GOD CAME DOWN

God Is With Us

Immanuel

.
…and they will call him Immanuel –

which means,

“God
with us.”

.
Matthew 1:23

Immanuel! God is with us!” We proclaim this
fact in the sense that God’s love includes the
entire world! One can’t even cross a street
today without meeting people whose ideas and
outlook on life are different. You can’t travel to any
place without mixing and living with people who
are different. If God is with us, then he must also
be with them! If we think we have to wait until they
are converted or changed, we’ll most certainly be
least in God’s kingdom. Jesus died for us because he
died for the entire, godless world. This is the love
of God: he bestows a kiss without waiting until we
have become angels! If God is with me, he is with
all people! God is with us – all of us!
If we are honest it is not easy to identify with this
Immanuel. It would be so much simpler if I could
just stand in a niche near my Savior and be “saved”
and let the world go to hell – that’s not hard. But
to accept Immanuel and proclaim, “God with us,”
and be entirely sure that the world belongs to God,
and get to work, that’s difficult. Much of the world
doesn’t want anything to do with God. Worse still,
even the followers of Jesus hardly understand what
it means that the world belongs to God. Christians
not only take up arms against “unbelievers,” they
fight one another and kill each other and consign
one another to hell – that is sheer torment.
Jesus, the light of the world, Jesus, the love of
God for the world – these must be put into practice!
“Immanuel!” Let it be today, tomorrow, and for
all time: “God with you, with me, with all the
world!” In this way we can be, “people for life”;
and wherever we go, wherever we stay, we can say
“Immanuel.” When things are hard for us, when we
meet enemies, let us remember “Immanuel” and be
joyful that this Savior came into the world!

Christoph Blumhardt