The Bible

 

Matthew 2:11

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11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Commentary

 

Christmas Gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

By New Christian Bible Study Staff

The Adoration of the Magi, a Design for Bas Relief.

In the Christmas story, the wise men bring gifts to the Lord: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The gold is listed first, because it is the inmost - signifying good, e.g. the good that we do when we love the Lord and the neighbor.

The frankincense is next. It signifies rational truth, which is the set of true ideas that we know, not about external things like cars or cooking, but about what is really good, and what is really true.

These rational truths are built on earlier knowledges that we learn, before we have really made them our own. Those early knowledges about spiritual things - often learned in childhood - are represented by the myrrh.

In a way, these gifts are really a reciprocation. We can't actually give them to the Lord until the Lord has given them to us. We necessarily start out by learning and doing the Lord's law (myrrh). The Lord can then call up those memories to become rational truths (frankincense). Then, over time, and with effort, those truths can be transformed into good (gold). The wise men from the East had gone through this process of learning and becoming vessels that could receive truths and goods. They were able to perceive the Lord's birth, and find him, and bring gifts to him.

Commentary

 

Wise

  

Like love, wisdom can come from many levels. Ultimately, though, all wisdom is a reflection of the perfect, infinite, divine wisdom that is the Lord's. At its heart, wisdom is love's imperative desire to take form. That's a tricky statement, but think of it this way: If you love someone, you are simultaneously filled with the desire to express that love. The desire for expression is so powerful and automatic that it is really part of the love itself. And that desire to express love is wisdom. Wisdom thus gives love form, and gives it tools so it can reach out and affect the world. Wisdom gathers knowledge so that from love it can form ideas and understanding of what it is to be good and how to be good. And sometimes, when the Bible talks of being wise, that's the kind of wisdom that is meant – a wisdom that seeks knowledge from a love of what is good, so it can use that knowledge for good. At other times, though, "wise" represents perversions of this, with knowledge twisted to other ends. A somewhat neutral example is the "wise men" of Egypt. They were people who had an extensive knowledge of the correspondences between spiritual things and natural things, but took an external view of them, using them for worldly knowledge instead of spiritual knowledge. A negative example is in Revelation 13:14, which says "here is wisdom" and offers 666 as the mark of the beast. There "wisdom" represents insanity, with knowledge twisted completely to evil ends.