Don Miller | Christmas 2025: What child is this?

I am the light of the world – John 8:12

There are two types of light in the world.

When we are born into this world, we perceive physical light; without it we would have no life.

But there also is another light, which Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate today, spoke about as being the light of his truth, and the light of eternal life.

He said those who perceive this true and eternal light will never walk in spiritual darkness – and how this light can be taken into the dark places of the never-ending hatreds, misery and violence of our world.

Jesus says that this light will illuminate our path, if we follow him and reflect it to others by how we live and treat others.

And light we need, since, as Jesus observed, in this world, in this life, we will have troubles.

And so we do.

And now, as seemingly forever, we long for peace.

Centuries before the birth of Jesus, the Jewish prophet Isaiah wrote of a child who would be called the "Prince of Peace." His reign would end oppression and set things right.

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

– Isaiah 9:6

We often think peace is something we can secure by will power, commerce, or military might. Or we might believe that through silence, by ignoring problems, maybe they'll go away.

But similar to light, the Gospel looks at peace far differently.

Jesus, according to the New Testament, fulfills the promise of Isaiah 9:6 but not by marshaling armies or by pretending everything is fine.

The New Testament teaches that on the cross, Jesus takes on the hostility and violence of this world and absorbs it in love. Through Jesus' death and resurrection, God reconciles all things to himself and opens the way to lasting peace.

Jesus calls his followers "peacemakers," people who join him in the hard but profound work of reconciliation. Being a peacemaker means telling the truth about brokenness, forgiving instead of retaliating, and choosing to love both neighbors and enemies. It means being willing to repair what we can and trust God with what we can't.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for peace is shalom and in the NT the Greek word is eirene. Isaiah looked forward to a future king who would bring shalom. The Apostle Paul says Jesus himself is our eirene. And Jesus' followers are instructed to create their own eirene, which, according to Jesus, means taking what is broken and restoring it.

So back to Christmas, a day that commemorates the strange circumstances of the birth of the ultimate peacemaker.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I, along with a small group of believers from a local church, traveled to Israel, a journey most would not take today.

Among our stops was the West Bank city of Bethlehem, a Palestinian city of 220,000, separated from Jerusalem and Israel by a wire fence and border checkpoints.

Jesus was born here, according to the New Testament, and pilgrims for many centuries have lined up to go through the Church of the Nativity, some 1,700 years old, built above a limestone cave.

Once entering, we descended into an underground area beneath the main floor of the church to quickly pass by the very spot where tradition says Jesus was born in a manger.

The setting, the caves, the circumstances of Jesus's birth, were about as far from the seemingly lofty heights of modern religion, much less the vast medieval cathedrals of Europe, as one could imagine.

But, again, there had been generations of anticipation. Prophets foretold this event and the people hoped for it. And so there, in a simple town, amid poverty, with a family seeking shelter, witnessed by shepherds smelling of sheep, it happened. The Son of God took on the vulnerability, frailty, and weakness of humankind by beginning his life as we all do - as a baby. To Mary, the Savior was born.

Do you think anyone imagined that at his long prophesied coming, the Messiah would begin his life on earth as a powerless baby? That he would grow from an infant to a child to a teenager to an adult, the same way we all do? Even during his ministry, people wanted to view Jesus as a conqueror - a man of power who was going to topple the Roman government and establish himself as their triumphant ruler.

Jesus, however, did not come to topple governments or gain earthly power and influence. He came to serve, to reach out to the people on the margins of society and to redefine power by turning the world upside down.

The Apostle Paul wrote, within a few years of Jesus' crucifixion, that Jesus had come and "made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a humble servant." A servant who in obedience died a criminal's death, and one who, Paul also wrote, made peace with us through that death.

And yet, two millennia away from the arrival, ministry and violent death of Yeshua, his teaching remains the most influential ever recorded, though, as we can see today, in the end it's often ignored or twisted.

Even so, frightening and apocalyptic as our present times can seem, it's human to reach out for hope, for believing tomorrow will be better, that shalom is on the way.

And this hope is reason enough to bring gifts and place them at the foot of the Christmas tree.

So, tonight, as I've done for many years, in darkness I approach.

I can see generations dance across the tree. Come and gone.

The branches of this tree are wildly askew; all my failures hang there, my secrets too.

There's a distant sound of Christmas bells.

I'm not surprised I hear them toll for me.

A whisper. We are not of this world.

Light flickers in the shadows.

A star rises in the east.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Yes, come, let us behold the man.

Prince of peace.

Light of the world.

Don Miller is the Opinion Editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Portions of this column ran previously. Thank you to the Bible Project for the word studies.

Tribune Regional CA

This story was originally published December 25, 2025 at 2:18 AM.