What is His name?

Immanuel

Harry Foster

"Thou shalt call his name Jesus ... they shall call his name Immanuel" (Matthew 1:21, 23).

Isaiah had prophesied that they would call Mary's infant Immanuel, but there is no evidence that anybody ever used this name during the earthly life of Jesus. Joseph called Him Jesus, as he had been commanded to do, but we have no means of knowing how much he understood of Matthew's identification of the child as the virgin-born Immanuel of Isaiah's prophecy. Yet if people did not use the name it is clear that the spiritual reality was appreciated from time to time. There were moments when people sensed that in meeting Jesus they found themselves in the presence of God.

Peter began his history as an apostle with an abject confession of his own sinfulness which only the holy presence of God could have provoked (Luke 5:8). When a man was raised from the dead, those present exclaimed that God had visited them (Luke 7:16). What made the squad which had come to the garden of Gethsemane go backward and fall to the ground when Jesus confronted them with the words: "I am he" (John 18:6)?

Was it not a momentary awareness of divine majesty? They sought Jesus of Nazareth, and they met the great Immanuel. They fell back in dismay; but others knelt in worship. The Lord Jesus had insisted to Satan that God alone must be worshipped (Matthew 4:10), yet He did not demur at the worship given to Him by the man born blind (John 9:38) and others. Indeed He clarified the position to the rich young ruler who knelt before Him and called Him 'good', by explaining that the only valid way of so describing Him must be to recognise Him as truly God for: "... there is none good but one, that is, God" (Mark 10.18).

Reference to Isaiah's prophecy may explain why men never used the name, for the circumstances of the early life of this Immanuel were gloomy in the extreme. The background of the sign given by God to Ahaz was that the child would be born into the famine conditions of a land devastated by war (Isaiah 7:14-16). Spiritually this was fulfilled in the case of the child whom Joseph called Jesus.

The prophecy was fulfilled; the virgin bore her Son; but God's appearance in incarnation was made confused and sombre because of His people's sin. God was with man indeed, but He was here to share man's misery and to bear the consequences of his departure from his creator. No man realised it at the time, but in fact God was with us, with us in all the shame and degradation of human folly and sin.

After the cross came the resurrection, and then the true glory of Immanuel was made evident to all believers. In Christ, God is for us and God is with us. Thomas began the happy testimony with his: "My Lord and my God" (John 20.28), and from that day to this, Immanuel – God with us – has been linked with the saving name of Jesus in the grateful praises of all believers. The Lord Jesus gave added emphasis to the encouragement and comfort of this name of His when He told His disciples to go into all the world, backed by His universal authority, and added: "Lo, I am with you all the days ..." (Matthew 28:20).

So Matthew's words have proved true – "they shall call his name Immanuel". We count ourselves happy indeed that we shall know Him eternally by this marvellous name.

Toward the Mark / Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan-Feb. 1974.

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