Praise Immanuel!

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel
Isaiah 7:14

Immanuel.  Literally, God with us.  Has this name passed through our heads so many times that we've lost its significance?

God.  With.  Us.  And not with us in some form that we can't comprehend or appreciate.   He emptied Himself and came in human likeness.  God came as a baby!  The all-powerful Creator of the Universe came as a baby.  Remarkable.

But why?  Why is it so remarkable?  And why is it easy to read that previous paragraph and not immediately fall to our knees praising our God for sending Jesus?  Why can we hear the Christmas story every year for dozens of years and yawn in reply?

Maybe one reason is we don't think about the form God didn't take when He came into the world.  Or, more specifically, maybe we don't think about the form God in His justice should have taken when He came.  See, we're wicked you and I.  Wicked beyond what we'll ever know.  Listen to these statements about us:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for imaged resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles
Romans 1:21-23

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator
Romans 1:25

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.  They are full of envy, murder, strive, deceit, maliciousness.  They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors, of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:28-32

No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God
Romans 3:10-11

We are sinners and we like sinning.  What's worse, when we read sentences like these, we want to object to them!  The case against us is insurmountable and God's punishments of death and hell are just.  When God came as Jesus on that first Christmas morning, He could have come as our Great Condemner, wiping us out and sending us to hell.  And He would have been perfectly just in doing so.  God could have come as Judge.

But He didn't! 

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him
John 3:17

The glory of Christmas is that Jesus did not come to judge us, but to save us!  He did not come as an exalted King, executing His wrath that we all deserve.  He came as a humble baby, eventually growing to serve and love and redeem.  He can identify with our struggles and pain and temptations because He experienced them.  And remarkably, He came not to Judge but to be judged.  He had no sins, yet He bore our sins.  He deserved no punishment, yet He bore God's wrath intended for us.  He became a curse as He bled and died on that cross, thus removing the curse our sins deserve.  Our God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!

Yes, Immanuel deserves all the praise in the Universe!  Because He is God with us, not God against us.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God

2 Corinthians 5:21