Immanuel

Isaiah 7:14 (NKJV)
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

One of the many wonders of the scriptures is the fact that when God makes a promise He always stays true to His word. The prophecy of God’s gift to man was promised many times and verified in many ways. Within this verse we find that God said a virgin would bear a Son. This humanly is an utter impossibility. How can a woman who has never known a man produce a child without fertilization from a man?

The next part of this verse prophesies that this Son will be named Immanuel which is defined as “God with us”. So, what significance is this? God has been with us since the beginning of time. God is evident in nature and His creativity is evident in countless areas of life. In this sense, God is with us from eternity past through eternity future. But our verse is taking this to a new level. God is saying that this human Son shall be called God with us. This must mean that this Son was God and man at the same time.

Scripture goes on to verify this fact in very subtle but extremely powerful ways when Christ came. Within the first chapter of book of Matthew we are given a genealogy of very key examples of faith from King David up until the time of Christ. Each one of the men on the list where recorded to have “begot” a son. Begot is a word used of men who fathered a child and this child would carry forth their lineage. But when we get to Christ, the wording is amazingly different. Matthew, at this point, states, “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ”, (Matthew 1:16, NKJV).

The word “of whom” has amazing significance. In the original language this is a feminine singular word. This means that human seed came from a female alone. This could have only been Mary. Christ was fully human, completely able to feel and experience all that we do today. But the seed of fertilization was not of the human Joseph since they merely engaged and she was still, bodily a virgin. The seed had to be from the very God of heaven. Human seed and fertilized by God can only create a God/Man. This is why we can call Him Immanuel.

No other theology has been challenged more harshly that the deity of Christ. But, without Christ being God, He is nothing but a good man and not a Savior. John states in his first verse, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, (John 1:1, NKJV). And Paul said, “And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist”, (Colossians 1:16, NKJV). Christ is God and holds all things together. The fact that He is Immanuel shows that He knows all that we go through, but He is also the Savior in whom we trust for salvation and all other things in life.

Thoughts, comments, objections, prayer requests.



Daniel A. Smith