Luke’s gospel gives us the backstory of Mary before the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew’s gospel gives us the backstory of Joseph. In his genealogy Matthew lists Joseph as in the line of David, so although he is not the biological father of Jesus, he is the legal father according to Jewish law and so a “son of David” as the angel addresses him in Matthew 1:20. This is important because the Messiah was to be a descendent of David, which Jesus was.
Joseph is a great example of faith. The angel tells him that the child in Mary is of the Holy Spirit and that He is the promised Christ or Savior, who “will save His people from their sins.” So Joseph obeys the commandment to take Mary as his wife. His faith had three elements: he believed God’s word, he knew he needed a Savior to deliver him from his sins, and he acted by faith in response.
Matthew tells us the birth of Christ was a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” which translated means, “God with us.” Isaiah called this birth “a sign” from the Lord God.
In Luke 2 we read the same language from an angel speaking to the shepherds: “Today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger.”
Christ being born of a woman is the great sign from God of salvation to sinful man, who is in desperate need of salvation. Jesus “saves His people from their sins.” Therefore, this is the sign that separates all men between those saved from their sins and those left in their sins. It is the difference between eternal life and eternal death.
Those who believe in Christ, who belong to Christ, are always referred back to this sign in one way or the other because they face many trials and temptations to wreck their faith while going through this world. One example is Romans 8:31: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely gives us all things?”
If you are a Christian, you are to think of Christ as “God with you.” It would be impossible to state all the ways in which God for Christ’s sake is said to be with us or favorable to us. He is reconciled to us through the death of His Son. Christ has brought us to God. We are not only reconciled so far as justice is concerned, but we are the objects of His love.
He is everywhere present by His Spirit to aid, counsel, and comfort. His providence is ever over us and watchful. Not a hair can fall from our head without the will of our heavenly Father. The Lord is with us, at our right hand, as near as light, as strength, as consolation, as the infinite good of the soul.
“God with us” expresses that union which is effected by the incarnation; it was because of the miraculous birth of the child, who was the Son of God, and who was called Immanuel. The union brought God and man into the most intimate fellowship in the person of Christ. It brought God into a relation to man such as He sustains to no other creature, that He call us brethren. He can sympathize with us in our temptations. What is done to us is done to Him. He lifts our nature above that of the angels.
Our great duty therefore, is to live worthily of that union, and to endeavor to bring others to enjoy its blessings. We have been given a perfect Savior by God and unsearchable riches in knowing Christ. We should, like Paul, “in view of the mercies of God, offer our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.”
Or like Peter instructs us, be “like newborn babes, longing for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.” And let us sing with joy, “Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King; Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled … Christ is born in Bethlehem.”
