Immanuel - God with us

613 immanuel god with usTowards the end of the year we remember the incarnation of Jesus. The Son of God was born human and came to us on earth. He became human like us, but without sin. He has become the only perfect, divinely normal human being, just as God had planned before time. During his earthly life he lived voluntarily in complete dependence on his Father and did his will.

Jesus and his Father are one in a way that no other person has experienced to this day. Unfortunately, the first Adam chose to live independently from God. This self-chosen independence from God, this sin of the first man, destroyed the intimate personal relationship with his Creator and God. What a tragedy this is for all of humanity.

Jesus fulfilled his Father's will by coming to earth to redeem us from Satan's bondage. Nothing and nobody could prevent him from freeing us humans from death. That is why he gave his divine and human life for us on the cross and made atonement for all our guilt and reconciled us with God.

We have been spiritually transported into Jesus' death and resurrected life. This means that if we believe, i.e. agree with Jesus, in what he says, he changes our life and we are a new creature. Jesus opened up a new perspective that was hidden from us for a long time.
In the meantime, Jesus has taken his place again at the right hand of God his Father. The disciples could no longer see their Lord.

Then the special festival of Pentecost occurred. It is the time when the New Testament church was founded and I emphasize that the Holy Spirit was given to the believers. I would like to represent this miracle with a few verses from the Gospel of John.

«And I want to ask the Father and he will give you another comforter that he may be with you forever: the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him because he stays with you and will be in you. I don't want to leave you orphans; I am coming to you. There is still a little time before the world will no longer see me. But you see me, for I am alive and you should also live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you »(John 14,16-20).

The fact that the Holy Spirit lives in us and that we are allowed to be one with the Triune God is beyond what the human spirit can grasp. We are again faced with the question of whether we believe this and whether we agree with Jesus, who addressed these words to us. The Holy Spirit of God who dwells in us reveals this glorious truth to us. I am convinced that every person who understands this thanks God for this miracle that has happened to him. God's love and grace for us is so great that we want to return his love full of the Holy Spirit.

After the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in you, he shows you the way, the only one in which you too live happily, contented and fulfilled with enthusiasm completely dependent on God. You cannot do anything apart from Jesus, just as Jesus did not want to do anything that was not His Father's will.
You can now see that Immanuel is "God with us" and that you were allowed to receive a new life, eternal life through and in Jesus, because the Holy Spirit lives in you. That is reason enough to be happy and thankful from the bottom of our hearts. Now let Jesus work in you. If you believe that he will return to earth and that you will be allowed to live with him forever, this belief will become reality: "For all things are possible for him who believes".

by Toni Püntener