Four Gifts of ChristmasНамуна

  Myrrh - the Warrior’s Gift 

Myrrh is a strange gift for a child. Typically used in medicine, perfume, or embalming, a toddler has little use for it. Some scholars believe it was given for its medicinal properties or financial value. Others teach that Matthew included it to foreshadow the kind of warrior sacrifice Jesus faced.

“By His wounds, we are healed” - Isaiah 53:5b (NIV)

Myrrh is well known as an anti-bacterial coagulator, often used as first aid on the battlefield and in the gladiator arenas. If the Magi were influenced by Jewish prophecies, did they read about Isaiah’s suffering Servant? Did they know the kinds of wounds this Child would suffer for His people?     

The warrior’s gift is a meaningful death. No warrior suffered more than Jesus, and no death meant more than His.

It is only by trusting in His death and resurrection that we can die with Jesus and be raised to a new life in Christ. 

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume

Breathes a life of gathering gloom;—

Sorrowing, sighing,

Bleeding, dying,

Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

(Three Kings of Orient by John Henry Hopkins, Jr.)