Another expression of the Immanuel Principle is our hope of our eternal residence with God in heaven; God himself is our eternal dwelling. Between Eden and the Incarnation, the Immanuel Principle was God’s intent, as evidenced in his appearances to man through OT theophanies. Through these appearances we see Christ Himself, manifested through revelations and visions. The OT theophanies reveal to us the God the promises of the onewho would come and dwell with us.

Introduction:  The Immanuel Principle
If we tend to think of “Immanuel: God with us” mostly at Christmas, a deeper study will show it to be a core concept throughout Scripture. As some have explained: ‘The Immanuel Principle’ is God’s intent to be with us and His creation. Understanding and appreciating the Immanuel Principle is one of the reasons why we celebrate the Christmas season. Even though Christmas observance is not scripturally mandated, we should celebrate God’s intent for us to know that he is with us through Christ’s incarnation. It is the core of our Christian hope.
The Immanuel Principle is first seen right at the beginning of God’s revelation in the Garden of Eden as God walked and fellowshipped with man in the cool of the evening. When man’s sin broke his communion with God, His still intended to be with us. Through the incarnation he would show Himself to man, to resolve and remove the sin that had necessitated the separation. As God told Moses, “No one can see my face and live” ( Ex. 33:20).
In Christ’s incarnation we would look on Christ and live, in the same way as Israel did when many were bitten by deadly serpents in the wilderness; Moses was instructed to place a serpent made of brass on a pole so any who looked at it would be healed and live (Num 21/Jn 3: 14-16). This anticipates the unmistakable divine providence pointing to the cross of Christ.
Another expression of the Immanuel Principle is our hope of our eternal residence with God in heaven; God himself is our eternal dwelling. Between Eden and the Incarnation, the Immanuel Principle was God’s intent, as evidenced in his appearances to man through OT theophanies. Through these appearances we see Christ Himself, manifested through revelations and visions. The OT theophanies reveal to us the God the promises of the onewho would come and dwell with us.
The God Who Sees Finds Hagar (Gen 16)
In the OT world, Hagar was a least of the least position. As an Egyptian slave woman, and surrogate mother for Abraham’s family at Sarah’s insistence, Sarah came to despise Hagar even though she gave Abraham a son.  Sarah chased Hagar out of the house through her hostile treatment. Gen 16:7 tells us, “The angel of the LORD” went and found her by a spring of water in the desert wilderness.
The Angel of the LORD asked her a question: “Where are you coming from, and where are you going?” The Angel also promised, “I’ll  give you offspring unable to be numbered,” beginning with the child she was now carrying.  Only God Himself could make such a promise.
The text reveals no fear in Hagar of this Angel; the conversation with Him appears quite normal to Hagar. He appeared ordinary to Hagar, much as Christ in His incarnation “has no majesty or beauty that He would stand out” (Isa 53).  During his earthly ministry, people spoke with the Christ, the God-man, “as a man speaks with his friend.” The Gen. 16:13 account tells us Hagar called the name of the LORD who spoke to her “El Roy,” that is, “You are a God of seeing,” for she knew, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”
While the omnipresent Father sees and knows all, He wants us to know that He knows and sees. It is the Incarnate Christ who tells us, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). As Hagar said, “I have seen him who sees me.” God sees us as “in Christ.” God cares for us in the Person of Christ, who loved us and gave Himself up for us” ( Eph. 5:2).
Jacob Wrestles with God…and Wins (Gen 32)
If God’s appearance to Abraham (in Gen 18, the promised birth of Isaac to Sarah) reveals a God and Savior who keeps His promises, the appearance of Christ to Jacob even more clearly reveals a Savior who shows us God, not only in His holiness, but in His mercy.
Jacob had run from Esau, his brother, having deceived their father to steal Esau’s birthright.  He had gone to his relative Laban in a far country. Eventually, he wore out his welcome there, too, both men agreeing to set up a pile of stones that neither would by-pass, to harass each other. Jacob was anticipating the reunion with Esau, going so far as to prepare for battle by dividing his family and possessions into two separate caravans.
In this fearful mood, Jacob would encounter the pre-incarnate Christ.  Having sent even his wives away, Jacob spent the night alone. As the Scripture tells us, he wrestled all that night with “a man,” a physical confrontation with an incarnate being, of some sort. The two fought to a draw, eventually the Christ- figure damaging Jacob’s thigh socket to break free from his grip.
