The Law applies even if sweetly delivered.

Imagine the tender scene of a troubled man, anxious for his family during very difficult economic times.  He is sitting in the foyer of an employment office once again informed there is no work.  Assistance is so hard to come by.  His family is without health insurance but not without medical needs.  The guy is strapped and struggling.  His spirit is breaking.

Another man sees the dejected look, the hunched shoulders and the body language of a man with few options and many cares.  He comes over and lays a hand on the other man's shoulder and says kindly, "Don't worry.  Just keep your chin up."

Well meaning as the remark may have been, he only lays another straw on the back of someone already carrying a severe load of obligations and fears.  On top of everything else, he is told not to worry.  

Thanks a heap.  The words may be sweetly delivered by they are still law.

A romantic image of the infancy of Jesus can easily overlook some fundamental realities.  Jesus didn't come into the world to be the poster child for a Gerber-styled babyhood.  The Bible states in Galatians 4:4-5, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons."

The law applied to Jesus.  The very author of the Ten Commandments must himself submit to them.  The baby Jesus receives no exemption.  He is not excused from the obligations of the moral law or even the civil or ceremonial law just because he is virgin-born or serenaded by angels.

He may indeed be a king, and indeed is, but nobody who opens the womb avoids the imperatives of the law.  He was born under the law!  Holiness of life is compulsory for Jesus if he is to be one of us.   

Do we sing three times in the refrain of the carol, "O, come, let us adore him, ... adore him, ... adore him" because he is so adorably cute?  Because he is sweet as sugar-plumbs?  Or is it because adoration and worship is owed to the God who deliberately stepped into the shoes and even the skin of a man like the one we spoke of before being crushed by the law?

Jesus wasn't given a pass in this world. The Law of Moses, the self-same written Law of the Lord, obligated Jesus as a first born son (as every first born son of Israel) to be holy to the Lord.  Just because generations of Israel's sons before him never lived up to this requirement means nothing.  Jesus must keep it.

The law never loses its potency even when applied to Jesus "so poor and so small."  There is no begging off a single ordinance of God.  There is no immunity for being cute.  The law must be discharged.

The Lord of the Temple must go to the Temple of the Lord.  The ransom price must be paid for one who is the property of the Lord.  Jesus, even though God Himself, must serve under the Law throughout his life because he is now a man.

Poverty notwithstanding, the binding decree of the law would bring Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem for her purification, and with them Jesus who must uphold the law, fulfill the law, and execute a flawless life if He is to be the vicarious Redeemer of the world. 

There is no way to soften it.

And the law extends no pity.

A man may be struggling; his family may be under pressure, besieged by bill collectors; his liabilities may be mounting to the point of devastation.  The law will have no sympathy.  It continues to demand. 

It is not the tone but the implacability of the law which crushes.  It cuts no one any slack.  There are no margins or time outs, no special dispensations or "freebies."  The entire weight of the Law was a fundamental reality under which Jesus came into this world.

Jesus not only died for us; he lived for us ... lived under the Law and toiled under the law.  He endured under the law from his infancy straight through to his crucifixion.

And why should He do such a thing?  Why take on this uncompromising obligation and accept the duty of man?