O Come, Emmanuel 10: Law's Awe

My tenth Christmastide reflection on that beautiful carol, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, focusses upon its fifth verse’s final two lines:

In ancient times didst give the law,
In cloud, and majesty, and awe.

Not only is Jesus Christ the pre-incarnate God of Sinai, but the One who gave there the laws to Moses. Thus He never came to abolish them, but fulfil them, and, in His human form, to obey them. Moderns who like to think of Jesus as some cosmopolitical liberal or coffee bar hippy with free spirit theology and relativist ethics should heed the ancients’ better understanding of Christology. That majestic, awesome and terrifying God of Horeb with His astonishingly high moral standards and dreadful penalties became Bethlehem’s Babe, that He might live that law-abiding life on our behalf. He then died the law-breaker’s death in our stead upon that horrid cross, for which the magi’s myrrh offered darksome hint.

This is the real meaning of Christmas.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel;
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by Thine Advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,
In ancient times didst give the law,
In cloud, and majesty, and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

From the text of the 1851 translation by John Mason Neale of the twelfth-century hymn Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, published in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861)