Emmanuel

The true believer has no difficulty in accepting Isaiah’s prophecy of Christ who was virgin-born. “They shall call His name Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23). This further name meaning “God with us” indicates a progressive revelation of the Lord. In the Old Testament, it is “God for us.” As the result of the Incarnation it is “God with us,” for Christ came as God manifest in flesh. He came and dwelt among men (John 1:14). Through the advent of the Holy Spirit it is now “God in us.” “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

The prophet Isaiah also gives us a plurality of names under the singular form, “His name”; (Isa. 9:6). Actually there are five names mentioned, although Isaiah says, “His name shall be called...” We have another instance of the use of the singular form to describe a plurality of persons in our Lord’s commission, in which we are instructed to baptize all believers, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). One name—three Persons. A proof, surely, of the unity of the Godhead. Isaiah’s names of Christ emanating from “His name,” speak of the unity of His transcendent attributes. They are the various facets of the same brilliant diamond.