God With Us
God the Father was very merciful: He sent His creative Word, who in coming to deliver us came to the very place and spot in which we had lost life, and broke the bonds of our fetters.
And His light appeared and made the darkness of the prison disappear, and hallowed our birth and destroyed death, loosing those same fetters in which we were enchained…
Thus then the Word of God in all things hath the pre-eminence; for that He is true man and Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God; calling men anew to fellowship with God, that by fellowship with Him we may partake of incorruption. So then He who was proclaimed by the law through Moses, and by the prophets of the Most High and Almighty God, as Son of the Father of all; He from whom all things are, He who spake with Moses—He came into Judea, generated from God by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, even of her who was of the seed of David and of Abraham, Jesus the Anointed of God, showing Himself to be the One who was proclaimed beforehand by the prophets…
Now Emmanuel is, being interpreted, With you God; or as a yearning cry uttered by the prophet, such as this: With us shall be God; according to which it is the explanation and manifestation of the good tidings proclaimed. For Behold, He saith, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son; and He, being God, is to be with us. And, as if altogether astonished at these things, he proclaims in regard to these future events that With us shall be God…
Therefore by newness of the spirit is our calling, and not in the oldness of the letter; even as Jeremiah prophesied: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will accomplish for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah the covenant: of the testament which I covenanted with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: because they continued not in the covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant of the testament that I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not teach any more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will pardon and be merciful unto the sins of their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more…
This, beloved, is the preaching of the truth, and this is the manner of our redemption, and this is the way of life, which the prophets proclaimed, and Christ established…