Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth, for the Colson Center on John Stone Street. Scripture portrays the incarnation as an act of war against Satan, sin, and death. God taking on flesh is at the center of a cosmic conflict between good and evil, a battle for a world that was never fully lost by God, but was fully recaptured in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, of course, that part of the Christmas story tends to be missing from the 24-hour holiday music station, from most Christmas plays and pageants, and even many Christmas Eve sermons.
However, there is a source that continues to confront people with this part of the gospel, offering clear teaching. About the redemptive realities of this holy season and the cosmic struggle that it is. Christmas carols are an incredible source of theology and worldview. For example, take the Wexford Carol. There's also the traditional English carol, God rest ye married gentlemen, which powerfully describes that the incarnation was a rescue mission.
And there's the haunting beauty of Ocum, Okum Emmanuel, which situates the coming of Christ within the context of God's Old Testament promises. Few hymns offer as rich a Christology as Hark the Herald Angels Sing, which was a brainchild of the great hymn writer Charles Wesley and also in part, the great revivalist George Whitfield. And of course, I heard the bells on Christmas Day describes clearly just how this cosmic battle between good and evil will eventually turn out. These songs, and of course there are others as well, they all remind us of essential Christmas truths, that this world belongs to God, that our plight of sin is not wholly lost, that the world's captivity to Satan's schemes is not the end of the story, and that God working through the ages has promised redemption. Through patriarchs and prophets and kings, God has been fulfilling the promises that he gave so long ago.
But especially, he's doing so in the wonders of the incarnation. We can see it in the fear and the hope of Mary and Joseph, and with the realization and the glory of angelic hosts proclaiming their king. And ours. Each year, these hymns remind us that God has not left us in a broken state. He came and lived among us so that he might die for us.
And these songs are the whole gospel of God. And as comforting and instructive as they are to us, at what other time of the year do otherwise completely religiously disinterested friends, neighbors, and family members find themselves singing and humming along with theology? A colleague once observed that Christmas is an opportunity to emulate the witness of Philip to the Ethiopians. The world around us hides under vain pleasures and false narratives, but they know that things are not really quite right. What they need to hear is how things can be made right in Christ Jesus.
By singing our way through Christmas, we can share with them and the whole world what it most needs to know right now. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
And for more resources like this one, go to breakpoint.org. At the Colson Center, we're committed to strengthening families, churches, and schools to be faithful influences for Christ. Because in a culture severed from truth, the question isn't how do we fix everything, but how can we be faithful where God has placed us? In 2026, we want to help families, educators, and church leaders answer that question with courageous faith. But we need your help.
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