Jesus causes different people to react in quite different ways.
Herod feared the child. He used trickery to try to learn of him – but never himself sought to be in the child’s presence. He feared him from afar and tried to destroy him.
The three wise men traveled over great distances based on an uncertain hope. They searched. They left their lives and their homes behind. They were in a way a foreshadow of the disciples who would drop their nets to follow Jesus. They came not to get anything from Jesus, but to give him gifts and pay him honor.
Does trying to read into the biographies of these men give us a clue to their reactions? Or does that reduce faith to sociology and psychology? At it heart, we have two possible reactions to Jesus in this story. A desire to pay him homage and fear. What causes these different reactions to well up in us? Why do some of us react like Herod and others like the magi?
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
