Is Herod a Part of Your Version of the Christmas Story?

 Is Herod a Part of Your Christmas Story?

Matthew 2:3  "When King Herod heard this [about the birth of Jesus] he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him...."

“Christ is the peace of the righteous, the trouble of the wicked.” (P. Quesnel)

I think it's worth being reminded that you can’t tell ‘the Christmas story’ faithfully without including the story of Herod, and the diabolical role he played in the events surrounding the birth of the “Christ [=King] child.”  Herod reminds that in many ways the story of the human race is the story of the contest and conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15).  And so, Cain rose up and slew Abel.  It is the war between ‘flesh’ and Spirit, between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.  Herod is what we would all be, were it not for the restraining effects of God’s grace and truth.

The ‘Herodian impulse’ is one of envy, paranoia, resentment and rage, deceit, dishonest, manipulation, maneuvering and the unspeakable murder of innocent children (because one of them was the Rival [Rightful] King).

Herod, of course, was a monster – his ‘sin nature’ was acted out in the extreme.   But the ultimate truth is, every one of us has ‘Herod’ living inside us, and unless we resist and repent, enabled by God’s redeeming grace, every one of us goes deeper into the sinful self-centeredness and hatefulness that makes us more and more monstrous ourselves – less and less loving, and kind, less and less compassionate and caring, and more and more troublesome and toxic to those around us.

We want to be the center of things – we want to reign and rule – in our family relations, in the place where we work, and even in the churches where we ‘worship’ and ‘serve.’

And make no mistake – we are faced with the choice that Herod faced – will we bow the knee to the true and rightful King?   Will repent?  Will we turn from the sinful, self-centeredness that expresses itself in our own envy, resentment, manipulating and, yes, ‘murders’ (see Matt. 5:21-22; 1 John 3:12, 14-15).

In fact, when you trace of the Story through the New Testament, the murderous assaults of the Herods continued throughout the rest of the ‘story of Jesus’, didn’t they?  (Ask John the Baptist.)   It was a Herod who teamed up with Pilate to finally accomplish what his grandfather failed to do.  The murder that mis-fired so  tragically in Bethlehem succeeded brutally just outside of Jerusalem.

Herod was the Serpent’s Agent for carrying out the crushing of the heel of the seed of the Woman – and so on Golgotha it looked like the Herods of the world will win out after all….

…But three days later it didn’t look like that at all anymore.  Jesus accomplished the ultimate defeat  of Satan, our Adversary and Accuser, by His substitutionary work on the cross that crushed the Serpent’s head, dealing him the fatal blow (see Col. 3:13-15)

But one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith is that, while the Lord Jesus did indeed mete out what would be the mortal blow against the Evil One, His victory will not be finally manifested until He comes again.  In fact, the apostle John, even on this side of the Cross, says the whole world (still) lies under the power of the Wicked One (1 John 5:19).

And so we find the conflict between the kingdoms playing out in the Book of Acts.  Yet another Herod arrests and murders James the brother of John.  He also arrests Peter, but an angel of the Lord miraculously delivers Peter from jail.  And in fact, not much later, after a prideful, God-defying speech, “…an angel of the Lord struck [Herod] down, and he was eaten with worms and died.”  Wow.   And what does Luke write next?  “But the word of God continued to increase and spread.”  (Acts 12:23-24).

And so this irreconcilable war continues and will continue until the end of the Age.  “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and will go from bad to worse….” (2 Tim. 3:12-13).

But our “blessed hope is the appearing in glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13), at the end of the age when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.   And He shall reign forever and ever.  Hallelujah! (Rev. 11:15).  (By the way the action described in the favorite Christmas carol, “Joy to the World”, is actually about his SECOND Coming of Christ.

But the Bible makes it unmistakably clear that the return of Jesus Christ to reign and to rule begins with the awesome/aweful work of final Judgment, when everyone who lived out their allegiance to Christ, the rightful King, in love, kindness, compassion, honesty, righteousness will receive their reward and commendation, entering into the endless joys of the kingdom of God….

…But this will also be the time when every Herod gets what’s coming to him.  For everyone who was self-seeking and self-serving, following the way of evil, there will be wrath and anger, trouble and distress (Rom. 2:8-9).  And the judgment will be specific – repayment for specific acts of sinning.  In fact the Lord Jesus himself said, “I tell you that people will have to give account on the day of judgment for every useless word they have spoken [or typed, or posted, or tweeted, etc.]”  (Matt. 12:36).   The Lord will be the avenger on that day for every person abused, even when the abusive person thought they had gotten away with it (cp. 1 Thess. 4:6; 2 Tim. 4:14).  Ironically, even warnings like this will make a Herod even madder and meaner, but that will only mean a sterner recompense on the say Christ comes to judge.

So, strange as it may seem, we really do need to included Herod in our telling of the Christmas story, for that is the way to include the essential reality of our sin and evil, guilt and slavery to sin (which the classic Christmas carols include as well).   Only those who are honest about the darkness are going to pay attention to talk of a kingdom of light.  The urgent message, summons and invitation of the full Story of Christ includes the call to sincere repentance and faith, so that we may be “transferred from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the Son [the Father] loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”  (Col. 1:13-14).

Real repentance includes turning from all our Herod-like tendencies and twistedness  and entering into the life of the Spirit of Christ – the real and rightful King who will rule the world in truth and grace and make the nations prove [by experience] the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love!