How Jesus’ Birth Declared War

Most of us are used to soft-focus Christmas. Candlelight services. Cute pageants. Gentle carols and Hallmark warmth. But the Bible’s Christmas story is anything but safe. It is the beginning of a rescue mission, a declaration of war against an enemy far more dangerous than we like to admit.

Years ago in Las Vegas, a young mother lived through a nightmare that sounds like something from a horror film. Her family was temporarily housing several large snakes from the shop where she worked. One night, while her three-year-old son slept in his bed, an eighteen-foot python silently slithered into his room.

His grandmother went in to give him a goodnight kiss. When she pushed on the door, it stopped against something heavy. She forced it open and screamed—there, on the floor, lay the massive tail of a snake. The python had coiled itself around the little boy and was squeezing the life out of him.

The boy’s mother heard the screams from the kitchen. She grabbed a butcher knife and ran like a woman on fire into the bedroom. She stabbed and slashed, driving the blade into the snake again and again. Seventeen times she plunged the knife in before the serpent finally loosened its grip. The boy survived. The snake did not.

Most of us instinctively place ourselves in that story as the hero with the knife. But spiritually, we are the child in the bed—not the mother. Our enemy is not a literal python but the “ancient serpent” Scripture speaks of, the one who lied to Eve, deceived Adam, and slithered his way into the whole human story.

Christmas is the story of God hearing the scream.

It is the story of a Father who will not stand by while the serpent crushes His children. It is the moment He sends His Son into the world—not just to comfort, not just to inspire—but to crush the snake that is strangling us.

An Old Promise in a New Room

To see what is happening in Luke 1, we have to go back to the beginning.

Imagine standing in Eden. The air is thick with the scent of fruit and flowers. The ground is soft under your feet. Creation is still ringing with the echo of God’s “very good.” But something has gone terribly wrong. Adam and Eve are hiding in shame. They have listened to another voice—a smooth, persuasive serpent who assured them God was holding out on them.

You can almost feel the dread in their chests as God calls their names. They know judgment is coming. But before God speaks to them, He speaks to the serpent. And in His judgment, He makes a promise:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

Right there, in the ruins of rebellion, God promises a child. A descendant of the woman will one day crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will wound him, but the final blow will belong to the child.

From that moment on, the Old Testament is full of wondering: Will this son be the one?

Eve hopes it might be Cain. Lamech hopes it might be Noah, praying his son will bring relief from the cursed ground. Abraham, Moses, David—each seems promising for a time. Each fails. None can resist the whispering snake. The curse remains.

And then, centuries later, we find ourselves in a small town in Galilee, in a quiet room in Nazareth, where a young Jewish girl named Mary is about to hear words that will turn history.

“The angel Gabriel was sent from God,” Luke writes, “to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin… and the virgin’s name was Mary.” He greets her with a warrior’s assurance: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.”

No wonder she is troubled. In the Old Testament, “the Lord is with you” is not a Hallmark slogan—it is what God says to people headed into battle. Mary is about to be drawn into the center of a cosmic war she did not choose but was born to play a part in.

Gabriel tells her she will bear a son. She is to call his name Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. He will receive the throne of David. He will reign forever, and His kingdom will never end.

This is not just birth announcement. It is battlefield language. The seed of the woman is finally stepping onto the field.

Christmas as Dragon-Warfare

In Revelation 12, John gives us a startling image of Christmas from heaven’s perspective. He sees a woman in travail and a great red dragon crouched before her, waiting to devour the child as soon as He is born. The child is destined “to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” and yet the dragon believes—again—that he can stop God’s plan.

The birth of Jesus is a birth under threat.

Herod’s slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem is not just political paranoia—it is the dragon lashing out. The temptations in the wilderness, the opposition, the plots, the cross itself—all of it is the serpent striking at the heel of the One who has come to crush his head.

We make a mistake when we imagine the devil only as a horror-movie monster. He almost never comes that way.

In Eden, he sounds gentle, reasonable, even helpful. “Did God really say…?”
Today, he still sounds like what our flesh most wants to hear:

You don’t have to forgive that person. They hurt you too badly.
God wants you happy more than holy. He won’t mind if you ignore His commands.
If anyone knew what you struggle with, they would abandon you. Better to hide it.

