"God Save You!"

The Prayer of a Faithful Nephew and the Answer of a Faithful God

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” - James 5:16

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.” - 1 Peter 3:12

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, is a Christian story. I doubt there are many who would contest that, but there are probably a few. Those who would deny this have most likely only watched one of the poorer film adaptations of the story, the kind of adaptations that miss the whole point. But even most of the not-so-great-adaptations fail to totally eradicate the Christian message of this great book, for it would be just too hard to do so. Every line of this song (indeed it’s a carol, divided into five staves) has Christian themes and principles woven into its fabric.

Still, I dare say, many people who would acknowledge the essentially Christian nature of the story tend to miss one the most fundamental messages of the book. If asked, “What is the message of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol?” the majority of people would probably answer, “to find the true meaning of Christmas.” Well enough. But if we ask, “What is the true meaning of Christmas?” many of those same would answer “To be kind to your fellow man and to share with those in need.” It is here that they are wrong…or at least…they are sort of wrong.

Indeed the message of A Christmas Carol is upstream of those ideas. I should argue that the goodwill and love for one’s fellow man is, rather, a byproduct of the story’s true message. The message of A Christmas Carol is this: Only God’s grace can save sinners like you and me. The message isn’t simply “be nicer to those around you” or even “share with those in need.” The message is that Scrooge, like you and me and everyone else, needed divine grace to become a person who could genuinely love his neighbor as himself. He was a “tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”¹ Scrooge needed a Savior. He did not deserve one, of course, but then neither do you or I.

The earliest entrance of grace in the story comes when Scrooge’s nephew enters his uncle’s counting house with these words: “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” The text notes that Fred came “upon him so quickly that this [prayer] was the first intimation he had of his approach.”² Reminding us that salvation can come upon a man unexpectedly, like a pouncing lion. Scrooge’s story of redemption begins with the prayer of a righteous man named Fred whose abounding love availed for his uncle. “God save you!” is the cry of this God-fearing young man and “Will do” is the answer of God in this story.

Indeed God has had his eye on Scrooge for some time now. You know the familiar scene wherein Scrooge dismisses the two men raising money for the poor, with his novel use of “Good afternoon!” The text of the story tells us, immediately thereafter, “The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterward, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.”³ The rich symbolism of the church bell looking down upon Scrooge is a way of reminding the reader that Scrooge lives coram deo, that is, “in the presence of God.”

In fact, the bell of the old gothic church, representing the ever present gaze of God upon Scrooge, sets up the reader to connect the presence of God in this story once again just a little bit later on. After Scrooge’s disturbance at the knocker of his own front door he eventually settles into a chair in his room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.⁴

In the heights of Scrooge’s house, those rooms closest to the heavens, the old bell system in Scrooge’s house began to ring. Soon it was not just the heights of the house but the whole house and all its bells which were ringing in every room throughout. The presence of God had filled Scrooge’s home like an invasion from heaven.

Unexpectedly, the grace and mercy of God then calls into its service an agent from Hell.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.⁵

The ghost of Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner who has been damned to hell for unrepentant sins, is put to use and in the service of Heaven. Of the fact that Marley is damned there can be no doubt, for “There was something very awful, too, in the specters being provided with an infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, his hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapor from an oven.”⁶ Marley’s ghost cannot himself give an account of why Scrooge can now see him. It tells scrooge “How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.”⁷ The purposes of Heaven cannot be understood by the agents of Hell, but God can use even such as these to bring about great goods.

The ghost of Marley is, in fact, the bad news which must needs precede any true understanding of the good news. Scrooge must be made to look at the truth of who he is and what his sins deserve before he can hope to receive God’s grace. Marley’s ghost is a picture of God’s law and the just condemnation of sinners, but Scrooge, by God’s grace, will not share the same fate.

When does salvation come for Scrooge in this story? Again, I wager, most people would tell you that it is when he wakes up on Christmas Day after his time with the third spirit (of Christmas Yet to Come), but I would argue this is completely incorrect. While Scrooge grows in grace and understanding progressively throughout the story (sanctification), and while his true repentance is most visibly manifest after he wakes up on Christmas Day, his regeneration (new life) comes much earlier in the story.

One of the subtleties that is often missed in adaptations of this great story, even by the best adaptations (you know, like A Muppet’s Christmas Carol) is in the interaction between Scrooge and the Spirit of Christmas Past. You know the part, the Spirit is leading Scrooge to the window and he exclaims that he is afraid because he is “but a mortal” and “liable to fall.” In almost every adaptation Scrooge is invited to either take the Spirit’s hand or touch his robe, but this is not what actually happens in the book. The text actually reads, “Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!”⁸ Scrooge is not upheld by the strength of the Spirit’s arm, or by magic contact with the Spirit’s robe, Scrooge is upheld by a change in his heart wrought by the Spirit. Scrooge’s heart is changed by the application of the Spirit’s power to it. It is from this moment that Scrooge is a new man and is now able to receive the lessons God has for him. No longer is he stubborn and resistant (as he was with Marley’s ghost) but, as a new man, he is like a child ready to be led and to listen to what the Spirit has to say to him. Scrooge is born again.

Much more analysis of this sort could be done throughout the whole of this great story. Pages and pages could be written on the role of grace in A Christmas Carol, but let only a few more observations suffice for now. It is noteworthy that there is one other thing left out of most adaptations of this story (though it is conspicuous in the actual book). Scrooge, immediately after he awakes on Christmas Day, goes to church.

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon, he turned his steps toward his nephew’s house.⁹

Scrooge does what all Christians do, he goes to be with the people of God to worship his Maker, he begins to show love and concern for others, he takes pleasure and finds happiness in all the good and true and beautiful things God has made. He is bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, he is evidently changed and penitent. His chains are gone, he’s been set free.

Nowhere is the change that has been wrought in Scrooge’s heart more evident than in his interaction with Bob Cratchit.

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”¹⁰

Christians, insofar as they are able, are to repair relationships they have damaged, to pay back those whom they have wronged. Though it is misguided to suggest we should pay reparations for the sins of others, committed in the distant past, it is thoroughly biblical that we should pay restitution to those whom we have directly harmed. In this Scrooge’s repentance is seen to be complete. The Grace of God in Scrooge’s life, which began with the prayer of his nephew, has far reaching effects for many others. Tiny Tim, of course, and countless others are recipients of God’s grace through one man who was formerly the chief of sinners.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him; but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.¹¹

The true message of A Christmas Carol is that God can save anyone and make good come from anywhere. He can even save people just like you and me.

Whether you are a longtime lover of A Christmas Carol or you’ve never read it before STGB has resources for you to get all you can out of it. You can check out our online study guide HERE, Paid Subscribers can download the PDF version HERE, and you can also listen to a discussion about this great book with myself and

Joel M. Ellis

by clicking HERE.

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1. Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol (Christmas Books series Book 1) (p. 8). Atria Books. Kindle Edition.

2. Ibid. 9.

3. Ibid. 12.

4. Ibid. 16.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid. 18.

7. Ibid. 20.

8. Ibid. 25.

9. Ibid. 70.

10. Ibid. 71-72

11. Ibid.