Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth emphasizes earthly connections to the Old Testament lineage from David and Abraham and fulfillment of prophecy. Luke points in a bit more heavenly direction. Both perspectives are necessary. We need to be convinced that Jesus was the One the prophets foretold. We also need to be captured by the One worthy of worship and devotion.

Luke calls Jesus “the Son of the Most High” and says that it is “the Lord God” who will give Him the throne of His father David. These titles could not possibly be loftier. Along with Jesus’ many claims to deity (“Before Abraham was born, I am!” John 8:58) and New Testament proclamations of Jesus’ deity (Colossians 1:15– 20), Luke’s titles in these verses prevent us from thinking that Jesus was merely “a great teacher” or “another prophet.” As C.S. Lewis observed, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse” (Mere Christianity, book 2, chap. 3).

As Christmas approaches, let us bow before the One who is “the Son of the Most High” and the One on David’s throne, a place of honor for all eternity.