A Word in Season: Jesus—Saviour (Matthew 1:21)

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Perhaps, for many people today, the name Jesus is not much more than a swear word or a curse word.

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For others it may just be an irrelevance, not someone or something they think about a great deal.

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And for too many Christians, perhaps, it's a name that we use with casual familiarity.

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We refer to Jesus the same way that we might refer to a mate that we meet walking down the street.

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And yet, when we come to the Scriptures, we find that that name is often associated with other names and titles that only add to its richness and its sweetness, reminding us that this

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Jesus is our Lord Jesus Christ, that there is more to this name than we might first imagine.

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Our hint toward that, our reminder of that, the revelation of that is found in Matthew's Gospel in chapter 1, when an angel of the

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Lord visits Joseph in a dream. Now Joseph is going to be the son of God's foster father when he comes as a man into the world.

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And amongst the things that the angel tells Joseph is that this lady,

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Mary, who is going to be his wife, will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name

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Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. This name

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Jesus means Saviour. It is not an accidental name, there is nothing casual about it.

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It is both name and title, a description, a designator of the work that he will do in order to bless his people.

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It is a reminder to us that we need to be saved. The Lord Christ does not simply come tripping into this world as a whim of the divine mind.

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He comes because we are dead in our trespasses and sins. He comes because we need to be saved from sin and all its consequences, from the pollution of sin, the guilt and the shame that cloaks our souls, that makes us filthy in the eyes of God and brings us grief and distress when we consider what we are before him.

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We need to be delivered from the power of sin, from that bondage, that slavery by which we are kept under the power of darkness.

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And we need to be delivered also from the punishment of sin, that fearful hell that awaits all those who go on unrepentant in a course of rebellion against God.

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And it reminds us not only that we need to be saved, but that we cannot save ourselves.

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I have by nature neither the ability nor the will to do this.

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I cannot save myself. I cannot make up for all the sins that I have done.

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I cannot, even if I could do that, then provide a perfect righteousness which would be satisfying to the holy

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God of heaven. And even if I could, by nature I have no desire to do that, because I am by nature dead in my sins.

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I am quite happy where I am, not happy in the sense that I enjoy everything that there is in being a sinner, but I have no appetite, no desire, no will for anything else.

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And then it reminds us that Jesus can and does save his people.

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Yes, I cannot save myself, but I have now one who is willing and able to save.

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To use the language of the old hymn, he is willing, he is able, he is full of pity joined with power.

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He has come to save his people from their sins. And the angel's language to Joseph is the language of certainty, of absolute confidence.

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It is the language of divine revelation. He's not going to come and try to save his people.

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He's not going to come and make salvation possible for a people. He will save his people from their sins.

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He is going to come. And when he comes, he is going to do everything that is required to deliver those who are under darkness, lost in transgression, subject to Satan, covered in iniquity.

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He is going to deliver us from the pollution, from the power and from the punishment of sin.

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He is going to do that by living a life of perfect obedience. He is going to do that by dying a death of atoning grace upon the cross, standing in the place of his people, suffering the punishment that is due to their sins, and then rising again from the grave in triumph as a testimony of his saving accomplishments.

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So let us not speak casually, carelessly or flippantly of our

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Jesus, our Saviour, who came into the world because he was going to save his people from his sins.