The naming of Jesus (it really matters!)

Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matt 1:20–23) 

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This might be one of the most important verses in the Bible. It's packed full of so much meaning, though I suspect if you've heard this passage in the Nativity narrative, you read past it pretty quickly and missed a lot of the "meat" here. I did, for a long time.

 

The obvious thing, here, is that the angel (we don't actually know which angel this is, but most presume it's Gabriel) gives Joseph a dream to assuage his concerns. I mean, he was already betrothed to Mary, and she turns up pregnant! Can you imagine what he must've been thinking?

 

He knew he wasn't the father. The thing is, he'd have had no choice in Jewish culture but to divorce her. In that culture, an engagement was a legal marriage. There was a second stage, when he'd "take her in his home," which would consummate the marriage.

 

Usually, when you "divorced" someone for something like this, there was a public ceremony. It would shame the woman for her infidelity, and in this case, would have been important for Joseph to maintain his integrity, to establish his position that he wasn't the one who'd "gone into" Mary before the proper time.

 

Instead, though, Joseph had intended to divorce Mary secretly. What an act of grace! Not only would this spare Mary the humiliation of the public divorce ceremony, but it might even put some public scorn on Joseph. People would likely assume that the divorce was done in private precisely because Joseph had impregnated Mary before marriage.

 

This point is often missed. Can you see why Joseph was chosen to be Jesus' earthly father? In Joseph, we see a foreshadowing of who his adopted son would be. Joseph willingly took the shame, the scorn, the public "sin" upon Himself. At least, he was willing to do it. What a man, right? Remarkable.

 

But Joseph isn't the savior. His willingness to bear the shame might have foreshadowed who Jesus would become, but it wasn't to be. The angel intervenes, and addresses Joseph as a "son of David," indicating an important point about Jesus' identity. The Messiah was to be of the house of David.

 

But there's so much more here. We've barely scratched the surface. We could go into detail about the Holy Spirit, and how significant that is. But I have a propensity to write long e-mails. (What??? Nahhhhh!)

 

What are we to make of the specific name that the Angel tells Joseph to give to Jesus? And why was it important for Joseph to do this?

 

First, they didn't have gene testing back then. If Joseph named the child, it legally conferred upon his son his entire lineage, his entire inheritance. For the Jewish people, the naming of a child actually conferred an identity. It was considered more important that biological lineage, in part, because they didn't understand how the biology of it all worked back then.

 

There's a "book end" feature here in Matthew's Gospel, too. This is just the first bookend. At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus commissions the eleven disciples to make disciples by "baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

 

Remember, naming someone puts them in that lineage. Just as Jesus received a human lineage, from the house of David, to establish His identity, and to reveive all the benefits that came with being a part of the House of David. Baptism is done "in the name" of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because when we're baptized by Jesus' authority, we receive His divine lineage and receive all the benefits of belonging to the house of the Triune God. We become "sons" with the Son, and we get the benefits of belonging to the House of God! We become heirs of all "authority in heaven and earth" (Matt. 28:18), and heirs of eternal life.

 

Now, what about the actual name that's given to this baby boy, conceived by the Holy Spirit?

 

The name "Jesus" (Ἰησοῦς, Iēsous), the Greek form of the Hebrew "Joshua" (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ, Yehoshua), means "Yahweh saves" or "Yahweh is salvation." But pay attention to the words the angel speaks, the reason why this baby is given the name: "for he will save his people from their sins."  

 

What's the connection here? IF the name literally means YAHWEH saves... and this baby gets the name because he will save the people from their sins... the angel is revealing in a not-so-subtle way that Jesus is God. The verb, "he will save" is a third person future tense verb. The clear antecedent here is the child. The word "for" connects the name to the child. This child is Yahweh, the one true God.  

 

There's really no way around it here in the grammar. There are a lot of people who deny this, for various reason. Skeptics often argue that the divinity of Jesus is a late development, and doesn't appear until the Gospel of John (🚨 NERD ALERT... a lot of critical scholars date John's Gospel later than they should... they put John in 120-150 A.D. and based on archaic scholarship they claim that it was written by a John other than the apostle, and late... but P52, a manuscript fragment of the Gospel of John found around Alexandria in the last century was actually dated by several independent, and agnostic, scholars to 90 A.D., placing it clearly within the life of the Apostle John. Some scholars today place it as late as 125 A.D., but since this was a copy, found around Alexandria and not from Ephesus where John was writing, a significant amount of time must've passed from the time the Gospel was written, was copied, and this copy was made in Egypt... again, placing the composition of John much earlier, easily in latter part of the first century. In other words, within the era of an eye-witness account to the life of Jesus, e.g. the Apostle John 🚨NERD ALERT OVER, you may now resume your usual devotion).

Regardless, we have the affirmation of Jesus' divinity right here in Matthew's Gospel. I showed you in another e-mail (you can find it on the archive) how Jesus demonstrated that He was the one true God in virtually every chapter of Mark's Gospel. He didn't come out and "say," "Hey, ya'll, I'm God, come and worship me," but he did things that the Scriptures attribute to God alone.

 

Here, in the naming of Jesus, we see an affirmation of Jesus true identity, both 100% human, and also 100% divine, from the very beginning. A human and a heavenly lineage. Son of Man, and Son of God. And he was born for a purpose. All the way at the start, this naming comes with something akin to a mission statement.

 

"He will save his people from their sins..."  

 

Some people have said that Jesus Christ was born to die. I can appreciate that sentiment, but I think it's also important to recognize the salvific purpose of Jesus entire life. After all, if all that was necessary was that Jesus eventually die, why not let Herod slaughter him along with the innocents? Why was it important that Jesus grow into a man, that he teach, that he preach...

 

Well, he had to train up his disciples to spread the Good News. But he also lived his life in a way that actually recapitulated the history of God's people. A lot of the things Jesus did reflected back on the history of Israel, but he brought them all to greater meaning and significance. But he also had to totally enter into human experience, to truly grow into the fullness of a man, so that all of the human experience (not just Israel's history) might be redeemed in Him. So that He might also confer upon us the name that's above all names, reflected in the Great Commission and baptism, and so that we would be come true heirs of all heaven and earth.

 

So that we'd be forgiven of all sins, and live with Him in everlasting blessedness.

 

In Jesus' name,

Judah