The Christmas story as it is related in the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke is beautiful and cause for rejoicing by the church of Jesus Christ. It is not a story that is beautiful because the details of the story are appealing to man. Man can only find that story appealing if man gives the story a bit of air freshener and a makeover. Man must make the barn smell good. He must make the hay clean. He must wash the animals and brush them. He must ignore the sign of the manger. And he must make the baby Jesus mute—as no baby ever was—so that “no crying he makes.” That story as remade by man can be proclaimed as peace and goodwill to all men.

The details of the Christmas story all speak—every one of them—of the lowliness of Jesus’ birth and the wretchedness into which he was born, a wretchedness that came upon him because of man’s sin. In order to save us, Jesus had to be judged guilty by God for the sins of all his people. And because Jesus had been judged guilty, he was born into the worst of circumstances so that there in the ugliness, in the stench, and in the uncleanness of the barn, of the manger, and of the animals, was revealed the beauty of the grace of God. The only thing that is beautiful about the Christmas story is the beautiful grace of God that is solely responsible for the coming of that babe of Bethlehem and the grace of God that is shining brightly against the dark backdrop of the ugly scene of the manger.

So it was also for Christ his whole life. He was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He went all his life from the manger to the cross; from the deep humility of the barn, he passed into the deep darkness of his hellish agonies on the cross. And this descent began as soon as he returned with Joseph and Mary from Egypt. God brought them back to Nazareth so that Jesus might be called a Nazarene.

What men call you, how they refer to you, expresses what they think of you and the honor that they either bestow upon you or that they withhold from you. And I ask you, does not what men call you affect you very deeply? What men call you can damage you for the rest of your life. What men call you sinks deeply into your soul and lodges itself in your heart. And though many years later the pain of what men called you is not so sharp as it was when they first said it, the remembrance of what they called you never goes away.

They called Jesus a Nazarene.

That Jesus was called a Nazarene refers very simply to the city of Jesus’ origin. Like the Bible calls Elijah the Tishbite, Amos from Tekoa, and David from Bethlehem, the Bible calls Jesus a Nazarene. He was from the town of Nazareth.

When Jesus was born, it did not appear at first that he would be called a Nazarene, but it appeared at first that he would be called a Bethlehemite. He was born in Bethlehem, and the prophet wrote, “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2). Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not in Nazareth. God moved a whole world so that his Son could be born in Bethlehem. God moved Caesar Augustus, the emperor in Rome, to give a decree that all the world should be taxed, and that decree was made in Judea when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. God moved Joseph to take his espoused wife, Mary, being great with child, from Nazareth, their hometown, down into Bethlehem, the city of David, because Joseph was of the house and lineage of David.

There in Bethlehem the angels sang of the glory of God at the birth of the savior. They sang of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. There in Bethlehem the angels appeared to the shepherds, and the shepherds went to Bethlehem to see the baby lying in the manger. And the shepherds returned from Bethlehem, and they noised abroad to the entire countryside that a savior had been born in Bethlehem—the son of David, which is Christ the Lord.

Some two years after Jesus had been born, he was still living in Bethlehem, this time in a house. And there in that house, wise men came from the East, having first gone to the palace of Herod. Having been guided by the star to the house in Bethlehem, they arrived and worshiped—not Mary—the baby. And they gave him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

It was only after the wise men came that the baby had to flee from Bethlehem. Joseph, being warned of God in a dream, took the baby and the mother and fled into Egypt because Herod sought the child’s life. And it was there, out of Egypt, that God called his Son. And Joseph came into the land of Israel, but being afraid to go back to Bethlehem and being told by God in a dream, he went to Nazareth. And so Jesus was called a Nazarene.

His parents were born in Nazareth. They lived there. They were married there. It was their hometown, and it would be Jesus’ hometown too. He grew up there. He learned there. He attended the synagogue there. And that is, too, what the Jews called him: Jesus the Nazarene.

You understand, it is not merely the point of the text that Jesus was from Nazareth. That was plain enough. But the point is that Jesus shall be called a Nazarene.

