Wrapped in Swaddling Coths

“Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10–12).

The angel who heralded the birth of Jesus told the shepherds that they would find this newborn Babe, who is Christ the Lord, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a cow’s feed trough.

Swaddling babies was the common practice when Jesus was born. A baby was wrapped tightly in strips of cloth that kept their arms and legs from flailing about, while also giving them a sense of security similar to what they had known in the confines of their mother’s womb.

I remember a time when I was eight years old that I saw, for the first time, a Native American infant on a cradleboard. I was spellbound as I looked at that baby, swaddled and then wrapped in a canvas covering that was laced from head to toe. The cradleboard was equipped with shoulder straps by which the mother could wear it like a backpack. In days gone by, this allowed a mother to continue her daily chores without worrying that her baby might crawl away.

During this Christmas season, I have come to see the swaddling cloths in which the baby Jesus was wrapped as a metaphor for His entire earthly existence. How so, you might ask.

Philippians 2:5–7 says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”

In coming to this earth, God the Son—the second Person of the Trinity—divested Himself of His divine prerogatives and privileges. He put on a suit of flesh and bone as He entered this world in the person of a newborn baby boy. In that very act, the Creator of the universe voluntarily limited Himself to the confines of time and space. The One who had filled the cosmos with His presence became confined—swaddled, if you will—in the tiny body of a newborn infant. And for the next thirty-three years, He would know that confinement until He once again took His rightful place in heaven following His resurrection from the dead.

These voluntary limitations also subjected the Son of God to the possibility of death—the very reason for which this baby, Immanuel, had been born. And die He did. Yet when He offered up His sinless life as an offering for the sins of the world, the grave could not hold Him.

I pray that God would open our eyes and let us see, as we have never seen before, the mystery and the wonder of His indescribable gift to mankind for salvation. May we know and be convinced to the very core of our being that Bethlehem’s baby is indeed Immanuel—God with us.