The name “Jesus” is taken from the Hebrew word that means “to deliver, to rescue.” This baby boy is the most perfectly named baby in all the history of the world. Never has a child been born to address such a peril as the peril of a justly condemned race. Never has a person so gloriously fulfilled his or her name. Jesus was God made man in order to save man; he was God entering his own creation to redeem it, to defeat the power of the Devil, to remove the darkness of the curse, and to make all things new.

As you undoubtedly know, pronouns are big news today.  The humble pronoun has found itself dragged to the front lines of a raging contest regarding ultimate questions of identity, authority, and meaning. Few of us could have imagined the current cultural clamor over such simple words as “he” and “she.”

But here we are—and what a joy, then, to open the Scriptures and find those same simple words bursting with the glory of gospel truth!

Matthew 1:21 reads, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (emphasis added). Here we have, in one verse, four key pronouns that establish the saving purposes of God in Christ for this rebellious world. They represent all the essential participants in the story—a woman, a man, a Savior, and the sinners he came to save.

She: “She Will Bear a Son”

The first gospel pronoun refers to Mary, the young peasant girl from Nazareth, betrothed to a man named Joseph.

Scripture doesn’t point to any noteworthy characteristic about Mary. What stands out is how very common she seems: living an anonymous life in a nondescript little village in the back hills of Galilee. There is nothing remarkable here, except for one thing.

The angel reveals the defining feature of Mary’s life: “You have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). It’s the one distinction that makes all the difference. Out of all women, through all the ages of time, God chose this specific teenager to be the mother of the Son of God. Imagine the astounded look on her face as the angel of God told her the news:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)

Mary, the unknown and unremarkable, was called by God to carry in her own body the Messiah. It was completely implausible and yet mysteriously believable.

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