very faithful to the Bible when they demand express commands in order to know what to do, rather than inferring the full shape of God’s ways from the limited set of commands he gave.

This makes them like children, as Paul himself says of those under the “elements” of the old, pre-Christ creation in Galatians 4:

And I say, for as long a time as the heir is an infant, he differeth nothing from a slave — being lord of all, yet he is under tutors and stewards till the time appointed of the father. So also we, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world, and when the fullness of time did come, God sent forth His Son, come of a woman, come under law, that those under law he may redeem, that the adoption of sons we may receive; and because ye are sons, God did send forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father! so that thou art, no more, a slave — but a son; and if a son, also an heir of God through Christ. (Galatians 4:1–7)

This is the context of the passage I quoted before about Paul being afraid for the Galatians, because they observed days and weeks and times and years. Not meaning, of course, days like Christmas or times like Advent, for those did not yet exist. He is speaking of the calendars of the old world, the world before Christ, that was under the dominion of angels. This referred to both the gentile and the Jewish world, for not only were the gentiles under angels (e.g., Dan 10:20), but the Jews also (e.g. Dan 10:21), since Torah was put in place through angels (e.g., Gal 3:19).

How can the Galatians want to go back to that old world order — whether it is represented in the Jewish calendar, or another? How can they put themselves under the liturgical dominion of the old world and the old gods, making themselves children with no more power than slaves, who must follow orders, must be trained, have not yet come of age — when in fact we have come of age in Christ?

Christ has come into the world, and we are his body, animated and governed and enlightened by his spirit, and trained and instructed and informed by his word to act on his behalf in the world.

If you investigate Esther chapter 9, you’ll notice that in fact, even in the old world, as the Jews came to maturity — as they were dispersed into the nations of the world, and learned to function in an empire, in preparation for the empire of Christ and the gospel going out to the nations — they themselves were permitted to start exercising liturgical dominion over time on God’s behalf. Mordecai and Esther write “with all authority” — the Hebrew word is literally might or power — to confirm with all the Jews in every province of the empire that they will observe the days of Purim in its appointed times (Est 9.29).

Mordecai did not receive a command from the Lord to do this. It was obviously clear to him that it should be commanded with all authority — and it was clear to the Jews that it should be obeyed as if it were a command from the Lord. And God himself acts as a witness to the command, by recording it in his own word — in the very scriptures themselves — as, “words of peace and truth” (v. 30). In doing this, he ratifies the command; for if Mordecai had been acting presumptuously, if he’d been violating the regulative principle, the principle that all our worship must be regulated by the pattern of scripture, he would certainly have been condemned — not commended! But it is impossible to read Esther 9 and not to see that both Mordecai and Esther are held up by God for approval. He is not displeased at their adding to the Jewish festivals that he himself instituted. On the contrary, he bids us to conclude that it was fitting and seemly and right for the Jews to bind themselves to observing Purim in its appointed times, and that Mordecai was right to institute it with all authority.

He was, in fact, following the pattern of scripture — following the regulative principle, properly understood. He had observed the way in which God established festivals, and he had discerned that God’s own people had come to sufficient maturity to participate in that work, to walk in his footsteps, to exercise dominion as sons of their Father in Heaven over the times and the seasons.

Now, if this were true even for “children” like Mordecai, how much more so for the mature church under Christ, where our rulers are not like slaves, but like sons? Remember, in scripture the son is not a little boy on his father’s knee. He is the grown man, faithfully representing his father’s interests in the world. We are sons of God, Paul tells us. Are we not then competent to exercise dominion over time on the Son’s behalf?

This is what the angelic sons of God were supposed to do in the Old Testament. They were supposed to order the cosmos — time and space — according to the heavenly pattern. Consider Deuteronomy 32:8–9:

When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples by the number of the sons of God; for Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.

