Mfonobong Inyang: Understanding the Hidden Meanings in the Birth of Christ

The story of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, also known as The First Noel, has been celebrated for over two millennia. This story is a reminder that God gave His only begotten son to save the world, demonstrating His love for humanity. The word ‘gave’ is a derivative of the word ‘gift’, which highlights how Jesus’ birth was a gift to us all. My Zulu/Xhosa folks in Mzansi have a word for it that I love so much, Isipho. Hence Christmas is exactly that, the mass celebration of Christ as a gift to the world. This year, beyond the commercialisation of the event and the festivities that typically tend to focus on everything else but the subject – no thanks to needless culture wars – I elected to interrogate this story from a purely ecumenical perspective with a sprinkle of exegesis.

In the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, the intelligence of Jesus is classified. The people in that dispensation didn’t see the light, they only saw silhouettes. Hence, the pre-incarnate Jesus was communicated to them in types, shadows and metaphors. In the twenty-nine books of the Old Testament, especially the Pauline Epistles, Jesus was communicated with in explicit terms. John would famously submit that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

God’s Plan

I once submitted that many things documented in the book of Genesis do experience some sort of iteration across the remaining sixty-five canonised books. Right from the start, even before the first Adam fumbled the bag – God had a plan for redemption. The book of Revelation lets us know that Jesus was, “slain from the foundation of the world.” Even Micah, a minor prophet, gets a rare insight into this truth about Jesus and he documents it accordingly, “whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Jesus himself had to put the records straight with those who were capping on his origins. “Before Abraham, I was!” It’s God-esque to start something only after he has already finished it. Hence it becomes a pedestrian conversation to split hairs over the date that Jesus was born.

After Adam and Eve fell off from glory, the first thing they invented was deception – the use of fig trees to cover up themselves, literally and metaphorically. God didn’t have any of that, so later in that same chapter, God made them coats from animal skins. This is seminal because to get the skin of an animal, it must necessarily be killed. In other words, blood was shed. This was a precursor to Jesus ultimately shedding his blood on the cross as the sacrificial lamb.

Side note: I have always wondered why Jesus been dey para for the fig tree that year, cursing a seemingly innocuous tree. I used to consider his reaction as an overkill. Then it dawned on me that there’s more than meets the eye with that scenario. Perhaps, Jesus’ grouse with the fig tree wasn’t just that it dashed his hopes when he was hungry. Could it be that it gave him déjà vu, a pseudo that had leaves without fruit which represented shadow without substance? It reminded him of the first Adam’s futile attempt at self-righteousness. That’s why as the last Adam, Jesus had to come up clutch on prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. Talmabout, “I can’t do this on my own” just to right that original wrong in the Garden of Eden.

Hidden In Plain Sight

In the Old Testament, Jesus is outchea moving under deep shadow conditions. Operating like a sleeper cell; an infiltration unit, going by aliases and conducting covert ops. As the pre-incarnate Christ, he was often referred to as an angel. When you see God talking to Abraham about a ram caught in the thicket that would be slain in place of his son, Isaac, that’s Jesus on code. When Noah built an ark which would save anyone who heeded the warning of the impending great floods and being saved by entering the ark, that was Jesus on code too. Jacob placed his head on a rock and he had a vision of angels ascending and descending from heaven; Jesus was that runway – he was the way between God and man. When God told Moses to make a brazen serpent and put it on a pole such that whoever looked at it would live, it was a mirror of Jesus on the cross. Apollos, one of the greatest minds that walked on God’s green earth, was speculated to have documented the book of Hebrews. He doesn’t get enough PR like Paul of Tarsus did but he was just as profound. He not only decodes this but also intelligently uses a parallel phrase to underscore his point, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross”.

There is a litany of such examples but as that era progressed, certain people began seeing things a little more clearly than their peers. David, who himself is an archetype of Christ, literally documents the very words that Jesus would later repeat on the cross at least a thousand years before it happens, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” David prophesies about Jesus’ resurrection, “For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your holy one to see corruption”. He also predicted a dispensation of grace that Jesus would usher in, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered”. David was a shepherd who loved his father’s sheep so much that he risked his life to save just one sheep from a lion’s mouth. In a stark parallel, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who also risked his life and left the ninety-nine sheep behind to save that lost sheep. No surprise that David’s opening thoughts when documenting one of the greatest pieces of biblical literature was, “The Lord (Jesus) is my shepherd”.

Unto Us, A Child Is Born

Isaiah also intercepts significant intelligence about Jesus. He prophesied about a son being given who is no ordinary baby but will be fully God and fully man at the same time. Isaiah speaks about the physical incarnation of Jesus, who for the very first time, blows his cover and comes into play as a child but he is really “The mighty God, The everlasting Father”. In the intelligence community, there is something we call a cover story – a spin where one story is shared with the public to deflect from a more consequential story which typically borders on homeland security. Thankfully, we’re not hirelings who don’t know what their principal does – as family members, we know wetin dey sup. When you hear that there was no room for Jesus in the inns, whilst that explanation is true – that’s the lamba for the general public. The real reason was that Mary couldn’t have given birth to a lamb in a hotel, it was more appropriate that it happened in a barn!

I learnt something from Dr. Mike Murdock many years ago. “Wisdom is the ability to recognise differences.” The wise men recognised that this wasn’t just a kid, Jesus was king. In that culture, you only gift gold to royalty, it was a sign of honour or tribute – anyone else would amount to an act of treason. That’s why Jesus was sad because he came to his people and they couldn’t recognise him as a messiah; they only referred to him as the carpenter’s son. If you ask me, it wasn’t so much the shouting of Bartimaeus that caught Jesus’ attention but that he recognised him by his messianic title, “Son of David”. I believe that the reason why Jesus co-signed John the Baptist as the greatest of the old prophets was because, unlike his predecessors who could only see the Lamb of God as a representative animal, John recognised and pointed people to Jesus as, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Religion is what you get without the revelation of Jesus. When Jesus told Peter that, “Upon this rock, I will build my ecclesia” – it was a double entendre. Peter is petros, a pebble. Jesus is Petra, the rock. Whilst it primarily implied that Peter would head the ministry, it meant that the ministry would be built on the revelation of Jesus as the Christos – The Anointed One.

Typical of Paul, he comes through as that player you can count on to make the home runs. He is obsessed about the revelation of Jesus, hence you would hear him saying stuff like, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ” and “that I may know him”. Most of the assault on his life was owing to, “the abundance of the revelations”. So when someone with understanding wishes you a “Merry Christmas,” it’s not just a festive salutation, that person is effectively telling you that Christ is HIM.