What was Nazareth? Nazareth was not a town of any distinguished history. Nazareth was not like Bethlehem, about which the prophet Micah spoke with such glory: out of Bethlehem would come the governor, so that if he came from Bethlehem, everybody would know that he was the governor, whose goings forth were from everlasting! Nazareth was not like Bethel, where the patriarch Jacob had made his pillow of stones and where God had appeared to him in a dream of heaven opened and of the ladder with angels ascending and descending. Nazareth was not like Jerusalem, the city of David and the home of the temple. The city was Nazareth—a town of apparently recent origin, a town of no particular importance in the history of the nation, and a town of no significance either in the current life of the nation. Nathanael, the Israelite with no guile, said it best, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). In Nazareth there was no religious university. There was no important synagogue. There were no great teachers. Nazareth was a forsaken collection of hovels in the hill country of Galilee, economically depressed, the epitome of the basic, crude, or backward life.

“He shall be called a Nazarene.”

A label.

A stamp.

A label or a stamp is intended to summarize one’s entire character or in a few words to characterize a person. The purpose is to be able with that label or stamp to discount and to dismiss you. When Jesus was called a Nazarene, that was not merely intended to express Jesus’ origin or to express the distinction between this Jesus and some other Jewish boy in the nation of Israel who may have been given the name Jesus. Nazarene was intended to be a stamp to express in a single word the hatred and the loathing for Jesus. Nazarene was a label, a stamp, that was intended to be the answer to all that he said and all that his mighty works declared him to be in order to discount and to dismiss him.

When someone labels you, that is called an ad hominem argument. Ad hominem is a Latin phrase that means against the person. That is a rhetorical trick in the realm of debate and theological argument that is used to answer someone whose arguments and words you have no interest in answering and whose arguments and words you cannot answer. And that ad hominem comes from a bad spirit.

On the one hand, the label is designed to give cover to the one who uses it. It is true, after all, that Jesus was from Nazareth. But on the other hand, behind the label Nazarene stood the hatred, the dismissiveness, and the loathing of the one who used it.

People do that with last names. They do that with physical characteristics. They do that with tendencies. They do that with origins and with races. Men have done that all through history. It is the old, old trick. They did that with the name Christian in the beginning. They did that with Luther and Calvin. They said of Hoeksema that he was one-sided, an Anabaptist, and a hyper-Calvinist. And they say today, “Antinomian.” They did that with Jesus too. It was their answer to him, and it expressed their hatred for him.

Jesus was not born in Nazareth. The Jews all knew that. They knew who Joseph and Mary were. They knew that this precocious, young boy was a theologian of the theologians, who at age twelve could debate with all the lawyers and the rabbis in the temple and who could ask and answer all the hard questions. They knew that Joseph was a righteous man and that Mary was a believer. The angels proclaimed baby Jesus at his birth. The shepherds noised abroad the announcement of the coming of the Christ. John the Baptist was Christ’s herald, and John declared before all Israel that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Christ declared by his authoritative words and mighty deeds that he was the Christ, so that he needed no other announcement.

Jesus Christ made the blind to see. He made the lame to walk. He healed the sick. He preached the gospel to the poor. He set at liberty the captives. He said, “If you do not believe me for my words, believe me for my works’ sake.” And when he came into Nazareth, he read a prophecy in the synagogue:

18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

21. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

22. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. (Luke 4:18–22)

Yes, such gracious words. The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ! All these things declared plainly that Jesus was the Christ. All these things declared plainly that a man must believe in him; that a man must eat and drink him, or that man has no life in him. All these things testified that a man must become united to Jesus Christ. All these things plainly said that Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. These things all declared that a man who believes in Jesus lives and will never die.

And over against all of Jesus’ gracious words and all his wonderful works, the Jews dismissed him with the label Nazarene. All his life that contemptuous sobriquet dogged him. Some would say, “He is Isaiah” or “He is Jeremiah” or “He is John the Baptist come back from the dead.” But mostly they said with a sneer, “He is a Nazarene.”

They even said that in Jesus’ own hometown. They were too proud of their forsaken collection of hovels in the hill country of Galilee to use the word Nazarene itself, but they said the substance of it. They showed all the contempt and the loathing and the hatred that stood behind that label Nazarene when they said after his testimony that God had anointed him, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

When the soldiers sought Jesus in the garden, and in order to express all their wicked intentions and to excuse all their evil deeds and their treacherous and traitorous planning, they said that they sought “Jesus of Nazareth” (John 18:7). Even the worldly, unbelieving Pilate understood what Nazarene meant; and when he made his accusation to be hung over Jesus’ head, he wrote, “Here is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

If Jesus was from Nazareth, he was not from Bethlehem. And if he was not from Bethlehem, he could not be the Messiah. If he was from Nazareth, all he could ever be was the offspring of an adulterous relationship between two scions of the disgraced house of David. He never could be the Christ. And with a single word, the Jews dismissed the babe of Bethlehem, the son of David, and the Son of God, as a hick, a rube, an imposter, a fraud, and a blasphemer. And they nailed Jesus to a tree to curse him.

