True Christmas Worship

This Christmas, it’s worth asking ourselves who are we worshiping?  Jesus, yes.  But the divinity of Christ, or the humanity of Christ, or both?

Reading through some church history lately has reminded me that it’s important to focus our worship correctly.

The Arians of the 4th century only worshiped Christ as man because they (wrongly) thought that Jesus was less than divine.  Some others reacted to this and (wrongly) worshiped Christ as the divine logos, excluding his humanity.

But Philippians 2:6-11 seems to attribute worship to both the divinity and humanity of Christ: the Incarnate One.

Here’s how Cyril of Alexandria interpreted it: ”This is the sense in which we confess one Christ and Lord.  We do not worship a human being in conjunction with the Logos, lest the appearance of a division creep in by reason of that phrase ‘in conjunction with.’  No, we worship one and the same, because the body of the Logos is not alien to him but accompanies him even as he is enthroned with the Father.” (2nd letter to Nestorius).

So, this Christ, let us remember that we worship the God-man.  Let us worship the man who is to be worshiped together with God because of the divine union.  Let us worship Jesus Christ who came down from heaven, for us and for our salvation.