Everyone’s a Postmillennialist at Christmas

Merry Christmas is more than a seasonal greeting. It’s an exhortation to be joyful and to rejoice in the knowledge of Jesus Christ’s birth. To be “Merry” is about far more than a feeling of happiness, though it includes that. To be “Merry” is to act in a particularly joyful way. It is to do what Nehemiah 8:10 calls us to do: “Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

To be Merry this Christmas means to rejoice in Christ’s birth as we joyfully feast with family and friends. It means allowing our merrymaking to spill over into generosity for all, so that, like Ebenezer Scrooge having been visited by ghosts all night long, we wake to open tight fisted hands so that we may give joyfully to others, because we have received so much from Jesus.

Most Christians intuitively do this around Christmas time as we celebrate Christ’s birth and Incarnation. In fact, the celebration of the first advent of our Lord and Savior is typically punctuated in most of our churches by the singing of Christmas hymns. And, wondrously, at the grand risk of angering some, we all sing and sound just a bit more like postmillennialists around Christmas time.

Consider the Postmillennial Hymns and Carols

One of my long-standing, personal favorite hymns is Isaac Watts “Joy to the World.” The verses go like this: 

1 Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room,
and heav’n and nature sing.

2 Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
repeat the sounding joy.

3 No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found.

4 He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness,
and wonders of His love. 

In recent years, I’ve heard many suggest that this is not a song about Jesus’s first advent, but His second coming. For what its worth, there are certainly some lines in the song that could be interpreted this way. We know that when Christ returns to this earth that He will rule with truth and grace, for example, and sins, sorrows, and thorns will no longer infest this earth for He will burn them all in the eternal lake of fire, totally renovating the cosmos in such a way that it will actually be better than what Eden was like. 

I don’t have a problem with singing “Joy to the World” all the year long, but I do think it’s important to see that what Isaac Watts was depicting was not just the second coming of Jesus, nor was he simply depicting the first advent, either. Rather, what “Joy to the World” depicts to us is how Jesus’s first advent leads directly into His millennial reign—that is to say, as a rather staunch postmillennialist, Watts wrote “Joy to the World” because he believed that Jesus’s first coming had disarmed Satan and his works at the cross, and that His second coming would bring an end to evil, wickedness, death, and sin. But Watts also believed that in between these two cataclysmic events that shape time and creation, the gospel would go forth, sinners would be saved, and the earth would be conquered in preparation of the returning King Jesus. 

But it doesn’t end with “Joy to the World.” Consider some of the lines we sing in “O Holy Night”: 

O holy night! the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope- the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born! 

Why is there a thrill of hope in which the weary world rejoices? Because Christ has been born! And this same Christ is going to defeat the sin and error which the world has been subjected to. But it gets better. Later, in the second verse, we sing: 

The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our Friend.
He knows our need— to our weakness is no stranger.
Behold your King, before Him lowly bend! 

We bow the knee before Christ our king. But who exactly is bowing, or bending, before Christ? The answer is simple: the world! This King is the King of all! Making this point even clearer is the third verse: 

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim! 

Jesus’s gospel brings us peace and our obedience to His Law is borne from a heart that loves Him because He first loved us. He breaks our chains that bound us to sin, ends oppression, and, as the Lord, receives praise as we proclaim His power and glory forevermore. 

If that wasn’t enough, let’s consider one more Christmas Hymn. This time, it’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, which probably dates from the fifteenth century, if not earlier. 

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
let nothing you dismay,
remember Christ our Savior
was born on Christmas Day
to save us all from Satan’s pow’r
when we were gone astray. 

And, then, towards the end: 

Now to the Lord sing praises
all you within this place,
and with true love and brotherhood
each other new embrace;
this holy tide of Christmas
all other doth deface. 

So, even here, we see that our reason to be merry is because of the birth of Jesus, through which the gospel comes. Jesus saves us from Satan’s power and tyranny. And the season of Christmas defaces all others precisely because it speaks of the incarnation and advent of Jesus, which is the hinge upon which the death, burial, and resurrection depend. Christmas, understood in this sense, stands high above all other days because no other day, outside of Easter Sunday, so clearly declares, “Christ is Lord and King!” 

Let’s be Christmas Christians All Year Long

It was Charles Dickens who personified “the spirit of Christmas” in his Christmas Carol. The first rendition I ever saw of it, though, was the Muppets version. It’s still one of my favorite Christmas movies. If you’ve seen it, you know that the spirit of Christmas is a jolly, merry, and loving fellow. 

In reality, there’s no such thing as a Christmas spirit. There is, however, a Holy Spirit and He has indwelled all of us who profess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And what this means, then, is that we don’t need to wait for one day of the year to be filled with hope and joy. Christmas is merry, but we can be merry Christians all year-round. Dare I say, we can be postmillennial Christians all year round. 

Let’s stop dipping our toes in the water once a year to test things out to only jump away on December 26th. The water is fine. Jump on in. Embrace the hope of Christmas year-round. After all, Isaiah 9:6-7 declares the merry news that: 

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The Kingdom is Christ’s and He will rule forever. His Kingdom is advancing across the earth. When He returns, He will find the earth conquered for His Glory as the gospel was proclaimed and the nations were discipled. And this is certain for it is the Lord’s own zeal that carries out this world-conquering, glory-spreading task. 

We sing about this in our Christmas hymns. Let’s believe it all year round. 

Joy to the world, because Jesus came on a Holy Night, and He is coming again. He is the reigning, defending, conquering, God-King of the Cosmos. Through His Body on earth, the church, He makes His truth, grace, and love known to the nations. As this happens, His glory spreads and the works of wickedness are further diminished. Because the Savior reigns, all creation is brought to its knees—some, whose hearts have been prepared for Him, rejoice in Him with song, while others are forced to admit they are simply unable to stand against His wrath. 

And that’s the beauty of Christmas time, isn’t it? When we praise Jesus for His first advent, we longingly look to His second coming. Yet, hymns like “Joy to the World,” “O Holy Night,” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” teach us that our time between Jesus’s first and second advents are not to be spent twiddling our thumbs. They remind us that our work matters. These songs, and Christmas itself, reminds us of the postmillennial hope. 

So, regardless of your position on eschatology, have a Merry Christmas. Now, go be a Merry Christian always.