As one exorcist put it, demons study us. They learn our weaknesses, our patterns, the places we are most easily tempted and most deeply wounded. They do not mind if we laugh at the idea of spiritual warfare. They prefer it. It makes their work easier.

But into this world—into this darkness—comes a child who will not listen to the serpent’s voice. A child who will not buckle under temptation. A child who will grow into a man who walks straight into the teeth of the dragon and refuses to bow.

Christmas is the moment the knife appears in the doorway.

The Child Born to Break the Curse

Gabriel’s explanation to Mary is simple and staggering: the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, and the child to be born will be holy—the Son of God. This will not be another ordinary son of Adam, infected with the same disease and crushed under the same curse. This child will be truly human and genuinely divine. He will be like us in every way except sin.

The New Testament is clear about why this matters.

Because Jesus became human, He can stand in our place. He can bear our judgment. He can be tempted as we are and yet never surrender. He can sympathize with our weakness and still provide a righteousness we could never achieve on our own. He can absorb the curse and break its power.

And because He is the eternal Son, His life, death, and resurrection have infinite worth. He can carry the weight of the world’s sin. He can defeat not only the guilt of sin, but the powers and principalities behind it.

God had promised new hearts. He had promised a new covenant. He had promised that He would be our God and we would be His people. Christmas is heaven’s way of saying, “I meant it. Every word.” The baby in Mary’s womb is the guarantee that God keeps His promises, even when humanity has broken every one of ours.

Allegiance in a Time of Decorations

We are used to Christmas as a sentiment. The New Testament presents it as allegiance.

Gabriel’s words to Mary make it clear: this child will be a king. He will sit on David’s throne. His kingdom will never end. This is not a seasonal story we can visit in December and leave behind in January. It is a royal summons.

Either we stand with the serpent, who offers comfort now and devastation later, or we stand with the Seed of the woman, who calls us to repentance now and promises life forever.

For some, siding with the serpent doesn’t look dramatic at all. It looks like quietly living for self. Spending money however we like. Nurturing grudges. Numbing ourselves with entertainment. Keeping our sins carefully hidden. Telling ourselves God understands and doesn’t really mind. The serpent is happy with that. He does not need open Satan-worship. A little indifference will do.

But Christmas will not allow indifference. The child Gabriel announces is not just a source of nostalgia; He is the one before whom every knee will bow. His birth declares that the war has turned. His cross disarms the rulers and authorities. His resurrection announces that the serpent’s head is already under His heel.

The question is not whether the dragon will lose. It is whether we will still be clinging to him when he falls.

The God Who Runs into the Room

That Las Vegas mother could have frozen at the door. She could have stood there screaming, paralyzed by fear. But love drove her forward. She ran toward the danger. She raised the knife. She counted no cost too high to save her child.

If a fallen, flawed human mother responds like that, what do we think the God of Scripture is like?

Christmas is not God’s polite gesture toward a vaguely troubled world. It is His decisive charge into enemy territory. It is the moment He hears the strangled prayers, the suffocating shame, the quiet despair—and runs.

He runs not with a knife, but with a cross.
Not with seventeen stab wounds, but with one mortal blow.
Not just to give us a second chance, but to give us a new heart, a new identity, and a new future.

Some of us need to hear that for the first time. You may realize you’ve spent your life trusting your own wisdom, following your own desires, assuming God will not judge you. Christmas is your invitation to switch kingdoms—to stop siding with the serpent and bow to the King who came to save.

Others of us believe in Christ but live as if the serpent still has us pinned. We feel defeated by sin, ruled by our desires, exhausted by shame. Christmas tells us that the One born of Mary has already broken the serpent’s grip. We do not fight for victory; we fight from it.

The child in the manger is not fragile. He is the dragon-slayer in disguise.

So this Christmas, as you hear the familiar story, remember what it really is. Not just a baby. Not just a manger. Not just shepherds and stars.

It is the sound of a door slamming open.
The flash of steel in a desperate hand.
The roar of a serpent finally losing its prey.

The light has entered the room.
The grip is breaking.
And the King has come.