C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Christmas

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.

Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed,

you might say landed in disguise,

and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.

1

And now, what was the purpose of it all?

What did He come to do?

Well, to teach, of course;

but as soon as you look into the New Testament

or any other Christian writing

you will find they are constantly talking about something different—

about His death and His coming to life again.

It is obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies here.

They think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.

The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death

has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.

We are told that Christ was killed for us,

that His death has washed out our sins, and,

that by dying He disabled death itself.

That is the formula.

That is Christianity.

That is what has to be believed.

2

Now what was the sort of “hole” man had got himself into?

He had tried to set up on his own,

to behave as if he belonged to himself.

In other words, fallen man is

not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement:

he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

This process of surrender—

this movement full speed astern—

is what Christians call repentance.

And here comes the catch.

Only a bad person needs to repent:

only a good person can repent perfectly.

But the same badness which makes us need it,

makes us unable to do it.

3

But supposing God became a man—

suppose our human nature which can suffer and die

was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—

then that person could help us.

He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man;

and He could do it perfectly because He was God.

You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us;

but God can do it only if He becomes man.

The Second Person in God,

the Son, became human Himself:

was born into the world as an actual man—

a real man of a particular height,

with hair of a particular colour,

speaking a particular language,

weighing so many stone.

The Eternal Being,

who knows everything and who created the whole universe,

became not only a man

but (before that) a baby,

and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body.

If you want to get the hang of it,

think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

The really tough work—

the bit we could not have done for ourselves—

has been done for us.

The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ:

perfect because He was God,

surrender and humiliation because He was man.

Now the Christian belief is that

if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ

we shall also share in His conquest of death

and find a new life after we have died

and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy, creatures.

4

God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.

You might say landed in disguise.

Why is He not landing in force, invading it?

Is it that He is not strong enough?

Well, Christians think He is going to land in force;

we do not know when.

But we can guess why He is delaying.

He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.

God is going to invade, all right:

but what is the good of saying you are on His side then,

when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream

and something else—

something it never entered your head to conceive—

comes crashing in;

something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others

that none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise;

something so overwhelming that it will strike

either irresistible love or irresistible horror

into every creature.

It will be too late then to choose your side.

Ken Futch, who selected and arranged these quotations from “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis, is professor of English at California Baptist College in Riverside. “Mere Christianity” was originally published by The Macmillan Company in 1943 (Reprinted with permission).

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