1.  God as Saviour appears in highest manifestation in Jesus.

I do not now mean in regard to the nature of the salvation, but in regard to the relation between the human and the divine.  Joshua was the human agent through which the divine will effected deliverance, but, as in all helpers and teachers, he was but the instrument.  He could not have said, ‘I lead you, I give you victory.’  His name taught him that he was not to come in his own name.  But ’he shall save’—­not merely God shall save through him.  And ’his people’—­not ‘the people of God’

All this but points to the broad distinction between Christ and all others, in that God, the Saviour, is manifest in Him as in none other.

We are not detracting from the glory of God when we say that Christ saves us.

Christ’s consciousness of being Himself Salvation is expressed in many of His words.  He makes claims and puts forward His own personality in a fashion that would be blasphemy in any other man, and yet all the while is true to His name, ‘God is the Saviour.’

The paradox which lies in these earliest words, the great gulf between the name and the interpretation on the angel’s lips, is only solved when we accept the teaching which tells us that in that Word made flesh and dwelling among us, we behold ‘God manifest in the flesh,’ and ’in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.’

The name guards us, too, from that very common error of thinking of Christ as if He were more our Saviour than God is.  We are not without need of this warning.  Christ does not bend the divine will to love, is not more tender than our Father God.

2.  The Salvation brought by Jesus is in its nature the loftiest.

It is with strong emphasis that the angel defines the sphere of salvation as being ‘their sins.’  The Messianic expectation had been degraded as it flowed through the generations, as some pure stream loses its early sparkle, and gathers scum on its surface from filth flung into it by men.  Mere deliverance from the Roman yoke was all the salvation that the mass wanted or expected, and the tragedy of the Cross was foreshadowed in this prophecy which declares an inward emancipation from sin as the true work of Mary’s unborn Son.

We can discern the Jewish error in externalising and materialising the conception of salvation, but many of us repeat it in essence.  What is the difference between the Jew who thought that salvation was deliverance from Rome, and the ‘Christian’ who thinks that it is deliverance not from sin but from its punishment?

We have to think of a liberation from sin itself, not merely from its penalties.  This thought has been often obscured by preachers, and often neglected by Christians, in whom selfishness and an imperfect understanding of the gospel have too often made salvation appear as merely a means of escape from impending suffering.  All deep knowledge of what Sin is teaches us that it is its own punishment, and that the hell of hell is to be under the dominion of evil.