So the year turns, until Good Friday and the Crucifixion vividly reveal to us the grim and tragic fact of human sin, and the fearful cost of the Saviour’s mission to deliver us from its power.  For sin is that attitude of heart and mind which instead of looking outwards to God to determine one’s actions, perversely and rebelliously looks inwards and makes self the deciding factor – and often self in its most unpleasant form.

And just as there can be no fellowship between darkness and light, so there can be none between a self-centred and self-seeking person on the one hand and God on the other.

So the Child of Bethlehem became the Man of Sorrows, who did not flinch from the cost of his mission to make possible the full restoration of that broken fellowship – possible, because before it can become actual, individuals must themselves first respond by their repentance: turning from self to God and renouncing all those things which have kept them from him.

So that same carol goes on:

“O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today”.