Luke 2:13,14
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): An exhibition of divine splendor had been already made in the person of a single angel. But God determined to adorn His Son in a still more illustrious manner, This was done to confirm our faith as truly as that of the shepherds. Among men, the testimony of “two or three witnesses” is sufficient to remove all doubt, Matthew 18:16. The message was no sooner delivered by one angel than suddenly there was with that angel “a multitude of the heavenly hosts;” sufficient, we may be sure, to make a chorus, heard by the shepherds, “praising God;” and certainly their song was not like that which “no man could learn,” Revelation 14:13—for it was designed that we should all learn it.
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): There was never such joy on earth, and never such joy in heaven as upon Christ’s nativity, when the angels sang. The angels sang but one song before, which is recorded, but the matter of it seems to be the wisdom of God chiefly in creation.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): They were present at the creation: “The morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” Job 38:7. They had sung solemn songs over many a world which the Great One had created. We doubt not, they had often chanted, “Blessing and honour and glory and majesty and power and dominion and might be unto Him that sits on the Throne,” manifesting Himself in the work of creation, Jude 1:25; Revelation 5:11-13. I doubt not, too, that their songs had gathered force through ages. As when first created, their first breath was song, so when they saw God create new worlds then their song received another note. They rose a little higher in the gamut of adoration.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Creation glorified God, but not so much as redemption—Now is come the time when God’s kindness and good will towards guilty man is to be fully made known. His power was seen in creation. His justice was seen in the flood. But His mercy remained to be fully revealed by the appearing and atonement of Jesus Christ.
C. H. SPURGEON: They sang the story out, for they could not stay to tell it in heavy prose. They sang, “Glory to God on high and on earth peace, good will towards men.” Methinks they sang it with gladness in their eyes—with their hearts burning with love and as full of joy as if the good news to man had been good news to themselves.
J. C. RYLE: These famous words are variously interpreted. Man is by nature so dull in spiritual things, that it seems as if he cannot understand a sentence of heavenly language when he hears it. Yet a meaning may be drawn from the words which is free from any objection, and is not only good sense, but excellent theology, “Glory to God in the highest!” the song begins. Now is come the highest degree of glory to God, by the appearing of His Son Jesus Christ in the world. He, by His life and death on the cross, will glorify God’s attributes—justice, holiness, mercy, and wisdom—as they never were glorified before.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” It seems strange, doesn’t it?—to hear those words ringing down through the ages, when you think of the awful condition which prevails in the earth today. Look where you will; there is no peace. Look at the lands abroad; there is war. Look out over our own land; it is strife between different groups. There is misery and wretchedness everywhere, unrest on every hand; and yet the angel said, “Peace, goodwill toward men.”
J. C. RYLE: Now is come to earth the peace of God “which passeth all understanding”—the perfect peace between a holy God and sinful man, which Christ was to purchase with His own blood—the peace which is offered freely to all mankind—the peace which, once admitted into the heart, makes men live at peace one with another, and will one day overspread the whole world.
H. A. IRONSIDE: Ah, but that peace was dependent upon receiving the Saviour whom God had sent into the world. Alas, men rejected Him. They refused Him, and that is why the world remains in its unhappy condition.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): The strongest possible evidence of God’s love to men was, the gift of His only dear Son, to die for them. The whole race of man had fallen, and were subjected to God’s heavy displeasure. Nor was there on man’s part any possibility of restoring himself to Divine favour. But God devised a mode for reconciling the world unto Himself through the intervention of His only Son. On His co-equal, co-eternal Son, who was “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,” “He laid our iniquities,” that so, His justice being satisfied by an atonement in our behalf, reconciliation might be effected for us in perfect consistency with all the Divine perfections, Hebrews 1:1-3; Isaiah 53:6. Hence peace was brought down from heaven to earth, through the sufferings of our incarnate God, who is therefore emphatically called “the Prince of Peace,” Isaiah 9:6. Now every sinner in the universe may have peace with God, and in his own conscience, if only he welcome this Saviour into his heart, and believe in Him as God’s appointed instrument for the salvation of the world.
J. C. RYLE: Such was the purpose of the angels’ song. Happy are they that can enter into its meaning, and with their hearts subscribe to its contents.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): The glory died off the hillside quickly, and the music of the song scarcely lingered longer in the ears of its first hearers; but its notes echo still in all lands, and every generation turns to them with wonder and hope.
C. H. SPURGEON: I wish everybody that keeps Christmas this year would keep it as the angels kept it. Many persons who, when they talk about keeping Christmas, mean cutting the bands of their religion for one day in the year, as if Christ were the Lord of misrule, as if the birth of Christ should be celebrated like the orgies of Bacchus. There are some very religious people that would never forget to go to Church on Christmas morning. They believe Christmas to be nearly as holy as Sunday, for they reverence the tradition of the elders. Yet their way of spending the rest of the day is remarkable—they would not consider they had kept Christmas in a proper manner if they did not verge on gluttony and drunkenness—many think Christmas cannot possibly be kept except with a great shout of merriment and mirth in the house and added to that, the boisterousness of sin.
MATTHEW HENRY: But here is a heavenly host, with one consent and one voice bearing testimony to the Son of God. What then would be our obstinacy, if we refused to join with the choir of angels, in singing the praises of our salvation, which is in Christ?
C. H. SPURGEON: The angels gave glory to God. Let us do the same.
