Born Into Battle: Why Christmas Changed Everything

by Dave Miller

From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture reveals a single unfolding conflict that stands behind all human history, namely the struggle between two rival realities: the Kingdom of God that descends from heaven and the counterfeit order that rises from fear, accusation, and death. Although this conflict appears through many images, it reaches one of its clearest expressions in Revelation 12, where a woman brings forth a child while a dragon stands ready to devour, and it receives a helpful theological interpretation in Hebrews 12, where believers are told that they already belong to an unshakable heavenly city.

The writer of Hebrews pulls back the veil and explains that those who are in Christ are not merely hoping for a future heaven but are already positioned within a present heavenly reality that governs their lives now.

“Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a Judge who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.”

Hebrews 12:22–24 CSB

This passage does not describe a distant destination but a current spiritual location, because through faith in Jesus believers already stand inside the heavenly order that Revelation 12 depicts. Even while living in the midst of a broken world, the people of God belong to Mount Zion, which means that their true citizenship, authority, and security flow from heaven rather than from the systems of earth.

Revelation 12 shows this reality in narrative form by portraying the dragon’s attempt to destroy the child of the woman, not because the child is weak but because the child threatens the serpent’s claim to rule. When the child is caught up to God and His throne, the accuser is thrown down, which reveals that the real battlefield has always been about access to God’s presence and the authority that flows from it.

“They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not love their lives to the point of death.”

Revelation 12:11 CSB

This same pattern is visible at the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly life, when Herod sought to destroy the newborn King after the wise men refused to return to him. Matthew tells us that this massacre fulfilled the ancient prophecy of Rachel weeping for her children.

“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Matthew 2:18 CSB

Herod, like Cain before him, did the bidding of the serpent by using violence to try to eliminate the righteous Son of the woman, while Joseph, acting in faithful obedience to the Heavenly Father, became the earthly instrument through which God rescued His Son by carrying Him into Egypt. In this way, the Nativity was never a peaceful interlude but the turning point of the war of heaven breaking into earth, because the rightful King with unrestricted access to the presence of God and the full authority of heaven had entered the world to reclaim it.

This is why Revelation 12 does not begin at the cross but at the birth, because the dragon’s rage ignites the moment God becomes man, and the war shifts markedly from the unseen realm into the very theater where deception and death had ruled the sons of man through the prince of the power of the air.

This pattern did not begin in the manger, however, because it first appeared in the opening chapters of Genesis, when the sons of Adam and Eve stood at the doorway between faith and fear. Abel lived by trusting God, while Cain allowed resentment to make him vulnerable to deception, and God warned Cain with language that echoes the serpent’s role throughout Scripture.

“Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

Genesis 4:7 CSB

Cain did not kill Abel merely because of personal anger, because beneath his jealousy stood the same spiritual deception that later worked through Herod and, ultimately, through the religious leaders who rejected Christ. Abel was not killed because he was weak but because he was righteous, and his faith exposed the lie that fear based power can secure life.

Scripture teaches that Abel’s blood still speaks, which means that the first martyr’s death continues to testify that the conflict between faith and fear is not forgotten by God. And Luke’s Christmas narrative clues us into the promise of God when he traces Jesus, as a descendant of Adam, not through the murdered and deceived sons, but through Seth, whom God gave Eve as “another child in place of Abel” Genesis 4:25.

“Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”

Genesis 4:10 CSB

Yet Hebrews tells us that the blood of Jesus speaks a greater word than Abel’s, because while Abel’s blood cried out for justice, Jesus’ blood proclaims reconciliation, forgiveness, and the triumph of the Kingdom of God.

“Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.”

Hebrews 12:24 CSB

Satan believed that he had finally won when the Son of God was rejected by His own brothers and killed in the spirit of Cain, because the ultimate act of resentment appeared to silence the true King. Yet that very murder became the means of Satan’s defeat, because the blood that once cried for justice did not seek an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, but declared that death itself had been overcome.

This is why Jesus deliberately gave both bread and wine at the Last Supper, because He was declaring that His own life would become the new testimony that defines reality for all who belong to Him.

“This is my body, which is given for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Luke 22:19–20 CSB

However, long before Jesus ever held bread and wine in His hands at the table, He had already demonstrated their meaning in the wilderness, where He faced the same ancient temptation that confronted Cain. After forty days of fasting, when His body genuinely needed bread to survive, Satan offered Him a shortcut that would have turned obedience into a bargaining chip, asking Him to sacrifice allegiance to the Father in exchange for the fruit of the field. Unlike Cain, who grasped for control, and even beyond Abel, who trusted God in offering, Jesus refused to sell His obedience, choosing instead to hold Mount Zion as more worthy than the temporary satisfactions of Babylon and the old creation.

“Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Matthew 4:4 CSB

In that moment, Jesus effectively offered both the fruit of the field and the blood of faith to the Father, because He placed His physical hunger and His very life under the authority of God, looking forward to the joy set before Him in the new creation rather than yielding to the fleeting power of the old one.

“For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12:2 CSB

The bread and the blood together therefore announce that Jesus trusted the Father all the way through death, and that His faithfulness revealed a Kingdom that no violence, betrayal, or grave could overturn. In this way, Jesus did not merely die for us; He also showed us how true faith operates as unwavering allegiance to the Father even when the serpent appears to offer something we desperately want.

Hebrews defines this kind of faith not as wishful thinking but as participation in what is already real.

“Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.”

Hebrews 11:1 CSB

Because Abel lived by that faith and Jesus perfected it, those who follow Christ are called to live as visible proof that the Kingdom of God is more solid than anything the world can offer. Faith, therefore, is not simply agreeing with Christian ideas but embodying a heavenly reality in the midst of earthly pressure.

This is also why Scripture consistently describes faith as allegiance, because to belong to Christ means to be willingly and joyfully possessed by the Spirit of God rather than being shaped by the spirit of the age. The gospel does not leave us neutral, because the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in those who trust Him, forming their desires, loyalties, and patterns of life according to the culture of heaven rather than the culture of Babylon.

“You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.”

Romans 8:9 CSB

This is why Hebrews ends this section with a statement that connects worship, gratitude, and spiritual stability to our citizenship in God’s Kingdom.

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe.”

Hebrews 12:28 CSB

The serpent still crouches at the door of human hearts, and the accuser still seeks to turn fear into violence, but the Kingdom established by the blood of Jesus remains unmovable. When believers live in trust rather than panic,

obedience rather than self protection, and testimony rather than silence, they become living witnesses that heaven’s reality has already broken into the world. 

In this way, our lives begin to echo the better word spoken by Christ’s blood, which does not announce condemnation but declares that the Father’s Kingdom has already come and will never be shaken.

And tomorrow, Christmas Day, represents our celebration of this cosmic altering reality. This is the infant, named Jesus, in Mary’s arms.