Christmas meditation: The Angels Looking Up and Down

What is Jesus doing there, and there?

Dec 23, 2022

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Luther on Jacob’s Ladder, this is great Christmas preaching!

But what is this ascent and descent? I reply that it is this very mystery that in one and the same Person there is true GOD and man. Accordingly the unity of the Person fulfills this mystery. And we, who believe, fulfill the Word of Christ (John 1:51): “You will see … the angels … ascending and descending.” For we believe in the one Lord, His only-begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary, true God and man. This mystery is so great, so grand, so inexpressible, that the angels themselves cannot marvel at it enough, much less comprehend it. But, as is stated in 1 Peter 1:12, these are “things into which angels long to look.” For angels cannot rejoice and marvel enough at that inexpressible union and unity of the most diverse natures which they do not reach either by ascending or by descending. If they lift up their eyes, they see the incomprehensible majesty of God above them. If they look down, they see God and the Divine Majesty subjected to demons and to every creature.
These are marvelous things: to see a man and the lowliest creature humbled below all, to see the same creature sitting at the right hand of the Father and raised above all the angels, and to see Him in the bosom of the Father and soon subjected to the devil, as is stated in Ps. 8:5: “Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels.” Likewise in Eph. 4:9: “He had descended into the lower parts of the earth.” This is a wonderful ascent and descent of the angels, to see the highest and the lowest completely united in one and the same Person, the highest God lying in the manger. Therefore the angels adore Him there, rejoice, and sing: “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14). On the other hand, when they consider the lowliness of the human nature, they descend and sing: “And on earth peace.”
(LW 5.218)