As Europe was facing the onset of war in 1939, Lewis preached a sermon in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. With many other academics and students in attendance, the issue of how we should now live was certainly a pressing concern for all those present. So Lewis entitled his address, “Learning in War-Time”. What the academic community was thinking about learning while on the verge of total war was a most pressing matter indeed. Lewis gave those in attendance some very helpful advice. 

How we live in peacetime is often quite different from how we live in wartime. How people were living in Ukraine a few years ago for example was quite different from how most are living today, with their homes being destroyed, their very way of life put on hold, and many millions being forced to flee the country.
I have often spoken about these matters in terms of the Christian life. Especially during these dark days where the faith is under such sustained attack and where the culture wars seem to be threatening the very existence of the church, we need to think about living in times of war. As I said in one piece in this regard:
In a time of war not everyone stays true. Many surrender, or go over to the other side, or go AWOL. And individual believers risk doing the same thing. In the battles we face today there is no place for sitting on the fence, or trying to stay in the middle of the road.
When warfare is all around us, the only proper response is to engage in the battle. With faith, freedom and family all at risk, this is no time for business as usual. This is not the time to live a normal life. It certainly is not a time to have the fear of man, or a time to seek to please men. Let’s try pleasing God instead, even if it means ruffling a few feathers. billmuehlenberg.com/2017/03/22/wartime-not-business-usual/
And one quote I have often used to ram home this point is also worth repeating here. In a 2014 essay called “A Time for Heroism” American Catholic philosopher Melissa Moschella said this:
Perhaps there are times and places in the history of the world in which it is possible to go through life as just an ordinary, good person—a faithful spouse, a loving parent, a concerned citizen, a regular church-goer, an honest and industrious professional—leading a normal, quiet life, not making waves or standing out in any way. Perhaps. But the United States of America in the year 2014 is not one of those times and places. Rather, in our contemporary society, the only way to be good is to be heroic. Failing to act with heroism inevitably makes us complicit in grave evils.
I of course still agree with all those sentiments that I have so often shared. But there is another way that Christians can look at all this. It is perhaps more accurate to say that we are in a state of warfare not just during times of great crisis or upheaval, or when the days are getting especially dark and evil, but ALWAYS.
That is, the Christian will always be in a state of war with the world around him, with the powers of darkness, and with this present evil age. Sure, sometimes the battles seem more intense than other times, but the Christian is never fully living in peacetime.
Even when most of the surrounding culture was Christian or at least fairly sympathetic to Christianity, the true Christian was always a bit of a misfit in this world. Indeed, we will never fully be at home here. We will always be in some sort of warfare – certainly always spiritual warfare.
Thus the practical question is this: how should we then live? When Christians are being heavily persecuted, rounded up into prison camps, and being killed, such a question takes on real urgency and significance. But we always need to be asking these sorts of questions.
And the issue is, do we just drop everything we are doing, head for the hills, and prepare for the end of the world? Or do we just go on living more or less normal lives, but with an eye always on eternity, and an awareness that this is not really our home, and battles will always be with us?
Christians can take differing approaches here. Some simply pull out of the world altogether, either to live as monks or as end-time survivalists. But some Christians live as if there is no war going on, and have very happily made themselves quite at home in this world.
Somewhere in between these extremes might be the biblical way to proceed. And to help me discuss this further, I once again simply draw upon the insights and great wisdom of English academic and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. 
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Gerry Bowler observed in his book Christmas in the Crosshairs, that while the birth of Jesus has always been important to the gospel, the first generations of Christians “lived in profound expectation of [Jesus’] imminent return.” He suggested that, among other things, when those eschatological hopes weren’t immediately fulfilled, the birth of Jesus began to get more attention. When Constantine issued the Edict of Milan making Christianity a legal religion, the annual celebration of festivals and holy days soon followed.