These sons of God are the same ones that Moses warns the Israelites of, to beware,

lest thou lift up thine eyes towards the heavens, and hast seen the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the hosts of the heavens. And thou hast been drawn, and hast prostrated thyself unto them, and served them, which Yahweh thy God hath alloted to all the peoples under the whole heavens. And you hath Yahweh taken, and he is bringing you out from the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be to him for a people, an inheritance, as at this day. (Deuteronomy 4:19–20)

So the sons of God are identified with the luminaries, the heavenly host. This is just one example of many — it is extremely common in both scripture and ancient thinking in general. For instance, Job 38:7, speaking of the time when God laid the foundations of the earth, describes the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. The poetic parallel identifies the morning stars with the sons of God.

The sun and the moon and the stars — the heavenly host — these are the angelic beings that God created to rule the old world: the very elements or elemental spirits that Paul describes in Galatians 4 as something we must not return back to. But of course, rulership always involves ordering time as well as space. The sun and the moon and the stars are explicitly described as lords of time in Genesis 1, are they not?

God said: let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens to make a separation between the day and the night, and let them be for signs and for due times and for days and years, and let them be for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth and it was so. And God made the two great luminaries: the great luminary for the rule of the day, and the small luminary, and the stars, for the rule of the night. And God gave them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth, and to rule over day and over night, and to make a separation between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there was morning, day four. (Genesis 1:14–19)

Compare this to another passage you probably know very well, but haven’t really thought about in quite these terms before — in terms of rulership from heaven. Remembering how the sun and the moon and the stars rule the heavens, consider what Christ says to Peter:

I also say to thee that thou art rock, and upon this rock I will build my congregation, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, and whatever thou mayest bind upon the earth shall be having been bound in the heavens, and whatever thou mayest loose upon the earth shall be having been loosed in the heavens. (Matthew 16:18–19)

In other words, rulership of the heavens now takes place on earth through the church. Obviously the church is ruled by Christ from the heavens — but the earth has a significant part to play in heavenly rulership, because that is where the church is, which is Christ’s body. The body is the means by which one exerts power. Christ exerts power over the earth now through his body the church, and we truly are his body such that how we order the cosmos here has also been bound in heaven.

This is all connected with the symbolism of luminaries, but especially of daylight. Consider what Christ says directly before going out to preach the gospel for the first time:

The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. And to those sitting in the region and shadow of death, to them did light arise. From that time began Jesus to proclaim and to say, Repent ye, for near hath come the kingdom of the heavens. (Matthew 4:16–17)

Let me suggest to you that from the fall of Adam until the coming of Christ, the world was in night. That is why Israel’s liturgical calendar was a lunar calendar. The moon was waiting for the coming of the great luminary to light up the world into full day. Which is also why our calendar today in the reign of Christ is a solar calendar.

And when Christ came, he gave to his church, his body, the authority to rule on his behalf. Not just space, but time also. We are to order all of life according to the pattern of his law, the pattern of his wisdom. We have been raised into the heavenly places with him as new sons of God, far above the reign and dominion and authority of the original sun and moon and stars who previously ordered time. And so we are now the ones who rule over the day and the night, and who set appointed times and liturgical seasons.

2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “Because it is God who said, Out of darkness light shall shine, who did shine in our hearts for the enlightening of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 5:5 says, “All ye are sons of light and sons of day; we are not of night nor of darkness.” 1 John 2:8 says, “Again a new command I write to you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness doth pass away and the true light doth now shine.” And Daniel 12, too, prophesying the time to come — which is now — says, “They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the expanse, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, forever and ever.”

God, the father of lights promised Abraham that his seed would be like the stars — and are we not Abraham's seed? “If ye are of Christ then of Abraham ye are seed, and heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:29). Yes indeed, Christians are the luminaries of the new heavens, the morning stars of the day that is dawning in Christ as those new heavens come down to earth out of heaven, as he impresses the heavenly pattern into earth through the work of his body the church.

