Emmanuel: What Does It Mean?
what does emmanuel mean?
Ask three people around you, What does Emmanuel mean? If they know their Christmas carols or Bible stories, they’ll say it means God with us. But that doesn’t answer your question. What does God with us mean?
The first person might say that God with me is something that touches the deepest parts of my soul:
O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know what it’s going to be.
You created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
God has always seemed far off to people, unknowable. But he sent his son to experience the same things everyone on earth experiences, to speak our language. This is the one who was called God with us. He already knew everything about me, but then he came in the flesh to experience the good parts and bad parts of life, the stressful parts, the heartbreaking parts,
the hopeful parts…. The deepest part of my soul knows he’s with me, right now, God with us. God with me.
What does God with us mean to you, Second Person?
I use the illustration of an ant hill, Number 2 answers. If I see someone pour a can of gas onto an anthill, then go into the house for a box of matches, I can guess what’s going to happen to the ants—the ones that aren’t killed by the gas will get burned to death. I can stomp my foot, scream and wave my arms, but the only way I can communicate the danger to them is to become an ant—get down on their level and speak their language.
When God did essentially the same thing with us, most people either ignored what he said, refused to believe what he was saying or couldn’t understand it. Then they killed him.
But he left his Spirit behind. For thousands of years God had appeared to people in hidden ways—speaking through a donkey, appearing as a burning bush or as a pillar of cloud. He couldn’t appear as himself because no one could
survive after they saw him. After thousands of years of this he squeezed himself into human flesh.
He left records of his contact as God and God-in-the-flesh, then he left his Spirit to warn us against doing something, to push us to do something, to think about a certain passage from Scripture that will help us understand who he is and how much he wants to have a meaningful relationship with us. God with us, with help from his Spirit to understand what that means.
The third person you ask might say, Seven-hundred years before Jesus was born—which is what we celebrate at Christmas—a prophet said it was going to be happen. ‘A baby will be born and he will be called Emmanuel, which means
God with us.’
But his name wasn’t Emmanuel, you point out. His name was Jesus, which means he saves.
At the time Isaiah made that prophecy through the time when Jesus was born, to say someone’s name was Emmanual, for example, meant that his purpose in life was to act as God would if he were with us himself. A person’s name
described what they did, or what their reputation was. Prophets said Jesus was going to act as God with us long before he came, and when he came he said it himself:
On the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom, and stood
up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling
it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by
saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke
4:16–21).
Jesus came to show people what God would look like if he were a regular person—he’d love people no one else cared about. He’d speak kindly to poor people and expose the foolishness of the rich peoples’ pride. It’s the same thing he’d done for thousands of years before he came in the flesh. God with us means the same today as it did 2,000 years ago:
A man with leprosy knelt before Jesus and said, “Lord, if you are willing,
you can make me clean.”
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing.”
Immediately the man was healed (Matthew 8:2–3).
God is still among us today.
God with us.
God is with us.
http://www.everythingforyourchristmas.com/emmanuel.html