Come, Peasant King

One of the songs that the ward choir is practising right now is a version of "What Child Is This?" which contains the line "Come, peasant, king, to own Him." Since I'm a bit of an English nerd, I've really latched on to the punctuation of that sentence and how its meaning would change if we were to remove that second comma.

As it stands now, the invitation is addressed to both "peasant" and "king," showing that the invitation is open to people at a variety of social and economic levels, implying that the invitation to come unto Christ is open to just about everybody, which is a great message, but if you remove that second comma, the meaning becomes very different.

Without that comma, the invitation is no longer open to both "peasant" and "king," but to a person who is, somehow, a "peasant king." This description seems like a contradiction, but there are at least two ways in which it could apply to any of us.

First, we could be kings in terms of our wealth and blessings, but peasants compared to God. Most of us aren't unbelievably wealthy, but most of us have enough to get by, which is more than what some can say. And, rich or poor, we can all consider ourselves richly blessed. We have the Gospel. Many of us are usually in good health. Most of us have cherished family members and/or friends. We all have priceless blessings that money cannot buy. In that sense, then, we are as rich as kings, if not richer. Yet, we are all peasants compared to God. Whatever we have, God has more and better, and that includes both material and immaterial things. We could have all the blessings in the world, and yet, we should be humble, because no matter how great and blessed we are, we are nothing compared to God. We may be kings, yet we would still be peasants.

Second, even if we are the least blessed of mortals, we are still, eternally, kings. As I've noted, most of us aren't terribly wealthy. We may not have as many blessings (material or immaterial) as other people have. We might actually be rather poor, both physically and spiritually. Yet, we all have a royal heritage. We all have at least the potential to become kings and queens. Because of our eternal potential, we can all rise above the heights of even the greatest of mortals, no matter how humble our origins are. We may be peasants, yet we are still kings.

Though it seems like an oxymoron, we are all "peasant kings" and "peasant queens." We are all base in some ways and royal in others. There is no contradiction here. With the second comma, "Come, peasant, king, to own Him" applies to everyone. Without the second comma, the invitation still applies to us all.