Jesus' Two Birth Names

Two Sundays ago one of our church’s missionaries Robert Walter visited and gave a powerful gospel presentation out of Leviticus. Working with Chosen People ministries, a ministry focused on bringing the gospel of Jesus the Messiah to Jewish people, Robert has been in a pastoral-evangelist role in Brooklyn for ten years. So he has plenty of practice demonstrating the presence of the gospel in the Old Testament. His experience was evident in his Sunday gospel presentation from Leviticus. Jesus is there! 

The message reminded me of a study our Wednesday night prayer group did a couple of years ago. Studying Leviticus, we saw that it is essentially a telling of how a sinful people can live in the presence of a holy God. All of the sacrificial and purity laws that characterize Leviticus are in place so that the people can draw near to His presence. The need for such laws is not due to God’s raising the standard of holiness so that humans struggle to know him. Rather, the need for laws is due to the fact that something happened to humanity in the Garden of Eden whereby they can no longer live in God’s holy presence without mediation (hence their expulsion from Eden). Therefore, God establishes the system in Leviticus, centering on the Day of Atonement, which is placed in the exact middle of the book (Lev. 16). 

Leviticus and Advent

This brings us to Advent. You’re probably familiar with the account of Jesus’ birth and the events leading up to it in Matthew 1. There, Mary is found “with child from the Holy Spirit” (1:18), and her fiancé Joseph, no doubt feeling betrayed upon learning of his fiancé’s unforeseen pregnancy, resolves to divorce her quietly because he’s a good guy and doesn’t want to shame her (1:19). At that point, an angel appears to Joseph and tells him the child comes not from sexual promiscuity on Mary’s part, but from a miracle of God. And when the child is born, he is to be named Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21). Jesus is English for Greek Iesous, which is itself a translation of Hebrew Yeshua/Yohoshua, which means “the Lord saves.” Finally, Matthew tells us that all of this fulfills what the prophet Isaiah promised when he said that a virgin will have a son who shall be called Immanuel, which means “God with us” (1:23-24). 

You’ll notice that in his birth narrative, Jesus has two names: 

1. “The Lord saves,” because He came to save His people from their sins; and 

2. “God with us,” because He came to bring God’s presence to His people.  

Don’t miss Matthew’s point—the two names are intimately connected. Bringing back the theme of Leviticus, how can God dwell with sinful people? Only if there is mediation, so that the sinful people can somehow be placed into a position whereby their sins don’t keep them at odds with God. And whereas Christianity is not unique in contending that sin keeps us from God (for many religions claim the same), yet Christianity is unique how it contends that sin is dealt with: Through an act on God’s part, not ours.

Notice, Jesus comes as a baby born to a virgin (a miracle only God could perform); then (Matt. 2:13-15) he escapes Herod’s extermination efforts by being taken to Egypt, to show His continuity with Israel who had earlier lived in Egypt and were called the “son of God” (Ex. 4:23); eventually, after countless other actions to demonstrate that this is all God’s doing, He offers himself in the place of His people at the cross, to complete and fulfill both the sacrificial system and his own word that He’s come to “give his life as a ransom for many” (20:28) thereby establishing the new covenant which purchases the forgiveness of sins for all who believe (26:28). Finally, Matthew ends with the risen Christ telling his disciples that He will be with them always, until the end of the age (28:20). One might say that Matthew is sort of a New Testament Leviticus, answering the question, "How can God dwell with sinful people?"

Grace as a Means to Presence

The point is this: Jesus did not come to remove sin’s penalty and power as an end to itself. Rather, sin is removed so that there is room for the Holy Spirit to come and live with us, so that we can gain reality with God. We might say that Friday happened so that Pentecost could happen: Sin is taken away so that the Holy Spirit can be taken in. But let’s not miss the middle-portions of the story. First, Jesus rose from death, so that death is not the end of our story or our time with God; in fact, it is a sort of beginning insofar as we then experience His presence more gloriously. And second, He ascended back to His earlier heavenly throne, with humanity added, so that He can give His Spirit to all who seek God through faith in Him (Ac. 2:33). Therefore, with confidence (confidence!), a sinner can draw near to the throne of grace, because Jesus always lives to* make intercession for him or her (Heb. 4:16, 7:25).

What this means is that even if you were to have a continual struggle with sin—and let’s be honest, to some degree we all do (1 Jn. 1:8-10)—in your need, Jesus’ heart warms to you, longing for you to seek the Father’s grace and care, because the Son gave an offering at the cross which the Father accepted. That’s why Jesus rose: The Father took the offering, and now all who need Him can have confidence that He is there for them. Continual need doesn’t disqualify you from the grace of the one who saves; instead, continual need alone qualifies you. Or to borrow a verse from an old hymn: 

“Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;

All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him.” 

So come. Immanuel saves so that we can stay. And He has more grace than you have need.

*Note, he lives to make intercession for them. One of the main reasons He’s in heaven now is so that sinners can have confidence that God receives them because of Jesus.