Immanuel, God with Us: Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6

Looking into the Christmas story and reviewing the prophecies and the narrative with so many characters, there have been many things that have been worth learning and relearning. My eyes have been opened so many times. And now we come to the Christmas, the celebration of Christ’s birthday. By now, there is not enough room on the cake to put he candles. How many would be enough to represent infinity?

The Son is given

The words in Isaiah 9:6 are striking, yet we overlook them. ‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,’ it begins with these words. How poetic that the child is born and given unto us. But if we go back and look at these lines again, we see that a child is born, and the Son is given. The Son is given to us already fully ‘grown’. This gift is the One who was the Word from the beginning. In the same verse we see how the finite human is born while the infinite Son is given. This is how we come to have Immanuel, God with us.

The words used are different, ‘born’ and ‘given’ in Hebrew as well. The Son is clearly a gift and not ‘born’ of the virgin in the same sense. I do believe that the Son submitted to the small womb and was borne there for the requisite 9 months and in this sense, He was born. It is awe-inspiring that Christ humbled himself to such confines as required for not only the womb, but all the years of childhood to maturity. However, the essence of the Son was before and continues today and the Spirit is the continuing representation of God to us. God is still with us, Immanuel.

Birthday or birth?

So often the Christmas season relegates Christ to a child-sized representation. But it is too difficult for me to comprehend the reflection of God in Christ, this magnificence of the Messiah in a babe. I need to recall this is a celebration of birth, just like a birthday. We shouldn’t put Christ back into the manger and make him grow up each year. We need a birthday cake, not a manger. Or maybe a birthday cake and a manger? The fullness of Christ might be represented by the babe in a manger, but the fullness of Christ is borne by the man, the One who died on the cross.

Come Emmanuel

The entrance of the Messiah was notable, but odd enough, no one remembered it but Mary. His mother was the only one who treasured these revelations in her heart. Jesus grew up unremarkably, no one came again from long distances to see the king. No one came to ask advice or make requests of the leader of the Jews. The Romans did not declare war and go after the Messiah. Yet we insist on going back to the birth of a helpless child as one of the longest seasons on the calendar. We spend many days considering the baby and too few considering the man. Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father, the reveal the heart of the Father and His character. He came that we may know Him. We do know Him; we do walk with Him. O come, O come Emmanuel!