When God gave a new name
Immanuel, God With Us
Of all the names given in Scripture, one gathers the whole hope of the world into a single word. In Matthew 1 the angel prepares Joseph for a birth unlike any other, and Matthew reaches back to the prophet Isaiah to explain it. Long before, in a season of fear and threatened kings, Isaiah had spoken of a virgin who would conceive and bear a son, and the child would be called Immanuel. Matthew hears that ancient promise ring out again over the manger. This is not a name the child would answer to daily, the way we call one another. It is a name that says what He is. In the birth of Jesus, God did not send help from a distance. He came near, and stayed, and made His dwelling with us.
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”Matthew 1:23
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”Isaiah 7:14
“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”Matthew 1:21
The name that was given
Two names sit side by side in Matthew 1. In verse 21 the angel tells Joseph to call the child Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. In verse 23 Matthew adds Isaiah's word, that a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which is by interpretation, God with us. The names are not rivals; they are two windows into one Savior. Jesus is the name spoken over the child, the name that says what He does. Immanuel is the name that says who He is. Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, first given to King Ahaz as a sign in a threatened kingdom, and lets it open to its fullest meaning in the coming of Christ. God with us was no longer only a promise. It had a face.
What the new name means
Immanuel is Hebrew, and it breaks simply into its parts: with us is God, or God with us. Matthew does not leave his readers to guess. He translates it on the page so that no one misses the weight of it. This was the ache of the whole Old Testament, that a holy God might dwell among an unclean people without consuming them. The tabernacle and the temple were shadows of that longing, places where God met His people at a careful distance. In the name Immanuel that distance closes. The name does not describe a doctrine so much as an arrival. It says that the God who spoke the worlds into being has come to be present, not above His people or behind a veil, but with them.
How it points to Christ
This name points to Christ as directly as any in Scripture, because Matthew applies it to Him by name. The whole Gospel that follows is the unfolding of what Immanuel means. God with us is not only a truth about the birth; it is the shape of the entire ministry, God among tax collectors and lepers and children, God at the tomb of a friend, God on a cross. And Matthew's Gospel closes where it began, for in Matthew 28:20 the risen Jesus promises to be with His people always, to the end of the age. The name given at the start is honored at the end. In Jesus, God with us became a promise that does not expire, held out to everyone who will receive Him.
Questions people ask
Was Jesus ever actually called Immanuel as a name?
Not as a daily name, no. He was called Jesus. Immanuel functions as a title that declares who He is, God with us, rather than a name people used to address Him. Matthew quotes Isaiah to interpret the meaning of the birth. Both names are true of the same person, one naming His identity and the other His mission.
Isn't Isaiah 7:14 about a child in Isaiah's own time?
The verse first spoke to King Ahaz as a sign in his own crisis, and honest readers acknowledge that setting. Matthew, writing under inspiration, hears in it a fuller fulfillment in Christ, a pattern the New Testament often follows. Christians have long read the prophecy as pointing beyond its immediate moment to the birth of Jesus, without erasing its original context.