By that name Nazarene they declared that he was worthless for salvation, worthless to bring the promise of God, and worthless to establish the kingdom and the covenant. And though men do not use the word any longer, they still in deed call him a Nazarene whenever they displace him and his perfect work as the only work necessary for salvation.

Of this the prophets prophesied. There is no trouble in determining what it means that he was called a Nazarene, but what does it mean that it was “spoken by the prophets” that he shall be called a Nazarene?

Anyone who is acquainted with the Old Testament knows that one will not find anywhere in the Old Testament the words “he shall be called a Nazarene.” They are not in Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. The words are not in any of the minor prophets, the law, the psalms, or any of the writings. The words are not found in the Old Testament.

There is one passage. It is Isaiah 11:1: “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” The word “Branch” is a translation of the Hebrew word Nazareth. If you would translate this verse the way it sounds to the ear, you would translate it this way: “There shall come a Nazarene out of the root of Jesse.” That word Nazarene in Isaiah 11:1 means a little shoot out of the stump of a tree that has been cut down and left for dead.

Have you ever seen a tree in the woods or maybe on your property, and that tree has no canopy left? The bugs have gotten to the canopy and devoured it, and the tree is rotten and dead. So the owner of the property cuts down the tree and leaves only the stump in the ground. After a few years of sitting there with the rain falling on it and the snow covering it, a little shoot springs out of the stump of that hacked-down tree. That is a nazarene.

When someone sees that little shoot come out of the stump, he looks at the shoot and says, “That will never amount to anything.” And the man despises that little shoot—that nazarene—that comes out of the stump of that cut-down tree.

So with the word about the branch that would come out of the stump of Jesse, not only Isaiah prophesied that Jesus would be a Nazarene, but also all the prophets prophesied that “he shall be called a Nazarene.” For all the prophets prophesied that Jesus would be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Men, who glory in appearances, would despise Jesus. They would dismiss all his words. They would ignore all his works. They would only repeat that little label that they had invented in clever unbelief to characterize Jesus and to stamp him as contemptible. All the prophets prophesied that. Man does not accept his savior. Man loathes his savior. In loathing him, man ridicules him. In ridiculing the savior, man dismisses Jesus in a single word. The prophets, from Genesis to Malachi, all said that. And they said that because God said that.

The main thing about the fact that Jesus was called a Nazarene is not that man called him that but that God called Jesus a Nazarene. Men used that label to express their contempt of Jesus. But God called Jesus a Nazarene because a sinner must be shamed. A sinner must be dismissed. God dismisses the sinner with a single word. It does not matter what that man’s life says outwardly as men can see it. It does not matter how great that man may be or what that man’s accomplishments may be in this life. All the works that a man does, his accomplishments, words, church membership, and outwardly pleasing life in the world do not matter, and the last word about him is sinner. With that single word, man must be dismissed. He must be dismissed in this life, and he will be dismissed in eternity. God calls man as God called Jesus—a Nazarene—because the sinner can only be despised. And God called Jesus a Nazarene, and God controlled all the despising of Christ and ultimately the cross because God had judged Christ guilty for all the sins of all his people.

And that little nazarene—that little shoot that comes up out of the hewn-down stump—has one other meaning. It means head or representative. Out of that stump came that little shoot, and that little shoot represented the only thing that was living in the whole nation of Israel, the whole line of Adam, and the whole race of mankind. Only Christ had life. He had life of himself, and he gives that life to whomsoever he wills. There is no life in man, in an Israelite or in a Gentile; there is no life in a man or a woman or a child; there is no life in all the world apart from that little branch out of the stump of Jesse.