Now, if you’re not familiar with these ideas, your mind may be casting about for something to draw all of these threads together. I’ve covered a lot of ground. It would take me way outside the scope of this episode to give you a full biblical theology of the sons of God in the Old Testament; of their relationship with time; and of their replacement by the new sons of God, the church, in the New Testament. But if you would like to learn more about this, I can recommend a couple of books. Both are very succinct, with no wasted words. So many books these days could just be condensed into a good essay. But these books are not like that. The first is The Spine of Scripture: God’s Kingdom from Eden to Eternity by me, Bnonn Tennant. The second is Re-enchanting Time: A Primer on How Christ’s Lordship Re-enchants Time-Keeping by Josh Robinson.

3. “Christmas is secular”

There is a third way that Satan has convinced Christians to abandon Christmas, and that is by showing us how successfully he has compromised it in the wider culture.

Since the world now treats Christmas as a celebration of Mammon, rather than a celebration of Christ, Satan wants us thinking that Christmas used to be about Christ — but it just isn’t anymore. Now it is about Mammon. That’s just what it is now; there’s nothing we can do about it; we have to abandon it; it’s a lost cause.

Well, hopefully in light of what I have already said, it’s obvious what utter foolishness that is. In fact, to say this is functionally to deny the Great Commission, and the Lordship of Christ that this commission is based on. It is really to say: Rather than discipling our nation and taking every thought captive to obey Christ, we will let them disciple us; rather than acting as timekeepers on behalf of the Lord of Time, we’ll opt out; the pagans can have time.

And of course, you can’t live without routines and rituals tied to certain dates — so what happens is we reject liturgical time overtly, throwing out the times and the seasons of the church, but then we accept it covertly by observing the times and the seasons of the pagans instead. Because you can’t not observe times and seasons. You always show up for deals on Black Friday huh? But you treat Christmas as if it shouldn’t exist. So who do you really think is in charge of time? The pagans dictate the calendar to you now.

I think not. Is the arm of the Lord suddenly shortened? You think God can take the entire calendar from the pagans and establish Christmas against all their festivals, but he lacks the power to bring us back to the true observance of it? Nope.

The only reason Christmas remains a festival to Mammon is because churches are so weak at asserting the lordship of Christ over time, and teaching their people to do the same. And much of the reason for that is because they have fallen for one of the three strategies that Satan uses that I’ve talked about in this article.

So what should we be doing?

If the church is authorized to order time by establishing festivals as wisdom guides her, then those festivals need to have a particular form. They have to be celebrated in a certain way.

You can’t actually celebrate Christmas if you don’t know what to do to celebrate Christmas. In fact, that’s exactly where a lot of Christians go off the rails — because they think that celebrating Christmas means celebrating Mammon. They correctly recognise some of the current liturgical forms for the Christmas festival are kinda not good, and so they want to avoid those — and that leads them to avoid Christmas itself. But that is not the path of wisdom. We should rather be asking: What should we be doing for Christmas?

What parts of our cultural practice are really wicked and irredeemable, so we should utterly avoid them? What parts are good and worthy of celebration? What parts have good elements which have been compromised, so they are worth redeeming — and how should we go about reforming them?

Scripture does not command Christmas — but it does give us patterns for how we ought to celebrate that kind of an event. I take it as obvious that celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior is good. I don’t think it could possibly be more obvious. We all show our appreciation for our friends by celebrating their birthdays. We all honour our parents by celebrating their birthdays. Here in New Zealand we honour the king by celebrating his birthday. But you want to convince me that it is somehow dishonouring to the Son of God himself, the Great Friend, the Everlasting Father, the King of Kings, to celebrate his birthday?

Are you mad?

In fact, to fail to celebrate Christ’s birthday is as obvious a violation of the first and fourth commandments as failing to celebrate our parents’ birthdays is a violation of the fifth. But we don’t have to just accept how that birthday is celebrated by our culture today. We don’t have to do as we’re told.

We are the lords of time. We don’t have to assume that as it has been, so must it be. Let’s rather investigate it. Let’s ask about Santa, and about Christmas trees, and about presents, and about nativity scenes. What is good? What is bad? What would the Lord Jesus have us do, to start establishing a truly Christian culture for the celebration of his birthday?