Yahweh Saves His People

Matthew 1:20-23

“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

I've been dialoguing with a couple of very friendly Jehovah's witnesses lately, going back and forth about the divinity of Jesus. In their eyes, he's God's chief angel, not really God Himself. I'm not sure how they get around these verses, though.

Joseph was to give the Holy Spirit-born child the name "Jesus," the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Joshua, which means, "Yahweh saves." Yahweh does save, but the angel says that Jesus is the one that is going to be saving his people from their sins. 2+2 = 4, right? Jesus = God = God himself saving his people from their sins. God does it all, right on down from the Holy Spirit impregnation.

Then to top it off, Matthew includes a little Old Testament scripture to back up what the angel had just said, namely that God promised he would come and be with his people. It's an amazing and somewhat paradoxical thing...that God would come in human form and walk among us, but it makes more sense to me than sending an angel to do what God repeatedly said he was going to do Himself.

"²¹ Declare what is to be, present it—
let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago,
who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, Yahweh?
And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none but me.

²² “Turn to me and be saved,
all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, and there is no other.
²³ By myself I have sworn,
my mouth has uttered in all integrity
a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
by me every tongue will swear.
²⁴ They will say of me, ‘In Yahweh alone
are deliverance and strength.’”
All who have raged against him
will come to him and be put to shame.
²⁵ But all the descendants of Israel
will find deliverance in Yahweh
and will make their boast in him." (Isaiah 45:21-25)