Church Words 101: Immanuel
It is a magnificent, mysterious, hard-to-grasp, and imagination-stretching reality. But when you get it, when you come to fully understand the purpose and implications of this reality, you will stand in awe. This reality’s amazing truth didn’t begin when Mary got pregnant, or when prophets began foretelling it, or when God announced it after the calamitous rebellion of Adam and Eve. This reality is so miraculous in every way that it could have only come from God’s mind in eternity before the foundations of the world were laid by His powerful Word.
This reality points to God’s divine wisdom and exclaims the power of the mighty hand. No man could have imagined the details of this reality and if he did, no man could ever have advanced what he had imagined. This reality is itself proof of the existence of God and is a representation of his holy character. What is this reality? Immanuel: God with us!
The glorious world that God had created was now broken and groaning as the direct result of the rebellion of the ones God had made in his own image and had chosen to guide and love. The evidence of the world’s brokenness was apparent from the deceitful hearts of people to the corruption of government to the presence of diseases. It would have been just for God to stay away and give the world what it deserved. It would have been a just response to humanity’s rebellion that brought this brokenness to the world. But in a gorgeous mystery of God's sovereign grace, He looked on his broken, rebellious people with eyes of grace and mercy.
God acted decisively, and His actions were what he had planned for eternity. His response was grace and mercy instead of condemnation and judgment. He would act in grace and do what the law could never do and what we could never do for ourselves. He would give an unconditional gift to an undeserving people as an unobligated giver. He would offer the only thing that could ever rescue humanity from the punishment their rebellion deserved. He, Himself, would become the ultimate most costly, most transformational gift ever.
God would take on human flesh and enter His sin-broken world. However, He wouldn't descend to a castle.
Instead, God the Creator, the sovereign King over all things would humble himself and take on the form of suffering servant. He lived a perfect life on our behalf, and He voluntarily died the death that you and I deserve to die, and He raised from his tomb as the defeater of sin and death. He suffered each day of his life so that He could give grace to rebels, extend love to people who would deny his existence, give wisdom to people who think they know better, and offer forgiveness to everyone who has faith in Him.
This is the reality…this is the true story of Immanuel: a masculine Hebrew name meaning “God with us” or “God is with us.” In the book of Isaiah, a baby born in the time of King Ahaz was given the name Immanuel as a sign to Ahaz that Judah would receive reprieve from attacks by Israel and Syria. Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.” The name Immanuel was a sign of the fact that God would establish His guiding and protecting presence with His people in this rescue. A second, far-reaching implication of Isaiah’s prophecy about a baby named Immanuel pointed to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
Seven hundred years after King Ahaz, as prophesied, a young virgin from Nazareth named Mary was engaged to Joseph. During their engagement, an angel visited Joseph to proclaim that Mary had conceived a child through the Holy Spirit, and when the child was born, they were to name him Jesus. Matthew recognized the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesy in Matthew 1:22-23, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’)”.
Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy since He was literally “God with us”; He was fully human and fully God. Jesus lived in Israel with His people, as Isaiah had foretold. Matthew acknowledged Jesus as Immanuel, the Incarnation of God Himself, the miracle of the Son of God becoming a human being and making His dwelling among. Jesus was God with us, appearing in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). John 1:14 beautifully describes Immanuel this way: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Christ’s coming showed everyone that God is faithful to fulfill His promises. We can trust God. Jesus was not just a sign pointing to God with us, like the baby born in the time of Ahaz. Jesus was really God with us, in Person, for real, as Colossians 2:9 confirms, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…”. Immanuel knows our struggles because he too struggled (Heb. 4:15-16; Phil. 2:6-11). Immanuel is our Savior (Jn. 3:16-17), and He will be with us forever (Mt. 28:20)!
