During Advent this year, I will be reflecting daily using this Advent Photo Devotional. The word designated for December 4th was #King. 

A favorite worship song which can be particularly appropriate for the time around Christ the King Sunday and the early Sundays of Advent is “The King of Glory” by Willard F. Jabusch. It’s a catching tune which does a nice job of connecting the incarnation, birth, life, death, and resurrection.

The text of the song includes:

The King of glory comes, the nation rejoices. Open the gates before him, lift up your voices. 

Who is the King of glory; how shall we call him? He is Emmanuel, the promised of ages. In all of Galilee, in city or village, he goes among his people, curing their illness. Sing then of David’s Son, our Savior and brother; in all of Galilee was never another. He gave his life for us, the pledge of salvation; he took upon himself the sins of the nation. He conquered sin and death; he truly has risen, and he will share with us his heavenly vision.

The King of glory comes, the nation rejoices. Open the gates before him, lift up your voices. 

The image of a king is one that we have come to associate with Christ. But what kind of a king rests his head in a manger bed? One that is for the world, full of love, grace, and truth.

Martin Luther writes in his Christmas Book,

“‘They presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.’ Incense is a live confession, full of faith, by which we offer all that we have and are to God. The Wise Men traveled a long distance to bring this gift. Spiritually we can bring it swiftly and easily. The gift of gold is that we should confess Christ as King, laying aside our own esteem and the dictates of our reason and good intentions, that we should present ourselves as foolish, naked, and ready to be ruled…The myrrh is love…Love reduces us to that nothing which we were in the beginning, so that we desire neither goods nor anything outside of God, but simply that we should commit ourselves truly to his good pleasure. This is the way of the cross by which we come most speedily into life.” – Martin Luther, 64-65.

What do you think of when picturing Christ as King? What does this mean to you? 

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Sources:

“The King of Glory,” Willard F. Jabusch, Israeli traditional, found in Worship and Praise, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), 136.

The Martin Luther Christmas Book, Roland H. Bainton, trans., (Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg Press, 1953), 64-65.