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Worship Christ, the . . . King

I know I promised to begin God’s Wisdom in Proverbs this week, but I had forgotten that I wanted to fill these days with Christmasy content, which I now begin to do.

Angels from the Realms of Glory
Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o’er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation’s story
Now proclaim Messiah’s birth.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
Shepherds, in the field abiding,
Watching o’er your flocks by night,
God with us is now residing;
Yonder shines the infant light:
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
Saints, before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear;
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
Though an Infant now we view Him,
He shall fill His Father’s throne,
Gather all the nations to Him;
Every knee shall then bow down:
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
All creation, join in praising
God, the Father, Spirit, Son,
Evermore your voices raising
To th’eternal Three in One.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Don’t get me wrong, I like this hymn. I like the theology it preaches, and I’ll admit liking it on the sentimental grounds that I’ve grown up with it and have always liked it. Still, I don’t care for the last line of the refrain: “Worship Christ, the newborn King.” We are not called to worship a baby Jesus (as many Roman Catholics sometimes do), nor were the shepherds. The angels announced “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” That Savior just happened to be an infant at the time, but his age was not really relevant to the shepherds. They didn’t go to Bethlehem to worship a newborn king, they went to worship the King who was, at the moment, newly born.

John MacArthur writes,

Christmas is not about the Savior’s infancy; it is about his deity. The humble birth of Jesus Christ was never intended to be a façade to conceal the fact that God was being born into the world.
—John MacArthur, God’s Gift of Christmas, (Thomas Nelson, 2006), 9.