God called Jesus a Nazarene because God had judged Christ guilty for all the sins of all his people, so that Jesus Christ could pay for those sins of all God’s people as their head. God had made Christ responsible for all those people. God had identified Christ with those people. And God had identified those people with Christ. He was one with them. They were Christ’s. And because they were his, their sins were his. Because their sins were his, God judged Christ guilty. Because God had judged Christ guilty, God called Jesus a Nazarene. Because God called Jesus a Nazarene, God dismissed Jesus Christ. That is what Christ said in his agony on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

By that death, the death of the Nazarene, God also accomplished salvation. Christ is worthless to men, but he is precious to God. Christ lives, and he poured out his life unto death. He made himself of no reputation and took on himself the form of a servant, and with his life he made the perfect sacrifice in obedience to God.

And having dismissed Jesus on the cross and raised him from the dead, God still says, “Jesus is a Nazarene.” He was the only thing living in all the house of David and in the nation of Israel and indeed in all the world. And there was no life apart from Jesus Christ. It was because of him that the line of David still existed and that nation of Israel was still around in the world.

That is true historically. The root of David, of Jesse, of Israel, of Abraham, and of Adam also is Christ. He was before all things. By him all things consist. And he appears as that little shoot in history. There was no life in Israel and in the whole line of the patriarchs apart from Jesus Christ. And also now that is true. There is no life in the whole world apart from Christ.

So the apostles preached Jesus. He was crucified and arose the third day; and fifty days after that, when all the Jews had gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, Peter stood up and said, “I declare unto you Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, whom ye took, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, but whom God has raised up and made head over all!” Most glorious proclamation. The name that the Jews had sneeringly used to dismiss Jesus is declared to be the only name in which salvation is found.

The apostles raised a lame beggar, saying, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). That is man’s salvation. In Jesus’ name means union with Jesus Christ. Man’s salvation consists in being joined to Jesus of Nazareth.

And when God joins you to Jesus of Nazareth by faith, forgives all your sins, and sanctifies you by his life-giving Spirit, then you, too, become a Nazarene. Not now in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of men do you become a Nazarene. This means that men will dismiss you. This means that when you speak the word of God and you live the word of God and you represent the word of God in the world by word and deed, so that the word that you speak clearly testifies the truth of the word of God, then men will despise you and in hatred will dismiss you with a label.

The false church stoned Stephen for preaching Jesus of Nazareth. The false church wrote off the whole Christian church before the Roman governor as the sect of the Nazarenes. If you are a Nazarene who is joined to Christ by a true and living faith, let that mind be in you that was also in him, a mind that will willingly and joyfully endure reproach for his sake. It is his reproach. When Jesus Christ converted Paul, the persecutor of the sect of the Nazarenes, on the road to Damascus and stood before Paul in his exalted glory in heaven, Jesus said, “Paul, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.” As Paul was dragging the Christians off to their trials and to their jail cells and to their deaths, he did that to Jesus of Nazareth. Because we are one with him who is the Nazarene, we become Nazarenes. And as Nazarenes we become the objects of men’s ridicule and scorn and hatred. And men will label you with nasty, evil labels.

You cannot avoid that. Oh, I am not saying that you cannot avoid the reproach of the name. You can. It is possible for you and for me to avoid the reproach of being called a Nazarene. But we cannot do that without denying Jesus Christ. If we can sit comfortably with those who have cast him out and those who have reproached his name or with those who by their silence and connivance are partakers of that sin in others, then it is because we are embarrassed of Jesus the Nazarene, and we say by our actions that we do not know that man. If you rebuked the unbelief of those who have cast out Christ or those who connive at that wickedness, would they sit with you? Would they not likewise cast you out? Yes, yes, you can avoid being a Nazarene but not without denying Jesus Christ. If you confess him, then you are associated with him. And then his reproach becomes yours.

And when unbelieving men show their hatred of Christ by dismissing those who confess him, then Jesus says, “Rejoice and be exceeding glad!” We celebrate Christmas properly then, as a people who remember the birth of the Nazarene, by becoming Nazarenes ourselves. Not by trying to overcome the division and the hatred and the reproach that God put between the church and the world, between Christ and Satan, and between faith and unbelief but by bearing it. Bearing it as Jesus did, as a badge of honor. So that when the Jews said to Jesus, “We seek Jesus of Nazareth,” he said, “I am he!”

Our Father in heaven, we thank thee for the birth of Jesus, the Nazarene. And, Lord, we thank thee for joining us to him and making us glad with his salvation. So, Lord, make us glad when we suffer for his name’s sake, that we may bear that suffering as a badge of honor from our risen and exalted Lord. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.