Road Trippin With Rachael

We are onto our third carol: The First Noel. Previously, we have looked at O Come, O Come Emmanuel and at What Child is This. O Come, O Come Emmanuel looked to why the world and specifically the Hebrew people were looking for Emmanuel (God with us) to come. Meanwhile, What Child is This answered the question of who this long expected baby was – Jesus.

As we begin to look at The First Noel, we are going to be taking a closer look at the theology behind who this person that the world has been waiting for. As we explore this, we will be looking to the Gospel of John chapter 1. Specifically we are going to take a look at verses 1-5 and then 14-18.

As a side note, although we are looking at this through the lens of Christmas, I spent 2024 going through the Gospel of John on my YouTube Channel, Road Trippin with Rachael. If you’d like to watch my video on that, it will be linked here.

Noel – What’s in a Word?

Noel is not a common word in everyday life – at least, not until unless there is someone in your life with that name. I’ve often been known to say when I worked with students that words matter and so does perception. By understanding where we get the word, we can also understand what it means, and the implications of that word. Before we begin to look at theology, we need to take a closer look at the word noel itself.

So where does the word “Noel” come from? If we look back, we’ll find that Noel originally comes from the Latin word nasci – which means to be born. If out you’ve taken a foreign language, you’ll know that there are families of where words come from. For example, the romance languages (Spanish, French, and German) are based in Latin, but there are also many other languages that have developed out of the romance languages.

Out of the Latin, Noel became Nael; this was Old French and was used as a reference to Christmas. From there, through the beauty and magic of commerce and interaction with other cultures, Nael developed into Nowel during Middle English, also used to refer to Christmas. Modern English has now developed the pronunciation to what we know today, with it continuing to mean Christmas.

Taking this back to Scripture with regards to nasci meaning – to be born – if we look to Ecclesiastes 3:2 we know that there is a time for everything. Colossians 1:15 has Paul saying that Jesus Christ is the first born among many, which is a reference to Jesus’ status as the Son of God. This is how we relate the word to Christmas – the birth of one who came in the time that was predetermined.

A bit of a long winded explanation, but I thought that understanding who we get to the words of the song that we are looking at, then we can have more appreciation for the carol as a whole.

In the Beginning – John 1:1-5

Now we are going to be getting into the theological part of the conversation.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light sines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. – John 1:1-5 (Christian Standard Bible)

The Word was present at the beginning. In this case “Word” is a synonym for Jesus. The Word has been present since the beginning – which would mean that He was a part of creation (Genesis 1:26). If we follow the flow of logic, this would also mean that Jesus as the second Person of the Trinity was not created; in other words, this is a statement of the deity of Christ. Jesus as the personification of humanity as it as intended was born and that is what we celebrate at Christmas. We celebrate God coming to be among sinful man in the form of an innocent baby who would then go on to live a perfect, sinless life.

The Word Dwelt Among Us – John 1:14-18

The Word began flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, “The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me’.”) Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side – he has revealed him. – John 1:14-18

It was not for kicks and giggles that Christ came as a baby. He came to dwell among his people (Israel). Although separate from human kind, God was still very active in the the world, which is very different from the pantheons of the world at this time. Man could not stand before God because of sin, but God’s character is omnipresnet (which means that he is everywhere at all times). That being said, there was a special place – called the Holy of Holies – where the presence of God manifested among the Jewish people.

Throughout much of the Old Testament the Jewish people had a tabernacle until the reign of King Solomon, which was when the first temple was constructed. Tabernacle meant “dwell”, and since the tabernacle was in and among the people, it was symbolic of God dwelling amongst the people. The Holy of Holies was in the center of both the tabernacle and the temple, further symbolizing that God was to be the center of the people’s faith.

Isaiah and Jeremiah do a good job of explaining why the people would eventually be removed from the land and sent to Babylon. As a part of their exile out of the land, the temple is destroyed. It would later be rebuilt when the people return, but during that time, in the Hebrew mind because there was not a physical location for which the people could go to worship, they did not collectively believe that God was present with the people, and that they could not maintain their relationship with God – meaning that they couldn’t offer sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. Of course, eventually the people return, the temple is rebuilt, and King Herod right before the time of Jesus reconstructs the temple to make it grandiose; there were various reasons for that, however we will not discuss those here.

Turning our attention back to Jesus coming, we can then look at this as Jesus coming to tabernacle among the people, and unlike in the Old Testament, God did not restrict his presence to the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could enter, but he walked, talked, ate, and prayed with his people. His presence was not going to be restricted to a single point, and it was not only a high priest that was going to be able to come to him. He was gong to be available for all people, and his presence was amongst the people. Like today, we don’t need someone to serve as an intercessor between ourselves and God. We are able to go to him and know that he hears us.

What Does Noel Mean for Us?

As I’ve already eluded to, Christ coming and dwelling among us meant that God was now approachable. In many ways, he always has been. God didn’t turn anyone away who was earnest in seeking him. This included other who were Hebrew, and those who weren’t. It includes you and me. We do not need to utilize a sacrificial system to be forgiven of sins. We do not need to wait for once a year for a man to enter the temple to ask forgiveness for us. We do not need to regulate our worship to a specific place. Instead, we can go to God to confess our sins, to ask for forgiveness, to have a relationship with him. Nor do we need to be in a specific place for any of this to happen. We are able to come to God at work, in our cars, the subway, on a plane, in the deepest darkest places, and he will tabernacle with us.