The Labor of Christ in the Birth of Christ
It's Christmas season. Nativity scenes have begun popping up in our homes, churches, and stores.
They’re usually the same—an angelic scene of a peaceful Mary holding her baby. That depiction is so common that it likely affects our own views of that first Christmas night.
How perfect and calm it seems . . . Together we sing, “Silent night, holy night / All is calm / All is bright”—but I'm not so sure I buy silent.
With a history of difficult labors turned C-sections quite literally under my belt, a silent birth seems like an enigma. After my labor experiences, the movie-perfect hospital scenes I grew up watching were replaced by pitiful screams and a bloody mess.
It’s been five years since my last labor, but I can still feel the sharp hits of pain in that hospital room. I can hear my pleading cries, feel my wet tears, and I can vividly hear my whispers to my husband: “I'm just ready to meet him . . .”
While we can’t know exactly what Mary’s labor was like that night, we can trace the labor pains of Christ.
THE FIRST CONTRACTIONS
The labor that led to Christ’s birth was experienced by all of humanity. It began not with a young teenager next to her fiancé, but in the sudden ache of another man and another woman.
Adam and Eve felt the icy shiver of a cold breeze against their skin, but even worse, this ache struck down into their souls. The forbidden fruit extended by the snake hadn't long been from their lips, and they felt ashamed. It was the first of the labor pains for the sin-stained world.
Curses came as a result of their wrongdoing. First to the snake who deceived them. Next to the ground that would cause great toil for them and their children. Then to the very pain of bringing children into the world.
Yet God made them a promise. The world would now endure their consequences, but just as labor pains come before the joy of birth, God would bring forth hope from their hurting. A baby would be born into the world. An offspring of the woman would crush the snake and the consequences of the first man and woman forever (Gen. 3:15).
Hope was coming. But for now, they labored.
Then the blood came, first from the animal slain to clothe their naked bodies. Next blood would flow on the ground from the body of their son, slain by his own brother. Pain and sin would continue to stalk their family. Soon the people of the earth roamed the land with only one thing in mind: themselves.
At the height of the birth pains the water broke and the entire earth was flooded to cleanse the evil that tainted every soul. Eight passengers were kept safe by the Creator’s provision.
Surely the end was near?
LABORING ON
Yet the labor continued. The Creator set his favor on a man named Abram, and once again renewing the promise. “Through your family, I will bless the nations,” God told Abram. The end is coming. And God in his great faithfulness swore this promise by the greatest being there was—himself (Heb. 6:13).
But years went by as subsequent generations of God’s people experienced slavery, redemption, victories, and blessings. They labored with faithfulness, at times. But mostly they labored with folly, clamoring after idols, power, and their own strength. More blood filled the divided land. Enemy kingdoms captured them. Millions were exiled.
Yet some still spoke of the delivery to come. They hadn't forgotten that there was a birth at the end of all their pain. Isaiah proclaimed, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isa. 9:6). He is coming—the Prince of Peace, your Everlasting Father. He will come to bring light to the land of deep darkness (Isa. 9:2).
The prophet Ezekiel also reminded God’s people that new life was coming, and that this new life would bring life to their own blood-thirsty hearts (Ezek.. 11:19).
But then—silence. For 400 long years. The labor seemed to have stalled.
Saints and prophets came and went with a whisper: "I'm just ready to meet him . . ."
HE’S HERE!
But one day the twinge of pain hit a pregnant teenager in Bethlehem. While it was the first of her contractions, the throes of this labor had already been taking place throughout generations before her. They had been building for years, strengthening, and continually pointing to the end that had finally come—he was here.
And fittingly, the heavens rejoiced. Multitudes of angels proclaimed, “Glory to God in the Highest” (Luke 2:14) at the arrival of the one who had been anticipated for generations. Later in the temple, Anna and Simeon were able to gaze upon the baby they waited for. The prophets of old had only dreamed of it, but Simeon was able to say, “My eyes have seen your salvation" (Lk. 2:40). They finally met him!
The Creator himself, who made the first life in the beginning, had come to give new life to his creation—the creation that rejected him. Blood flowed again, but this time it was not the creature’s, but the blood of the long-awaited Christ. And for those who do receive him, who believe in his name, he now breaks them free from the curse of Adam and covers their shame once and for all (1 Jn. 1:12).
“Through his life and death, the curse is truly finished.”
Through his life and death, the curse is truly finished.
The Christmas season does not begin with the baby in the manger. A history of all the world’s labor pains help us understand the gravity of the nativity scene. In those painful years of laboring, God showed his sovereign care, his patience over his creation, and his loving-kindness to his people.
Despite all their sin, God held back the hand of evil through his laws. He drew near to them through the sacrificial system, which continually pointed them to the Christ who would come. And he sovereignly preserved his rebellious people in order to bring about the Redeemer he had promised.
The suffering, injustice, and difficulties throughout the pages of the Old Testament are the labor pains of a people waiting and longing for something better—someone they desperately needed.
A SECOND LABOR
But as much as we need to remember the labor pains that came before Christ, we must not forget the labor we now experience. Paul said to the Romans even now all of creation groans with the pains of childbirth as we wait for the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:22–23).
As Christians, we live in the in-between. We are already forgiven by Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but we still live in a world and body marred by sin. The labor pains we have now are for our hearts to be glorified and for his whole kingdom to be made new.
We experience this each day when we feel the weight of painful sickness, the wounds of violent men, the heartbreak of the news cycle, and the shame of our own sin. We cry with our forefathers, "I'm just ready to meet him".
But in this labor, we have now met the one for whom we wait.
LOOK BACK, HOPE FORWARD
Jesus has come! And his Spirit is not only reserved for the temple or the priesthood, but if we receive him, we are his chosen and holy priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9).
We do not hope in a shadow of what's to come, but we live in the reality of our Redeemer who lived and died for our sins once and for all. Our King will come just as he did the first time. And while we wait, we rejoice in his sovereignty even now—how he stays the hand of the wicked, sustains the earth that rejects him—not because he is slow to his promises, but so that all his people would be drawn to him (2 Pet. 3:9).
Don't forget the hard labor that came before the first Christmas. It's what gives us hope in our current waves of pain. Through our pleading, through our tears, we anchor our hope that he will come again, just as he did the first time.
In the meantime, I'm just ready to meet him.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.