Jesus and Emmanuel are Synonyms
“Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
Lord by the prophet, saying, 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 1:22,23
In addition to explaining the Name of Jesus, and recording its God given origin, the Holy Spirit, by the evangelist Matthew, has been pleased to refer us to the synonym of it, and so to give us still more of its meaning.” If, when our Lord was born, and named “Jesus,” the old prophecy which said that He should be called Emmanuel was fulfilled, it follows that the name “Jesus” bears a signification tantamount to that of “Emmanuel,” and that its virtual meaning is “God with us.” And, indeed, He is Jesus, the Savior, because He is Emmanuel, God with us; and as soon as He was born, and so became Emmanuel, the incarnate God, He became by that very fact Jesus, the Savior.
Our Savior is God, and therefore He is “mighty to save;” He is God with us, and therefore pitiful; He is Divine, and therefore infinitely wise; but He is human, and therefore full of compassion. Never let us for a moment hesitate as to the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, for His Deity is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. It may be that we shall never fully understand how God and man could be united in one Person, for who by searching can find out God? These great mysteries of godliness, these “deep things of God,” are beyond our measurement. Our little skiff might be lost if we ventured so far out upon this vast, this infinite ocean, as to lose sight of the shore of plainly revealed truth. But let it remain, as a matter of faith, that Jesus Christ, even He who lay in Bethlehem’s manger, and was carried in a woman’s arms, and lived a suffering life, and died on a malefactor’s cross, was, nevertheless, the appointed “Heir of all things,” the brightness of His Father’s glory, “and the express image of His person,” “who thought it not a prize to be grasped to be equal, with God,” for that honour was already His, so that He could truly say, “I and My Father are one.”
-Charles Spurgeon
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