“Our God Is with Us” by Steven Curtis Chapman (1995)

In recent years, contemporary Christian music has drifted away from songs that carry a message. The genre once included prophetic voices, storytellers, and theological poets. It featured artists who wrote songs to challenge the church, to teach doctrine, to expose hypocrisy, and to call believers to deeper discipleship. Today, much of that has been replaced by an almost singular focus on “worship music,” songs built for congregational singing, for private devotion, and for the emotional experience of the individual believer.

Worship songs are good gifts, but the shift has come with a cost. As Christian music has narrowed its focus, it has helped nurture a thinner, more individualistic Christianity in the culture that is often long on feeling but short on formation. The irony is hard to miss: the more we have emphasized “worship,” the more the music has centered on the self. Fewer songs speak to the church as a community. Fewer songs challenge us to live as a people shaped by a larger story. Fewer songs remind us that Christianity is not simply about “my relationship with God,” but about a God who calls us into a kingdom, a mission, and a family.

At Christmas especially, this loss is felt. The season invites us into a cosmic story: God breaking into the world, fulfilling His promises, drawing near to His people, and inaugurating the redemption of all things. These truths require more than vague sentiment or repeated refrains. They require songs that tell the story, that proclaim, teach, and remind us who we are and what God has done.

“Our God Is With Us” — Steven Curtis Chapman

Steven Curtis Chapman has always possessed a rare gift: he does not write Christmas songs that stay in the realm of sentimentality or seasonal nostalgia. He writes Christmas songs with weight. “Our God Is with Us” is one of the clearest examples. It stands as a proclamation that cuts through the familiar glow of Christmas lights and speaks directly to the human ache beneath the surface of the season. This is a song for people carrying grief, disappointment, and fear—people whose “hopes and dreams are led away in chains,” as the opening verse admits with startling honesty. Christmas may be festive, but Chapman begins with tears.

The first verse refuses to pretend. One of us is crying. One of us is dying. Hopes collapse. Love is lowered into the grave. Chapman sings what many believers are ashamed to say out loud: much of life feels like abandonment. Christmas magnifies that feeling for many. Such candor is profoundly biblical. The Psalms frequently begin with the same painful inventory. Before Chapman ever reaches comfort, he sits with realism.

But then comes the turning point:

“For all of us who journey through the dark abyss of loneliness / There comes a great announcement: ‘We are never alone.’”

This is the Gospel refracted through Christmas. God does not promise to remove loneliness; He shatters its power by refusing to stay distant.

Chapman’s lyrics walk through salvation history. God spoke through prophets. He appeared in fire and cloud. He revealed His will, but not His face. Israel knew His voice but not His heart. Then, in an unimaginable act of condescension, “the One most holy revealed to us His perfect heart's desire and left His rightful place.”

This is John 1 set to music. This is Philippians 2, the eternal Son emptying Himself. This is Emmanuel.

Chapman’s line captures the incarnation perfectly:

“In one glorious moment, all eternity was shaken.”

All the separation between sinful humanity and holy God—symbolized by darkness, distance, and the temple veil—is pierced by the arrival of Jesus. Not an idea. Not a message. A Person.

Modern Western life, and especially American evangelical life over the past decade, has been shaped by division, fear, and tribal “us versus them” thinking. Many Christians instinctively seek security through politics, cultural battles, or echo-chamber communities that reassure them they are on the right side. Chapman’s message cuts across this mentality with the most radical truth of Christmas:

God is not distant from the world. He is not threatened by it. He has entered it. He does not call us to withdraw from the brokenness, but to bear witness within it because He Himself has done so.

The song’s theology stands in sharp contrast to an anxious, defensive Christianity. Chapman is not describing a God who protects us from the world. He describes a God who steps into the world, into our grief, into our loneliness, into our weakness. He is not a fortress; He is Emmanuel.

This is deeply consonant with voices like Keith Green and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both of whom remind the church that true discipleship refuses comfort and embraces costly love. Christmas is not sentimental escapism. It is God choosing incarnation rather than insulation.

The chorus functions like a creed:

God is with us.
He has come to save us.
We will never face life alone.
He has made Himself known as Father and Friend.

These are not poetic exaggerations. They are the heart of Christian doctrine. If this is true, fear loses its grip. Political panic loses its appeal. The church regains its calling to love, serve, and suffer for the sake of the Gospel.

Christmas is not about God providing escape from trouble; it is about God entering trouble so that we can endure and overcome it with Him.

“Our God Is with Us” is one of Chapman’s most pastorally powerful Christmas songs because it aims directly at the human heart’s deepest wound: the fear of abandonment. If the incarnation means anything, it means this fear has been answered once and for all.

The final call, “Rejoice, Emmanuel has come” is not sentimental cheeriness. It is hope born from divine proximity. God has drawn near in Christ. He is with us through the end. And because of that, even our loneliness is never truly alone.