The people expected a Saviour. When Christ Jesus was born, many anticipated the Messiah's appearing. And yet most of them failed to recognize his arrival. Christians today can look back on that scene two thousand years ago and see a significant reason why this event went largely unnoticed: it came in such an unexpected way.
Preconceived views about how the Saviour was coming, who he would be, what he would do, obscured a wide appreciation of him. The problem wasn't that people didn't care, or that they didn't expect the Christ; the snag, at least for many, was that their spiritual sense was so uncultivated they couldn't discern this magnificent event.
Today Christians may wonder at the lack of receptivity expressed by so many during Jesus' day. There he was among them, living a life that would go down in history as the most consequential ever. And yet few perceived the Christ he expressed. From a later vantage point, the emergence of God's message is so obvious—at least to the world's Christians. The Saviour's coming had been prophesied; he was of a virgin birth; his surroundings were humble; he developed a spiritual might that literally jolted the adherents of materialism.
