WORD 2day: Friday, January 3, 2020
1 John 2:29-3:6; John 1: 29-34
Names, in the Biblical tradition are not merely nominative, they are descriptive and definitive! Abraham, Moses, were names that defined the history of the person; Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, were names that defined the very role of those who bore them; John was given the name even before he was conceived, just like JESUS, the Saviour; Emmanuel, God-with-us!
The Name says it all - You are to name him Jesus, we see the Angel instructing Joseph in Matthew 1:21... Yeshua. The reason for the name is declared immediately the Angel: for he will save his people from their sins. The Saviour, the liberator, the deliverer. How does he save, deliver, liberate? With some magical intervention from afar? No! The Lord saves, by becoming one among us. St. Paul tells us (2 Cor 5: 21): For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. He became poor (2 Cor 8:9), He became like us (Heb 2:17), He became one among us, and came to dwell with us - to save us, lift us up, take us to himself! That is what we have just celebrated - the Incarnation.
The true purpose of Incarnation was not to demonstrate the grandeur and the omnipotence of God, but the closeness of God with those whom God loved. Emmanuel is the title that explains best the love that God has for us...For God so loved the world, that God gave up everything even God's own Son; and the Son of God gave up even his Godhead and came to be one among us!
The Word was made flesh and dwells among us..here and now... and its name is, JESUS, the name above all names!