Last Word: Nomenclature

If you have ever named a child, you know it’s a fairly big deal.

I still remember a three-hour car journey my wife and I dedicated solely to my daughter’s middle name. If you’re interested after one hour we decided on Katherine. We spent the next two debating whether it should be Catherine with a ‘C’ or a Katherine with a ‘K.’ Why do Mums and Dads do it? Because names still say a lot about what parents want their children to be.

But it doesn’t always work out that way. My parents called me Jonathan, which in Hebrew essentially means ‘God’s Gift.’ And while I’d like to think I turned out alright, sometimes I can’t help feeling I’ve fallen just a little short.

But what of Christ? According to Matthew chapter 1, at birth he gets two names:

Immanuel

One name he is given is Immanuel (Matthew 1:23). It’s a name which, as Christians, we tend to knowingly gloss over. But it is a truly remarkable nomenclature! For the angel essentially says to Joseph ‘God is coming’.

Last winter a plumber came to fix our boiler. During the course of a mandatory cup of tea, he said: ‘I wish I had faith like yours, vicar, I respect it – I really do. But how do you know God exists?’ As a Nonconformist, the temptation to correct his naming of me (‘vicar’) was strong, but instead I told him about the name ‘Immanuel.’ I told him that if he’d been born at the right time, he could have seen God in a humble manager, heard the creator crying out into the Arabian night air, and felt divine tiny fingers curl around his. For the baby was amazingly ‘God with us.’

More importantly (which with hindsight I should have also shared with him) the name Immanuel was a name that Christ owned for Himself. It was not a name that was thrust upon Him by pushy parents. Immanuel was the name that He wanted on His satchel, as a boy, and on His office door, as a man. For He consistently claimed to be the Father in the flesh (e.g. John 14:9).

Christmas then is a time when we celebrate God in history – God in His story. The time when the a Author writes Himself into His novel. The time when the Director walks onto His stage. And so wonderfully at Christmas we remember that our God is not distant. His birth reminds us that God can relate to our deepest joys, fears, and pains.

Jesus

However, that is not the only name He was given. For Joseph is also told: ‘You shall call His name Jesus, for he will save His people from their sins’ (Matt. 1:23). Again, it’s a name and a doctrine that we all know well, but there is a temptation for Christians to fail to meditate upon it. It’s one thing to remember, ‘God was here!’ It’s another thing to remember, ‘God was here, because I needed saving.’

As we say goodbye to 2019, a year bookended by political sparring, terrorism, and royal sleaze, it’s easy to meditate on all the sin out there. Indeed, at this time of year, there is a real temptation for carol-service crazy Evangelicals to think that Christmas is just for the unbelieving world.

Unwrapped

Why do we do that? There are many good reasons – hopefully we long for our family and friends to be saved – but perhaps one is because sometimes we subtly like to wrap our brokenness.

Some of us box ourselves in such a way that others won’t know our seasonal struggles. But most of us cloak ourselves in beautiful wrapping paper of carol singing and additional Christmas child-care cover. The carol service invitation to the neighbour and the increased standing order to church in 2020 are ribbons on the present that is us. It’s a wrap for another year. The baby is for everyone else.

Accordingly we must make time at Christmas to remember the day when the baby, Immanuel, will remove all our wrapping. The last day when the bows of Christian activity will be cut, the tags of the church rotas will be taken off, and the wrapping paper of seasonal morality will simply fall away.

By God’s grace, I’ve done some things in 2019 that I am pleased I have done. But yet again this is another year where the notion of my every thought, word, and deed being published before God Himself brings much fear.

Hence, in the naming of Jesus, I am again reminded that the wonderful message of Christmas is not the birth of one who will help me hide. But the birth of one who will save me from my ongoing sin. The baby, who will grow up to die to pay the price of all the things that I sometimes try to wrap up.

At Christmastime I am reminded to praise God for Jesus – the Saviour. The one who allows me to stand in the beautiful white bows of his perfect righteousness, and the one who promises to keep loving me in spite of my brokenness when I humbly take off deceptive decoration.

Tim Keller describes true festive joy like this: ‘To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and yet truly loved is a lot like being loved by God.’