First, the central truth that Jesus is God’s World Ruler. We know it opened up in Isaiah 9 and throughout the prophets.

“For to us a child is born, To us a son is given, And the government will be on his shoulders. He will be called the Wonderful Judge/Prime Minister, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and right judgement from that time on and forever.”

Less it is observed how Jesus, while fully taking on the title King of the Jews (even to the extent of insisting on the title to Pilate when it would kill him) also avoided being merely the Jewish national ruler. He acknowledged himself as Messiah to the Samaritan woman, but damped it within Jewish situations. He turned down the national insurrection move of the five thousand crowd in John 6 15. He relativised the Temple, the Jewish national symbol. God’s ruler of all nations could not be nationalist, or nationally focussed, to the exclusion of others.

Paul understood that Jesus was Messiah , the Christ, of all Nations, especially in Romans 15 and quotes Isaiah, “the root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him.” The Christ of all Nations is the ruler of all. The Orthodox understanding of Pantocrator is the Almighty, the ruler of all peoples.

My understanding would be that western culture now is so dominated by the political rule as control, the will of the people or the elite, and military conquest – as it was in the first century – that it cannot understand and get inside the kind of rule which Jesus insists on – humble, service, disarming, for the weak, for all, law abiding, not domineering or aggressive and self-effacing. But we have allowed this rule to be sentimentalised and locked inside church, rather than being political, as it is in the New Testament.

Jesus is Son of David, King of the Jews, Son of Man (the vision given in Babylon), Son of God and Messiah or Christ. You don’t get much more political than that. Recognising Jesus political rule is the sticking point for the existing powers and the greatest challenge for humankind. To understand and submit to Christ is to open up the political healing of the nations we so obviously need.

Of course, the obvious Christmas expression of the rule of Christ over all nations is found in the fact that three kings turn up at his birth in homage with gifts. With God’s guidance they understood that the baby was king of all nations, the ruler of all, even though the jealous Herod the Great, probably creased with bowel cancer, did not. And so we bring our gifts to God’s ruler of the nations.