What does it mean that God is with us?
Matthew ends the account of Jesus' birth by reaching back to a prophecy given centuries earlier, and by attaching to the child a second name that translates into three ordinary words: God with us. The question is what those words actually claim — whether they describe a feeling of nearness, or something that happened in history at a cost.
More Than Everywhere
The name does not simply restate that God fills all things. Commentators point to something far more startling: God present in a real human life.
Samuel RidoutThis is the wonderful meaning of "Emmanuel" (God with us); not merely as omnipresent, filling heaven and earth and going beyond all the bounds of His vast universe, but — amazing thought! — in the person of One who emptied Himself and took a servant's form and was made in the likeness of men; of One who was perfect Man in the fullest sense of the word, spirit, soul and body — "the Man Christ Jesus."
Why There Is a Second Name
Two names are given in this chapter: Jesus, and Immanuel. They are not alternatives, and neither works alone.
F. B. HoleThe two names are closely connected. To have God with us, apart from our being saved from our sins, would be impossible: His presence would only overwhelm us in judgment. To be saved from our sins, without God being brought to us, might have been possible, but the story of grace would have lost its chief glory. In the coming of Jesus we have both. God has been brought to us and, our sins being removed, we have been brought to Him.
The Manner of His Coming
If God comes near, the way He comes tells us what He intends. He could have arrived in open majesty; He chose a baby instead.
J. A. TrenchHe might have shone into the rebel world in all the majesty of His glory. Who could have borne His presence? It would have been our destruction. But no! He veils the glory of His Person in the lowly clothing of humanity. In human weakness He is born into the world. What more perfect expression of it than a baby?
The Move Came From His Side
Nothing in the account is human achievement. Writers stress that the whole event runs one direction — downward, from God to us.
J. T. MawsonThat He should come in flesh was the only way if men were to know the heart of God and be saved. The movement must be from His side. It was in this way that God stepped in with mercy, not for the Jew only, but for mankind... The way God stepped in proves beyond all question that man is utterly unable to save himself. Men have had no hand in the matter at all, except to believe and to receive the blessing that results from it.
With Us, For Us, In Us
The phrase is not left hanging as a title. One writer traces it through Peter's preaching, where it becomes the first of three stages.
W. T. P. WolstonHaving announced Him as "Lord of all," Peter goes on to tell the history of Jesus, and unfolds three great truths — God with us; God for us; and God in us. First of all, you find the truth of God with us: "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree."
Still True in the Present Tense
Matthew opens with this name and closes with a promise that matches it. That promise is treated not as a hope but as a standing fact.
William J LoweThe actual presence of the Lord among two or three is not a mere promise, but is stated as a divine fact, resting on what He is in incarnation, Emmanuel, "God with us." Such is His divinely given name (Matt. 1:23). His closing word is, "I am with you" (Matt. 28:20)... Both chapter 18:20 and 28:20 are in the present tense.
And the line does not stop at the end of the Gospel:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe Gospel of Matthew begins with Immanuel, "God with us," and it ends with Immanuel. With Him, our Saviour and Lord, we shall be for all eternity.
The Weight of One Word
Taken seriously, the name is not decoration on a Christmas card. It rearranges everything around it.
J. G. BellettWhat force and authority, I may say, is in that one word "Emmanuel." If the soul really took it in, what power it would have to push everything else out of place! God with us is a thought, or a fact, or a mystery which might well claim the right to make room for itself, whatever else has to give way.
Summary
- Not distant. "God with us" means more than God being everywhere; it means God present in a real Man, spirit, soul and body.
- Not condemning. God with us apart from our sins being dealt with would only overwhelm us in judgment — so the child is also named Jesus.
- Not proud. He veiled His glory in human weakness, because open majesty would have destroyed us rather than saved us.
- Not earned. The movement had to come from His side; our only part is to believe and receive.
- Not ending. Matthew opens with Immanuel and closes with "I am with you" in the present tense — and it runs on into eternity.