God with us! Is there a more comforting thought than that? The writer of Matthew reached back into Israel’s history and recast a familiar story to make the point.
Matthew’s first readers remembered how Ahaz refused to trust God and put his hope in the earthly powers of Assyria. They knew the prophet Isaiah responded by foretelling the birth of a child to a young woman — a virgin — who would be called Immanuel, which means God with us.
Originally, the birth was a sign to Ahaz of his misplaced priorities.
But Matthew gave the story a totally unexpected twist. In Matthew’s Gospel, the story points to the miraculous birth of Jesus, who, as the writer says, is “God with us.”
It is impossible to hear that phrase — God with us — without recalling the details of Jesus’ birth. The angel Gabriel appears before a young teenager named Mary and announces that she will have a child even though she has never had a sexual relationship with a man. When she questions how this could be, Gabriel assures her that with God, nothing is impossible.
When Joseph discovers that his betrothed is expecting a baby, he decides to divorce her in a way that will not unduly embarrass Mary. It is then that an angel appears to Joseph and explains what God is doing. The baby is to be called Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.
Matthew 1:21 announces Jesus’ purpose — to save His people from their sins. Two verses later, verse 23, Matthew explains how Jesus can do this — He is God with us.
The early church was clear about the divinity of Jesus. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” That was the unmistakable teaching of the church. It was Jesus who saved and Jesus alone.
It was not consenting to a set of beliefs. It was not accomplishing certain deeds. It was not attaining some kind of spiritual sensitivity.
Salvation was available only through faith in Jesus Christ, the apostles preached, because Jesus was God with us.
He still is. The message of the gospel is still the same — salvation in Jesus Christ alone. Not in His teachings. Not in a certain lifestyle. Not in a value system.
The gospel still calls people everywhere to a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, because Jesus is God with us. Indeed, one can come to Jesus now in trusting faith because of that first Christmas day when God came to us as a newborn baby.
He still comes. When one trusts Jesus as personal Savior, God comes to us in the forgiveness of sin. He comes to us as an abiding presence called the Holy Spirit. He comes to us in a relationship with eternal consequences. That coming, though new every time a sinner accepts Christ, is an extension of that first coming about which Matthew wrote.
Matthew uses the word Immanuel — God with us — only one time in his entire Gospel, in Matthew 1:23.
But ironically, the writing closes with Jesus repeating the promise of that title. After affirming that the power of heaven and earth rests in Him, after commissioning the disciples to go and teach and baptize, Jesus makes a promise. He says “I am with you always.” The Greek words are almost the same as the title in verse 23.
Perhaps Matthew never noticed the irony — almost the same words used in the first description of Jesus and our Lord’s final words on earth. Or perhaps it was not an accident. Perhaps Matthew chose to emphasize the precious promise of God with us by using nearly identical words at the beginning and the ending of his Gospel.
Jesus was God with us in the Christmas story. He is still God with us, always. That is His nature (Matt. 1:23). That is His promise (Matt. 28:20).
Either way, it is a precious reality. God is with us in the joy of Christmas. He is with us in the loneliness and hurt of an empty place at the table. God is with us in the excitement of dreams come true. He is there when dreams shatter or have to be recast.
God is with us in the midst of family and friends. He is with us when we are alone or separated from those we love. He is with us on Christmas day and every other day of the year.
God is with us when we know Him through faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing can separate us from the love of God who came to us in Jesus that first Christmas morning.
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