If you are gathering together with your extended family today, you may hear your relatives retelling family stories. Often, one person’s version will sound a great deal different than someone else’s memory. They are not necessarily contradicting one another. Instead, each is describing the same event from their unique point of view. One person saw something that the other did not.

Luke was not an eyewitness to the circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth. But he did speak with those who were (vv. 1–4). It seems likely that many of the details of Luke’s account came from Mary. He describes the unusual circumstances of the birth and the surprising recipients of news about the child’s arrival.

The unexpected combination of an imperial decree and an angelic announcement underscores the divine nature of the whole affair. God moved heaven and earth to ensure that Mary and Joseph were in the right place at the right time. The first public announcement that Israel’s Messiah had arrived was not to kings or princes but to shepherds “living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night” (v. 8). Their words are emblazoned on countless Christmas cards and have been understood by many as an appeal for world peace. But the peace announced by the angels was a very different kind. Their message was a promise of peace with God, which can come only through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Paul seems to echo the angels’ announcement in his expansion on this theme in Romans 5:1–3: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”