Jesus the Saviour

“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Mt 1: 21)

What name in existence is sweeter than this blessed name which the angel proclaimed before the birth of the Saviour in fulfilment of the prophecies? No name has been repeated in the New Testament as much as that of Jesus. It is mentioned six hundred times. After the birth of the Lord, Christians refused to call anyone by that name; that Paul’s friend who was called Jesus was renamed Justus (Col 4: 11) that the name [of Jesus] may be set apart for the blessed Person of the Lord.

It is the name which the heavenly Father gave His Son, the Word Incarnate… He is the pride of the apostles, the crown of the martyrs, the joy of the righteous, the firmness of the Churches, and the forgiveness of sins.^[1]A reference to the prayer recited before the Nicene Creed in Coptic tradition, usually referred to as the Introduction to the Creed, which applies all these titles to Christ.

No Salvation Apart from Him

Jesus’ name is the same as that of Joshua and Hosea in Hebrew; and all such names mean “God saves.”

While Joshua of old was a type of the true Saviour, in that Joshua fulfilled the work of Moses, Jesus has fulfilled the Law in its entirety through grace and truth. Joshua crossed over with the people from the wilderness to the promised land, but it was the Lord Jesus alone who crossed over with the Church from the valley of the shadow of death to the glorious liberty of the children of God. Where Moses comforted Israel on a fleshly level, the Lord has given us true comfort through His resurrection, ascension, and His sitting at the right hand of the Father as an everlasting intercessor and an eternal salvation. He has prepared for us a place that we may enter the new Jerusalem with Him, the place of true comfort (Revelation 21).The understanding of the Saviour among the Jews of old had deteriorated from its spiritual level into dreams of colonial ambitions. They supposed that the Saviour would be a “superman”^[2]sūbarmān. who would destroy the foreign enemy, and extend Israel’s territory from the Euphrates River to the Nile River. However, the saintly prophets insisted on crying out in the consciences of the people that salvation is a question of our sins and iniquities.

We Are Saved By His Life

If the wages of sin is death, then Adam ought to die a spiritual, physical, and moral death, along with his children. But the heavenly Father promised Adam a seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head. This is the Messiah, the Saviour who saves His people from their sins.

Regarding this, Paul the Apostle says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:12, 17).Salvation is not from sin alone but also from all the consequences and complications that come with it. If sin is a separation from God as Isaiah the Prophet declares, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). Christ Jesus has come to seek and save that which was lost (Lk 19:10). Through Him, we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son.^[3]Although it may seem redundant to say that through the Son of God, we have fellowship with the Father and His Son, Bishop Bimen is probably simply quoting 1 John 1:3, ‘our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.’

Where sin was captivity, humiliation and slavery, Christ has freed us from the bondage of iniquity unto the glorious liberty of the children of God: “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn 8:36). He has given us adoption through His salvation, making us fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Where sin had become a heavy, back-breaking burden, Jesus the Saviour came to give us rest from our labours and the heaviness of our sins: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).

Where sin brought punishment, judgement and condemnation, Christ Jesus has given us redemption and justification. Justification here is not merely a declaration of innocence, but also a gift of positive righteousness.^[4]In Arabic, as in Greek of the New Testament, there is a natural connection between “righteousness” (birr/dikaiosunē) and “justification” (tabrīr/dikaiōsis): to justify someone means to make them just, i.e. make them righteous. As the Scripture says, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).

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