Advent

December 10, 2022

Scripture Reading:

Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus*.

The one named Jesus will save his people from their sins. Jesus is the Greek translation of Joshua—Yahweh saves. Christ is a title that means The Anointed One.

Iēsoús – Jesus, the transliteration of the Hebrew term, 3091 /Lṓt (“Yehoshua”/Jehoshua, contracted to “Joshua”) which means “Yahweh saves” (or “Yahweh is salvation”).

“Jesus Christ” is properly “Jesus the Christ.” “Jesus” (2424 /Iēsoús) is His human name, as the incarnate, eternal Son of God (Mt 1:21,25, see also Lk 1:31) – the Christ, the divine Messiah (the second Person of the holy Trinity).

[Christ (His title) means “the Anointed One” (the eternal pre-incarnate, Logos, Jn 1:1-18).]

A particularly onerous House Bill 1775 was passed and signed into law in Oklahoma during the 2022 session. Its purpose was to address public school dealing with one of the hot-button issues of our day, what to do about transgender students and other issues related to LGBTQ students. It is onerous regarding its message, but it is also onerous in its construction. Most new legislation begins with careful definitions of words that would be used in the body of the bill. There were no such definitions in this bill. The word gender and sex are peppered through it, allowing the reader to decide what it means. I can assure you that different understandings resulted. The State Department of Education, the agency responsible for developing rules to implement it, copied it as it appeared in the bill, most likely because they could not make heads or tails of what it was trying to say. At some point, a court will most likely have to make that discernment or send it back for revision.

I thought of that bill when I read the words quoted above. Jesus will save his people from their sins. The Greek word used here is  266 /hamartía (“sin, forfeiture because missing the mark”) is the brand of sin that emphasizes its self-originated (self-empowered) nature – i.e. it is not originated or empowered by God (i.e. not of faith, His Inworked persuasion, cf. Ro 14:23) **.

We are often taught that sin means missing the mark, but what we may not fully take in is that our missing the mark comes from our self-originated nature. I had a few lessons in archery as a part of the required exercise class in college. I was not good at it, but I did learn the fundamentals. The first being I did not get to define the target, the mark. God sets forth the standards of our service to God when we elect to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus defined our prime directives as loving God and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We are not only guilty of selecting our own targets. We also often fail to measure whether the way we want others to be treated is, in the same way we would want to be treated in the same circumstances.

Prayer: Help us learn to love ourselves as you would have us love ourselves so that we know and understand the meaning of how to love our neighbors. Amen.

*https://biblehub.com/greek/2424.htm

**https://biblehub.com/greek/266.htm

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.