The history surrounding Christmas has been anything but peace on earth and goodwill toward men. While contemporary religious and cultural traditions may evoke a certain nostalgia for its celebration, its history is actually a mess! One big mess—with feverish disagreements, hostility, and even rioting. In Christmas in America, Penne Restad wrote: “Christians [have] wrestled for centuries with questions of if, when, and how to celebrate Jesus’ birth.”
Stop the sleigh! Christians have wrestled with if Christmas should be celebrated? To some that might be a bigger surprise than the presents under the tree. After all, according to Gallup polling, ninety-three percent of people across all demographics celebrate Christmas in the United States, and of those who are fairly religious that number rises to ninety-six percent. In a society that’s deeply divided on any and every issue, Christmas is a near-universal observance. But it wasn’t always so. Paul VM Flesher said: “The notion that Christians of any stripe should not want to celebrate Christmas is so foreign to our present concept of the holiday that we need to review some history to understand it.”
The incarnation—the act of the eternal and only begotten Son becoming man—is foundational to the Christian faith. As John Chyrsostom preached: “Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity.” For some, the yearly commemoration of that event is one of the most important days of the year. Yet Jesus never indicated that this redemptive act was to be annually celebrated, and its yearly observance didn’t enter into the way the Apostles ordered the worship and life of the church. Early Christian scholar Origen (d. 253) asserted that celebrating birthdays was foreign to Christianity, saying: “It has not come from the thought of any of the saints; not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth” (Homilies on Leviticus 8).
Gerry Bowler observed in his book Christmas in the Crosshairs, that while the birth of Jesus has always been important to the gospel, the first generations of Christians “lived in profound expectation of [Jesus’] imminent return.” He suggested that, among other things, when those eschatological hopes weren’t immediately fulfilled, the birth of Jesus began to get more attention. When Constantine issued the Edict of Milan making Christianity a legal religion, the annual celebration of festivals and holy days soon followed.
Emperor Constantine commissioned that the Church of the Nativity be built in Bethlehem over the cave where it was believed Mary had given birth to Jesus. Historians debate the role of Constantine in the precise development of Christmas, but it has been suggested that he had a personal interest in the festival of the nativity. Nevertheless, it was in the 4th-century when the Roman Church began celebrating December 25th as the birthdate of Jesus. In the spirit of celebration Maximus of Turin (d. 465) said: “Brothers and sisters, our hearts still echo with the joy of the Lord’s birth, and our continuing gladness creates in us a sense of heavenly festivity. For, though the joyous day itself has passed, the sanctification that joy brought is still with us” (Sermo 6).
As that spirit grew around this man-created holy day, so too did traditions, superstitions, and syncretism. Leading to centuries of trouble was the struggle to keep the celebration set apart from worldly activities. For example, warning of the dangers of celebrating the feast in a worldly way, Augustine (d. 430) preached: “For our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became Man for our sake, paid a price for us. He gave Himself as a price and He did so for the purpose, namely, to redeem and separate you from the pagans. But if you wish to intermingle with the pagans, you do not wish to follow Him who redeemed you” (Sermon 198 on New Years Day). He went on to say: “Therefore, in order to follow your Redeemer, who bought you back with His own blood, do not mix with the pagans by aping their customs and deeds.”
Again, Bowler wrote: “Time after time, century after century, clergy would warn against unseemly folk rituals being practiced by Catholic believers; Christmastide was not the only battlefield but was a particularly contested one.” It seems, however, it was a losing battle. At first, Christians and the church adopted rituals they deemed harmless, but soon even practices once condemned (like gift giving and feasting) became high points of celebration. By the sixteenth century Christmas celebration was well established.
Then the Reformation happened. Often, when we think of the Reformation we think of reclaiming the biblical gospel especially as its related to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. But the Protestant Reformation was also about worship. In his The Necessity of Reforming the Church, John Calvin wrote: “The whole substance of Christianity [is] a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly of the source from which salvation is to be obtained.” As Sinclair Ferguson concluded: “[The Reformers] well understood that the rediscovery of the gospel and the reformation of worship were two sides of the same coin.”
Following the Protestant Reformation certain branches within Protestantism retained the celebration of Christmas. For example, the Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran churches states: “Of Usages in the Church they teach that those ought to be observed which may be observed without sin, and which are profitable unto tranquility and good order in the Church, as particular holy days, festivals, and the like” (Article 15.1).
Even some of those Protestants who followed a Reformed doctrine of worship gave place to its observance as helpful to piety although not given by God. The Church Order of Dort (1619) prescribed: “The congregations shall observe, in addition to Sunday, also Christmas, Easter and Pentecost”—and they threw in the circumcision of Jesus for good measure (Article 67). Francis Turretin (d. 1687), a Reformed scholastic, said “anniversary days” for the nativity, passion, or ascension should, according to the orthodox, “be left to the liberty of the church.” He argued this even while recognizing the festivals “were kept neither from the institution of Christ nor of the apostles.”
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We encounter the simplicity of God at the cross. Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way, p. 229: “Simplicity reminds us that God is never self-conflicted. In God’s eternal decree, even in the most obvious example of possible inner conflict (namely, the cross), justice and mercy, righteous wrath and gracious love, embrace…. At the place where the outpouring of his wrath is concentrated, so too is his love.”

How can God be loving if he sent his Son to die on a cross for the sins of others? Why couldn’t he just forgive everyone instead of putting his Son through all that suffering? The answer is that God can never deny himself; therefore, he must uphold all of his attributes. And we find no clearer evidence of this than at the cross.
Because he is spirit, God is always purely all of his attributes in complete perfection and unity. It is impossible for God’s mercy to override his justice. His holiness never conflicts with his love. Here are eight attributes of God we encounter at the cross, along with related Scripture passages and helpful quotes from respected theologians:
1. We encounter the holiness of God at the cross.
R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, p. 38: “When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be ‘other,’ to be different in a special way.”
Related Bible Verses:

And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isa. 6:3)
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” (Mark 1:25)
For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. (Heb. 7:26)
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Pet. 2:9)

2. We encounter the righteousness of God at the cross.
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 74: “The fundamental idea of righteousness is that of strict adherence to the law. Among men it presupposes that there is a law to which they must conform…. [and] though there is no law above God, there is certainly a law in the very nature of God, and this is the highest possible standard, by which all other laws are judged.”
Related Bible Verses:

God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. (Ps. 7:11)
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. (Ps. 11:7)
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33)
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Rom. 3:23-25)

3. We encounter the justice of God at the cross.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.17.4: “It is especially worth-while to ponder the analogy set forth by Paul: ‘Christ…became a curse for us,’ etc. [Gal. 3:13]. It was superfluous, even absurd, for Christ to be burdened with a curse, unless it was to acquire righteousness for others by paying what they owed. Isaiah’s testimony is also clear: ‘The chastisement of our peace was laid upon Christ, and with his stripes healing has come to us’ [Isa. 53:5]. For unless Christ had made satisfaction for our sins, it would not have been said that he appeased God by taking upon himself the penalty to which we were subject.”
Related Bible Verses:

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
    he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
    he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
    make many to be accounted righteous. (Isa. 53:10-11)

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