Advent Through the Lens of Four Christmas Songs

First Sunday of Advent 2010 AD

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Part 2

Matthew 1.23

— Verse 2 – Wisdom – Prov 8.12-36; 1Cor 1.30; Col 2.3.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,

Who orderest all things mightily;

To us the path of knowledge show,

And teach us in her ways to go.

The Bible identifies Jesus with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity – the eternal Son, the eternal Word, God’s Wisdom personified (John 1.1-3; Prov 8.12-36).  Thus, Wisdom speaks in Proverbs and says, “Whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD; but he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death.”  (Prov 8.35-36.)  Only God can speak in this way.  Exactly.  “Jesus became to us wisdom from God.”  (1Cor 1.30.)  “In [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  (Col 2.3.)  Apart from Jesus, there is no true wisdom – there are at best little fragments of wisdom, like broken pieces of glass from a once beautiful stained glass window.  The unbeliever can discover wisdom and beauty, but only in isolated fragments, never in the whole.  When we come to Christ, Emmanuel, we come to Wisdom, and the bits and pieces are all put into place.  Only then do we see life in the beauty and glory it was meant to be.  And truly the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.