Isaiah prophesied the birth of Immanuel, God-with-us (Isaiah 7:14). Matthew wrote that the birth of Jesus, He-will-save-his people (Matthew 1:21), fulfilled this prophecy.

Consider what Reformed theologian Karl Barth has written about Immanuel and Jesus:

"God with us" means God with the man for whom salvation is intended and ordained as such, as the one who is created, preserved and over-ruled by God as man. It is not as though the expectation belonged to his created being. It is not as though he had any kind of claim to it. God cannot be forced to give us a part in His divine being. The matter might have ended quite well with that general grace of being--which even in itself is great enough.

But where God is not bound and man has no claim, even more compelling is the will and plan and promise of God. It goes beyond, or rather it precedes His will and work as Creator. Therefore it has to be distinguished from it, as something prior, which precedes it.

The ordaining of salvation for man and of man for salvation is the original and basic will of God, the ground and purpose of His will as Creator. It is not that He first wills and works the being of the world and man, and then ordains it to salvation.

But God creates, preserves and then over-rules man for this prior end and with this prior purpose, that there may be a being distinct from Himself ordained for salvation, for perfect being, for participation in His own being, because as the One who loves in freedom He has determined to exercise redemptive grace--and that there may be an object of this His redemptive grace, a partner to receive it. . . .

We are reminded of this remarkable name Matthew 1:21ff. The reference here is to a single, final and exclusive act of the God of Israel as the goal and recapitulation of all His acts. But this act, the birth and naming of Jesus, is similar to the events in the days of King Ahaz in that once again we have come to a change in the relationship between God and His people.

As the Evangelist sees it, it is this time the great change compared with which what took place before was only from his point of view a prelude. And now it is the equally unexpected change from perdition to salvation, from an age-long judgment to a new and final blessing.

And the Emmanuel-sign has it in common with the name of Jesus that the latter, too, although this time in the reverse direction, is a sign for both: a sign "for the fall and rising again of many in Israel" (Luke 2:34), a sign both of the deepest extremity imposed by God (as in Isaiah 8:6f) and also of the uttermost preservation and salvation ordained by God (as in Isaiah 8:9f). Over and in both it is Emmanuel, "God with us," and now therefore (in order that what was said by the Lord through the prophet as he spoke) Jesus, Jehoshuah, "God helps."

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, IV/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), pp. 9-10, 6, emphasis added.

So let us rejoice again at Christmas that God is with us in Jesus to save even us from our sins.