In the Old Testament through Isaiah the prophet, the Lord had given a sign to king Ahaz, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23, referencing Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel means “God with us.”
Hundreds of years later, an angel visited Joseph and told him that Mary, his betrothed, “will bear a son, and you shall call his name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus means “God Saves.”
God the Son came to earth to be with us through an incarnated baby of Mary and Joseph, who bundled Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a feeding trough.
Matthew connected the later event to the earlier event metaphorically with the prophecy from Isaiah. Jesus in the flesh is God with us. God, in the person of Jesus, will engage His mission personally to save His people from their sins.
During Jesus’ lifetime, the Jews were not expecting this kind of a Savior. God was supposed to raise a person like king David to save them from their oppression so they can make Israel great again.
Today, many Christians are not expecting a Savior who will save them from their sins. For some believers, Jesus is expected to make them materially wealthy. For others, to make them happy. And yet others don’t expect much more of Him than to wait until they die and go to heaven.
Sin separates us from fellowship with God. He came to save us from our sins, and thus be “God with Us” every day, no longer estranged from His presence and kingdom, but in close communion with those He came to save.
On the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” After His resurrection, He commissioned His disciples to bear the good news of His resurrection to all. But they were to wait for the Spirit first. With the giving of the Spirit to the believers, the two names of the Son God collide again, and His disciples become the temples of the Spirit of Christ (God within us), and we become His empowered vessels to carry the work forward of saving His people from their sins through the selfsame good news.
But that good news works two ways. They save the believer from his or her own sins, and use the believer to communicate the gospel to turn others from darkness to light.
With God in us, the Spirit can partner with the Word of God to bring our sins and faults to light, and conform us to the character of Christ as we follow through in faith. He uses these clay pots to bring others into a deeper fellowship with God. Along the way, we learn lessons that deepen our own faith connection to our Lord. We disengage our faith in other things to rest our trust more fully on the Savior. Both names of Christ continue to work in us organically to accomplish His purposes.
God came to be a Savior with us. Whenever we make it a priority to deal with our sins instead of sweeping them under the rug, God will be with us. And Jesus will save His people from their sins.
These two names together in the believer’s life means God is dwelling with us and working through us. Immanuel is God with us, and that is the only way that Jesus can ssve us.