Even then, Jacob demanded God’s blessing and received it. Christ changed Jacob’s name to Israel saying, “You have striven with God, and have prevailed.” We too have prevailed with God, through the Person of Christ. Later, Jacob summed up the encounter, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”
In addition to Christ’s encounter with Hagar that revealed Him to be the one who cares for us, Jacob’s encounter with Christ reveals Him to be the One who shows us God and yet we live, not just in this lifetime but forever.  As Christ said, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In the person of Christ, we see God, and since Christ paid the penalty for our sin we receive life.
Manoah’s Barren Wife: The Sacrifice for Sin that Saves (Judges 13)
In biblical history, as man’s sin deepens, The Immanuel Principle becomes more essential, and in the case of Manoah’s wife, more detailed. While many OT theophanies can leave out details that render the historic account somewhat ambiguous, perhaps no theophany reveals more about the incarnate Christ than this, to Manoah’s wife. During the time of the Judges, Israel had again fallen into great sin, and God had again sent the Philistines to draw them back to Himself.
Manoah was from the tribe of Dan; his wife was barren. Judges 13: 3 tells us the Angel of the LORD appeared to her alone with a message: “You shall conceive and bear a son.” If this rings familiar, recall Isa 7: 14 and Luke 1:31, both foretelling the virgin birth of Christ. Manoah’s wife was instructed to commit to the Nazarite vow of no alcohol or eating unclean animals, as this son would “begin to save Israel from the Philistines,” to save Israel from the consequences of their sin.
This too would find a greater Immanuel Principle fulfillment. As a virgin, Mary would bear a son, and was told to call His name Jesus, for He would fully “save His people from their sins.” After a while, it occurred to Manoah this Angel of the LORD was God Himself, for he said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen the LORD.”
But her response was insightful, and theologically brilliant. She replied: “If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these” (13: 23). She knew about the purpose of sacrifices, what Isaiah would also tell Israel hundreds of years later, of the Incarnate Christ on the cross, “He shall see the anguish of His soul, and be satisfied.” Christ was the intent and fulfillment of all the OT sacrifices, the one sacrifice that would fully satisfy the Father.
After the construction of the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, the theophanies would largely cease, for God was dwelling among them.  It would take the Incarnation, that greatest of miracle of all, to show us all that God intended us to know about his dwelling with us.
Before the birth of Jesus, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying:
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us) (Matt 1: 20).
The incarnation of Christ demonstrates the fullness of God coming to his people to dwell with them. Jesus assures all who believe:
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30).
Today God is dwelling with us by His indwelling Spirit. And one glorious day, Christ will return to earth, to raise the dead with the living, “and so we will always be [dwell] with the Lord” (I Thes 4).
Mark Kozak is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Providence Reformed PCA in Lavalette, WV.
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We are all called to honor the gray hairs, to be grateful for God’s gifts to the church, and to sit at the feet of our elders with reverence, respect, and deference, like the fathers in the faith that they are. This will also teach our children, it will teach our churches, it will teach society outside the church how we deal with things: with the principle of grace, respect, forgiveness, redemption and mercy.

It can be an inglorious task to say anything about the current generation. Some concepts that would have been considered “conventional wisdom” a few years ago and wouldn’t require a lot of explanation are now under scrutiny and being reframed in an impressive and frightening exercise of deconstructing ideas that we see today.
I want to reflect on something that seemed like commonplace knowledge not so long ago, but is now under this sort of re-signification, which is the respect for the elderly.
It seems that we live in a time when the elderly represent a way of thinking and doing things that no longer works in our society (and, to our astonishment, in some churches) and therefore it is necessary to distance oneself from them (or from us). My subject is brief and I want to deal with it in the context of the Christian faith, for my concern is with the state of the church, I mean, the state of those who professes faith in Jesus Christ.
A huge number of young people from the “Z” generation, that is, people born from 1995 and on, seem to be leading a relentless patrol to everything that stands in the way of the new ethics that the so-called “woke” movement established as the immutable clause of our society. This new ethics is comprehensive and incorporates practically all the ideas that have emerged from the progressive narratives of the last 25 years that give new guidelines on what it means to live well in society. The escalation of change in core values was very fast, and, it seems it started to be implemented even more aggressively after the 2020 pandemic. From areas related to the environment to complex issues in medicine, science, politics, sexuality, psychology and religion, in short, for everything there is a new norm that does not accept any discussion. Its imposition becomes violent, whether due to the cancellation culture, very strong in the press and social media environment, or, even more dangerous, as we see in Western governments, due to the creation of new bills and jurisprudence that criminalize public opinion and the discussion of ideas. Thinking in an old-fashioned way in the 2023 can be very dangerous and even get one arrested.
