Swaddling Clothes

Most of our best ideas come from someone else. (Mine, anyway.) I shamelessly borrow good ideas and readily confess. I am in good company. I heard a great sermon by Haddon Robinson on the Ecclesiastes. He said that the Song was written by the Preacher for us to share with others.
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

I was visiting with my friend, Bill, this morning, and he told me about a Christmas sermon that he had heard. So I am at least number 3 in handing it down. It was another example of “little things” in the Bible being very important, if we only listen long enough.

Luke 2:7 and 2:12 mention this minor detail. “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” Verse 7 reports that she wrapped the baby in swaddling clothes. Other translations have changed the wording and this increases the likelihood that we will overlook it.

Just what are swaddling clothes? You may have heard that they referred to burial clothes which are wrapped around a body before interment. Thereby they prefigure Jesus’ death and burial. (GotQuestions.org is a good site to begin a search on Biblical questions. It is not always the last word, and I have found a few deficiencies, but nothing glaring.) GQ noted that the word used for “swaddling clothes” in Luke is never used for burial purposes anywhere else in the New Testament. Probably an inaccurate interpretation.

But it was used, and still is used, to describe the wrapping of a baby. One, it mimics the close confinement of the womb, and is comforting to the newborn. It also restrains arm and leg movement that might tend to turn the child off his back. It essentially immobilizes the baby, as it would an adult if he were so bound. And the significance is...?

Bill’s pastor provided a fresh insight, for both of us. And maybe for you as well. When God came down to become a man, He was “swaddled” or constrained by the human body He infused. He went from being omnipresent, everywhere simultaneously, to being confined into one tiny bundle of humanity. And to further represent His voluntary relinquishing of an attribute of deity, He was confined even as a baby. His total submission and loss of power was pictured.

Philippians 2:8 explains this:
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He didn’t just humble Himself to become a man. But as a man, He humbled Himself to the most humiliating and confining condition of death on a cross. “He could have called ten thousand angels,” the old song goes. (Matthew 26:53) But He resisted the display of power and authority.

He gave a slight nod to His submission when testifying before Pilate in John 19:11:
Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”
I have to admit that I believe that Pilate was a little slow. If I had heard such a chilling pronouncement, I would be heading for high country. To his credit, he made some efforts to release Jesus, but in the end Pilate feared the Jews more than he feared “the above.”

The “swaddling” of Jesus was total and complete. God, incarnate, yielded all power and authority to control even his own body. The swaddling clothes did, indeed, presage a wonderful truth. But it was not the macabre picture of a corpse. But of a living, vibrant sacrifice voluntarily submitting to the sacrificial offering. And we know what happened three days later.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!