In today’s reflections from Martin Luther’s Christmas sermons we come across something interesting. Luther contends that the swaddling clothes which the baby Jesus was wrapped in signify the Old Testament Scriptures. Now the principle of interpretation which Luther uses here is, I think, a very poor one. Yet Luther does touch on something important about Christmas. Luther says: Christmas reminds us that the whole Bible is about Jesus.
He writes: The angel says further: “And this is the sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.” The clothes are nothing else than the holy Scriptures, in which the Christian truth lies wrapped, in which the faith is described. For the Old Testament contains nothing else than Christ as he is preached in the Gospel. Therefore we see how the apostles appeal to the testimony of the Scriptures and with them prove every thing that is to be preached and believed concerning Christ. Thus St. Paul says, Romans 3:21, that the faith of Christ through which we become righteous is witnessed by the law and the prophets. And Christ himself, after his resurrection, opened to them the Scriptures, which speak of him. Luke 24, 27.
…Do you see how beautifully Christ lies in these swaddling clothes? How beautifully the Old Testament reveals the faith and love of Christ and of his Christians? Now, swaddling clothes are as a rule of two kinds, the outside of coarse woolen cloth, the inner of linen. The outer or coarse woolen cloth represents the testimony of the law, but the linen are the words of the prophets. As Isaiah says in 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”, and similar passages which would not be understood of Christ, had the Gospel not revealed it and shown that Christ is in them.
Pastor Dave Online 