It is curious, however, that the method of this new ethics takes place through the fragmentation of truth, through the end of empiricism and common wisdom and through the use of broken narratives, disconnected of a metanarrative in favor of a broad pluralism. This has been called post-truth and means that each person or social group has its own truth and values, which can never be questioned.
It is very disconcerting to realize that this trend has infiltrated the Christian church as well. Many among God’s people are strongly influenced by this new post-truth ethics and begin to confuse Christian ethics with the new (and suffocating) ideas that regulate the life of Western society in this 21st century. Alisa Childers, American Christian author, addressed this issue in her moving testimony published in book form under the title Another Gospel? A response to progressive Christianity, and also in here more recent title, Live your Truth.
But I digress. Let me get back to the point. Elders are being canceled left and right and it is happening in the church too, right under our nose. So, let me first bring the biblical principle to tackle this issue.
The fifth commandment of the Decalogue, written by God’s own hand (and spoken before His people in the Sinai) says: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you”.
In this commandment, God’s people are called to love and obey their parents. A first and important element that must be highlighted is that the commandment is not addressed to children only, but to all who have living parents (Proverbs 19:26; 23:22). This commandment, in distinction from most commandments in the Decalogue, is put in positive terms and, furthermore, is bound up with a promise. The promise has to do with the effects of obedience. As we see in the wisdom books of the Bible, taking good advice from our parents, listening to and respecting our elders, dealing respectfully with authorities are generally attitudes that will prolong one’s days and make life easier. Add to this the fact that God himself promises to bless those who seek to keep the fifth commandment and preserve its spirit.
The expression “honor” comes from the Hebrew kabod and has a sense of weight, importance, glory and prestige. It is the respect that an inferior offers to a superior. The Westminster Larger Catechism, in question 126, proposes that the scope of the fifth commandment is the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations, as inferiors, superiors or equals.
The Reformers went even further and expanded the understanding of this commandment to all who are in authority over us—primarily and immediately our parents, but also the elderly, the magistrate, educators, and spiritual fathers. French reformer John Calvin, commenting on the fifth commandment, highlighted three expressions of honor—“reverence, obedience, and recognition”—and demonstrates how the principle of honoring parents can extend to all in position of authority: magistrates, elders, fathers in faith, pedagogues. In his elaboration, Calvin will condition this obedience to obedience “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6.1).
A very important point of the commandment is that honor, respect and consideration begin in the heart. Reverence for our parents and other authority figures should be a reflection and evidence of our honor and reverence for God in the first place.
We also read in Leviticus 19:32: “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.” Proverbs 16:31 and 20:29 reinforce the teaching of Scripture that elders should be honored. This principle is there because normally the elderly are associated with maturity, experience, wisdom, and the accumulation of knowledge and a better sense of realism of life. In the Bible, the elderly are treated as a reservoir of tradition, of family history, as the living archive of a society that lives through oral tradition.
The influence of the Christian faith in the world did a good job of carrying this principle of life forward. Societies that preserve the value of respecting their elders are usually prosperous and very well organized.
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God has purposes in our grief. He means for us to carry them without being fully healed, to bear them with confident submission, to carry them all the way to the finish line. He means for those griefs to shift our eyes and hearts from here to there, from time to eternity, from this place of sorrows to that place of bliss.

I am often asked what churches and individual Christians can do to care for and comfort those who are enduring times of grief. It is a question I am always glad to receive and one I am always glad to attempt to answer. And there is a lot individuals and communities can do to bring comfort—they can pray, they can be present, they can provide meals and other forms of help, they can remember important dates and continue to express care for months or even years into the future. In these ways and so many others, they can help bear the burdens of those they love.
Yet I also feel the need to speak a word to those who are enduring the time of trial and it’s a word of realism. Over the past few years, I have had a lot of grieving people reach out to express a sense of deep loneliness. They sometimes wonder if their friends have failed them or whether their church has neglected to fulfill its duty toward them. And for those who are enduring the trial of grief compounded by the trial of loneliness, I say this: Grief is lonely. Grief is lonely even in community, lonely even when surrounded by loving and helpful people. Grief is lonely when you are the only one grieving and lonely when you are grieving with others. Unfortunately, but unavoidably, it’s just plain lonely.
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