Chapter 18: Immanuel

We have traveled a long way in this book. We have seen how, all through the Old Testament, the Lord God revealed Himself little by little—appearing in visible form though He remained Spirit; coming to Abraham as the Lord at Mamre, to Joshua as the Captain of the LORD’s host, to Hagar and to Manoah and his wife as the Angel of the LORD. We have watched Him sketch His plan of redemption in the design and pattern of the tabernacle and the temple. We have heard Him proclaim, in His own words, that He is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” And we have listened to the prophets tell of His character, His promise, and His coming salvation, spoken across many centuries.

Now we come to the turning point of all history. After roughly four thousand years since the promise of a Redeemer was first given in the garden of Eden, the appointed time had at last arrived for God to keep His word. And here is the wonder at the center of everything: there was no better person, no greater angel, no creature anywhere in heaven or earth able and worthy to save mankind—so God Himself would become a man. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). This is the great mystery of our faith: that God became man in the flesh.

Notice the difference from all that came before. In the Old Testament, the Word could appear in visible form and be seen—but those were manifestations; He wore, as it were, a spiritual body for a moment and then was gone. Now the time was right for something altogether new and permanent: for the eternal Word to take a true human body of flesh and blood, and to live among men—to redeem them, and to reconcile them forever to God. This was no sudden improvisation. Isaiah had prophesied it plainly, centuries before:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (Matthew 1:23).

His name would be Immanuel—“God with us.” The Word who was “in the beginning with God,” who “was God” (John 1:1), now, in the appointed time, became flesh:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

The verb John uses for “dwelt among us” is striking—it means He tabernacled among us, pitched His tent in our very nature. The God who once met His people in a tent in the wilderness now made His dwelling in a human body. The long separation that began in Eden—the barrier we traced through this whole book—was beginning to close, for God had come to live with us.

His name is Immanuel, God with us. And yet the angel told Joseph to give the child another name as well—a name that declares why God had come: “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus—Yeshua, “Yahweh saves.” The One who is “God with us” came to be “God who saves us.” His very name is the gospel in a single word.

This is a mystery too deep for the mind to fully grasp, and the apostle Paul says as much. Writing to his spiritual son Timothy, he set it down in words that read almost like a hymn:

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory (1 Timothy 3:16).

Born of a Virgin

His entrance into the world was as miraculous as the One who entered it. His birth was a virgin birth: the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High overshadowed Mary, and she conceived a son. Her pregnancy was not the natural result of the union of a man and a woman; it was a supernatural work of God—a fresh creation of a human life within the womb of a woman.

This is precisely what God had promised in the garden, when He spoke of the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15). As we saw earlier in this book, that phrasing is extraordinary, for in Scripture it is the man who carries the seed and through whom descent is traced. To speak of the seed of the woman was to hint, from the very beginning, at a birth in which no human father would take part. And so it was: no man—not Joseph—had any part in the conception of Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, God Himself:

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35).

The virgin birth is not a quaint detail we may take or leave; it stands at the foundation of who Jesus is. He entered our race truly—born of a woman, sharing our flesh and blood—yet He entered it uniquely, without a human father, conceived by the Spirit of God, so that from the first moment of His human life He was both the son of Mary and the Son of God. He is one of us, and He is more than us.

He Said He Was God

When Jesus began His public ministry, He did something that no mere prophet had ever dared to do: again and again He revealed that He Himself was the One—that He was God. And it was almost impossible for His hearers to take it in. They knew God as Yahweh: almighty, self-existent, enthroned in heaven. And now here was a man—who ate with them, who grew tired, who attended a wedding—telling them He was that same God. It was more than they could comprehend, and many concluded He was speaking blasphemy.

Consider what He said of Himself. To a hostile crowd disputing about Abraham, Jesus made a statement of breathtaking weight—and notice His exact words. He did not say, “Before Abraham was, I was.” He said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”—taking upon His own lips the very name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), the name of the eternal, ever-present One:

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple (John 8:56–59).

They reached for stones because they understood Him perfectly. To say “I AM” was to claim to be Yahweh; and to their ears, for a man to say that was blasphemy worthy of death. They did not misunderstand Him—they simply did not believe Him.²³³

On another occasion He said plainly, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), and again they took up stones. When He asked why, they answered: “for a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (John 10:33). His hearers had no doubt about what He was claiming.

And when His disciple Philip longed to see the Father, Jesus gently revealed the same truth—“I am He”:

Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? (John 14:8–9).

To see Jesus is to see God. He is the exact image of the invisible God, the One in whom the Father is perfectly revealed.

And here are two verses that, set side by side, seal the matter beyond all doubt. The first records the words of the Lord God spoken in the Old Testament to Isaiah; the second records the words of the risen Jesus spoken to the apostle John on the island of Patmos. Read them together:

Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God (Isaiah 44:6).

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1:17–18).

The One who says in Isaiah, “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God,” is the very same One who says in Revelation, “I am the first and the last… I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.” Only God is the first and the last. And the One who died and rose is Jesus. Therefore Jesus is that God. He is Yahweh—the I AM—Jesus. This is the mystery.

How Can He Be God and Man at Once?

Perhaps you are asking the natural question: how can He be God and man at the same time? How is such a thing possible? To help us think about it—reverently, for we are near holy ground—let us remember how God first made man. Scripture says God formed man from the dust, breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).

From that act of creation we can see that a human being is made of parts joined together:

• Man has a spirit, created by God and breathed into the flesh: “There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8); “then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

• Man has a body, created by God from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 12:7).

• Man has a living soul—which arises from the union of the spirit and the body (Matthew 10:28; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12).

So a human being has a created spirit, a created body from the dust, and a living soul that arises from the union of the two.

Now consider the Lord Jesus. Like us, He has a real human body—true flesh, formed in Mary’s womb—and a living soul. But here is the great difference. In us, the spirit is itself a created thing. In Him, the Spirit is not created at all: His is the Spirit of God—God Himself—for God is Spirit. And so He is truly man, because He has a body and a soul like yours and mine, with all the human senses and experiences we have; and He is truly God, because the eternal, self-existent Spirit dwelling in that body is none other than God the Word, without beginning and without end. Truly man and truly God, at one and the same time. This is the great mystery.²³⁵

And this God-man is Himself the light and the life of the world. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). And Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). The very light that was God’s first word in creation now stood among men in a human face.

It was this same Jesus who, in the beginning, created all things—though then He was known only as the Word, not yet born of a woman, His name “Jesus” not yet revealed, for that saving name belonged to Him as the Redeemer who would take a human body. Paul unfolds this mystery to the Colossians, showing that the Son is “the firstborn of every creature”—not because He was created (He is the Creator), but because He holds the place of supremacy over all—and that it pleased God for all His fullness to dwell in Him bodily:²³⁶

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible… all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church… that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell (Colossians 1:15–19).

All the fullness of God, dwelling in a man. The Creator of the galaxies, cradled in a manger. The great I AM, learning to walk on the legs He Himself had designed. Jesus—truly God, truly man. A great mystery indeed—and the hinge on which our whole salvation turns.