Advent Trail December 11th - Luke 1:31

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. (Luke 1:31)

If the angel’s greeting had been enough to trouble Mary then the message itself must have been truly shocking to her. Though a virgin, she was going to have a child. That was both amazing and scary news – no wonder the message had begun with “Do not be afraid”. And no wonder that Gabriel had emphasised to her that though the news sounded disgraceful it came to her because of God’s grace and favour.

That grace is evident in the name which will be given to her child – Jesus. This is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua which means “the Lord is salvation”. To save is to rescue and deliver from calamity and danger and this expectation was central to the Jewish belief in the coming “anointed one”, the Messiah e.g. “the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor... to proclaim freedom for the captives”. (Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 4:18).

In particular, the reason for calling the child Jesus is “because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt.1:21). We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners, but that’s the heart of our spiritual problem. So Jesus came to rescue us from our sins by taking them upon himself. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross... ‘by his wounds you have been healed’” (1 Pet.2:24; Isaiah 53:5).