She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus — Yeshua in Hebrew, meaning the Lord saves — carries within it the announcement of the child's mission. Names in the biblical tradition are not merely labels but descriptions: the child named Immanuel (God with us) in Isaiah 7 corresponds to the child named Jesus (the Lord saves) here. He will save his people from their sins — not from Roman occupation, not from political oppression, but from the deeper bondage that makes all other bondage possible. Acts 4:12 will later say there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. The name given before birth is the name that will be proclaimed to the ends of the earth.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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