Emmanuel (God With Us)

I want to share with you some of what God has been teaching me lately and God is still up 2 something! Julie may still chime in with a post every now and then with a topic of her choice, but I will also be sharing posts in a series about Walking in Grace. I will release posts as they are written rather than on Wednesday mornings so if you want to make sure you don’t miss any of them you can click on Subscribe via Email and receive the posts to your e-mail the following morning.

Mary was a virgin when the angel appeared to her to let her know that she would conceive a son as a virgin and when he was born he would be called “Emmanuel”, which means “God with us”. Why is it important that Jesus was born to a virgin? Adam and Eve were created perfect, but when they sinned by disobeying God, Adam immediately had a sin nature that is passed from generation to generation through the seed of the man. Every person is born with a sin nature that was present at conception from their father who had the sin nature until Jesus. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit coming upon the virgin Mary causing her to be with child. Jesus then was fully human as originally intended without a sin nature and he was also fully God. Jesus volunteered to leave the throne of heaven and come to earth to live as a human out of obedience to the Father. When we think about Christmas, we think about Jesus as “God with us”, meaning that he left heaven to be with us.

There is another aspect of Emmanuel (God with us) that we don’t often think as much about, but it may be almost as important as God coming from heaven to earth to be in the form of a human. When Jesus died on the cross, he became all of the sin of those that will trust in Him and removed it from us forever. In exchange, once we receive the gift of salvation from Jesus, our dead spirit is exchanged for the living Christ and He is with us forever. Why is this so important? The law proved that we cannot live in a way that is pleasing to God. However, Christ can and He is with us and will live that life through us if we just trust Him to do so in the same way we trust Him for our salvation.

So, if you have never placed your faith in Christ, trusting Him and only Him to save you from the penalty of sin, I want to encourage you to do that right now and you will immediately become a new creation and exchange your dead spirit for the living spirit of Christ. Maybe you are already a Christian and tired of struggling to live a life pleasing to God. What I would say to you is stop trying and start trusting. In the same way that you received Christ (by faith), trust Christ to live His life through you (by faith). How do you do this? Daily acknowledge that you cannot live a life pleasing to God and ask Jesus to live it through you. It doesn’t mean you will be sinless because your spirit will battle with your flesh for the rest of your life, but you will bear fruit because it will be Christ bearing the fruit through you and not you trying to bear it for Him. Stop trying to bear the fruit of the Spirit and let Christ bear it and allow Him to use your body however he wishes rather than trying to do things for Him.

In Christ,

Ben