Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm 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 merry

gentleman, which powerfully describes that the incarnation was a rescue mission. And there's

the haunting beauty of Ocome, Ocombe Emmanuel, which-Com-Emanuel, 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

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