"Mercy Calls You -- Break Your Chains"

While I was looking up Christmas song lyrics with which I was less familiar than I wanted to be, I found a song titled "Angels From The Realms Of Glory," which had been sung to the tune of "Angels We Have Heard On High." Looking up the lyrics, I saw that there were some verses that the Tabernacle Choir didn't sing. One of the unsung verses referred to the Trinity, so I'm not surprised they skipped that one, but there's another unsung verse that is (at least somewhat) doctrinally sound and that affected me pretty deeply when I read it:

Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you—break your chains.

I don't know how doctrinally sound the "endless pains" part is, and the part about justice revoking the sentence isn't technically correct, but we can chalk that up to poetic language. What really struck me about this verse was the command to "break your chains," implying that this is something someone can do, and something that they must do for themselves. God seldom breaks our chains for us. He merely empowers us and encourages us, and leaves the decision ultimately up to us. I was grateful for the reminder that we can and must do what we can to work out our own salvation, with plenty of help from the Savior, of course.

I also love it when Christmas Songs include reminders of what the Savior did for us and why it's so important that He came to earth in the first place. The reason we celebrate the baby laid in a manger is because that person spent the last three years of His life making it possible for us to break our chains, and the best way we can honor Him is by doing so.

Jesus was born so that He could live and die for us, and He lived and died for us to make it possible for us to repent. So, in a sense, repentance is one of the main reasons for Christmas, and it's probably one of the best ways to celebrate it.