“Grace of Christmas”
- Dec 19, 2025
- 5 min read
When Mary accepted God’s call to become Jesus’ mother, she then accompanied her ‘YES’ (see last week’s blog) with a song that today we call the ‘Magnificat’; it’s Mary’s startling response to God.
It begins: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour" (v46).
When we hear the word ‘magnify,’ we might think of a magnifying glass. I have one on my desk in the study. The grandchildren love to play with it and see how it makes things appear larger than they are. I guess this would be our immediate thought when we hear the word magnify; ‘to increase the size of something.’ Yet, here in our text, ‘magnify’ means something more profound. It’s ‘to praise highly, to glorify, to extol,’ here specifically it’s ‘to praise or render honour to God.’ This recognises and elevates God’s grace, greatness and glory in our lives.
Mary’s song is about Him - His divine power, holiness, grace, mercy and His faithfulness.
Listen to how Mary magnifies her Lord! “He has done great things for me… His mercy extends to those who fear him… He has performed… He has scattered… He has brought down… He has lifted up… He has filled… He has helped…”
Mary is making it very clear, it’s HIM, not me!
I began to wonder what part we will play this Christmas in magnifying the Lord, declaring His greatness, goodness, and grace? HIM, not me!
Tim Keller suggests, “If someone asks you if you are a Christian, you should not say, ‘Of Course!’ There should be no ‘of-course-ness’ about it. It would be more appropriate to say, ‘Yes, I am, and that’s a miracle. Me! A Christian! Who would have ever thought it? Yet He did it, and I’m His.”
Somehow, through all the celebrations at this Christmastime we must come to realise again how wonderful and awesome God is!
The Message Bible puts it this way,“His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before Him.”
So, my prayer this Christmas is that God’s mercy, love and grace will flow in ‘wave after wave on those who are in awe of Him.’
Why not stop and pray for His wave after wave of grace on...?
Richard Rohr said, “God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”
At Christmas, we see God making the common holy, the mundane mighty, and the everyday extraordinary. We are called to revel in God’s continued choice of the unexpected.
So, what about it?
As we make our way once more with Mary towards Bethlehem, we celebrate God’s unexpected favour for the last, the lowest, and the least. How are you and I living the ‘way of God’ into being? What are we about in making larger or bringing into clearer focus the love and life of God? I’m thrilled that God shuns the spectacular and prefers the ordinary, I’m one!
Dietrich Bonheoffer spoke these words about 'The Magnificat': “The song of Mary …is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind."
Mary sung in the Magnificat, “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble” (Luke 1:52).
The Magnificat reveals God’s powerful transforming work. The God she praises is not just about His heavenly existence, but gloriously it’s about His redemptive work on earth. It’s God’s gracious work in our lives and then responding with praise and glory. This is what Christmas is all about!
J.B. Phillips says, “We have not only to be impressed by the “size” and unlimited power of God, we have to be moved to genuine admiration, respect, and affection, if we are ever to worship Him.”
If we are honest, we have downsized God so often, sometimes reducing Him to a helpless, distant being who has nothing to do with our lives. Mary states the opposite. He is God ‘unlimited’!
A.W. Tozer's challenge is, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
One of my go-to texts is Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
Mary had come to realise life was hard, but God is great! When she heard she was to be the mother of the Messiah, she didn't know how it would turn out, either in the present or future. She simply believed it to be true.
She calls Him ‘God my Saviour’ in the opening line of her song (v47). She sings of God looking on her humble state (v48). I guess, on one hand she sees her littleness, her nothingness, feeling totally unworthy; yet on the other hand she recognises she’s been chosen by God and how amazing this is (v49).
God’s unexpected low-key, casual arrival to an unwed teenage mother, in a backwater town, a little north of nowhere, was perhaps God’s biggest unexpected surprise of all, in the extraordinary yet ordinary birth of Jesus.
God's grace is sufficient to transform lives. All that is required is faith!
The Magnificat is Mary’s perspective and new understanding of all that God is and what He is doing. From that place of acceptance, when Mary said YES to God, Mary is now experiencing a work of God’s grace, whereby by His Spirit she’s at the place of adoration.
Have you been there? That point where you are literally bursting with praise and wonder at all that God has and is doing in your life? Mary began singing praise to God for what she had once thought unmeasurable, unfathomable, unthinkable, unimaginable, uncontainable, but had now become real.
Let’s do the same!
It is clear that Mary knew God’s word. Writers have noted Mary either quotes or alludes to verses from Genesis, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Samuel, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah.
The song highlights grace, mercy, hope, and a joyful, Scripture-filled response to God's saving work. Through the song we are reminded of God’s radical reversal of power, which brings blessings to the humble, that brings down the proud, that fulfils promises to Israel made ages before, but will be brought about through her son, Jesus. Amazing!
Mary is describing the wonder of Christmas, realising it’s all about God! It's God’s everlasting story. It’s about His Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Never running out, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. It’s a song for all who are weary, for all who mourn, for all who are anxious, for all who sin and need a Saviour.
The Magnificat reminds us that God’s promises last, therefore we have every reason to hope and rejoice, even in the darkest of days.
Henri Nouwen states, “Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend, be our companion.”
Mary’s testimony points us consistently to Jesus. He’s the one she recognised as Lord and trusted Him for everything. We must do the same.
Whilst He is absolutely uncontainable, we must still make space for the God of grace! You see, the uncontainable can be found in you and me.
Such is the Grace of Christmas!
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