What is “He will save?”

Returning again our focus upon the angel’s statement to Joseph about the child Mary is pregnant with in Matthew 1:21, I want to look at the verb of the statement. We have looked at the direct object of the verb, “his people.” We have looked at the prepositional phrase, “from their sins.” Now I want to look at the verb, “he will save.” What does Matthew mean that Jesus “will save his people from their sins”? What is that “salvation” and what does it look like? How does Jesus’ death and resurrection carry out this “salvation”?

Let us go back to the context of the genealogy. Matthew asserts in Matthew 1:1 that the text or gospel being read is about “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then throughout the genealogy Matthew gives a “poetic” showing of the generations giving 14 between Abraham and David, 14 generations between David and exile, and 14 generations between exile and Jesus. I don’t think that the genealogy is trying to name every person in the family tree of Jesus from Abraham to Jesus, that would not be reading Matthew according to how he intended to be read.

What I think Abraham is doing is show that as Messiah, Jesus is the promised Davidide, the promised king from the family line of David, who will rescue Israel from her sins and restore her to the land promised to her through Abraham. Matthew goes further than this in that he is redefining Israel in the person of Jesus. The salvation that Jesus is offering is the breaking in of God eschatological saving reign to reconstitute Israel and bring her through a new exodus into her place as the channel through which God’s saving purposes for the world can come to fulfillment and completion.

When one considers the fulfillment texts of Jesus birth and infancy narratives in Matthew this comes to light. In Micah 5:2 Jesus is the coming king from Bethlehem. In Hosea 11:1, Jesus is the son who God has called out of exile and into her promised land. In Jeremiah 31:15 Jesus is the Davidide who leads Israel out of exile to be restored to her place under a new covenant where Israel is forever forgiven from her sin.

When Jesus begins his new ministry, Matthew contextualizes Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom has come near and the people need to repent and believe in Isaiah 8:22-9:2, which transitions the Immanuel child from a symbol of God’s judgment upon Israel and Judah, for their faithlessness and unbelief, into a symbol of God’s salvation (cf. Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 11). In the coming of Jesus as Messiah, the kingdom of God, the saving reign to redeem his people and end their exile from himself and from being his people has come to an end. Jesus, as their king, has come to lead them in a new exodus into a new world, no longer under the old covenant made at Sinai, but under a new covenant where God will install his law upon their hearts so that they will be guaranteed to obey and remain faithful to Yahweh.

But as Hosea 11:1 and the promise to call Israel out of her exile in Egypt is fulfilled in Jesus, it should be seen as Jesus redefining the very identity of who is Israel in himself. Much like the “son of man” in Daniel 7 serves as the representative of the saints whom God is giving an eternal kingdom to, so Jesus represents Israel. Jesus stands for Israel and in himself and his ministry he leads them out of the dominion of Satan and darkness and exile, and into his new creation and reconciliation of Israel to God through the exodus that he is to go on.

So to answer what is this salvation? What does Matthew mean by Jesus “will save” his people? I think it means that God’s saving reign has broken into this age in the person of Jesus as he is God’s promised Davidide to reconstitute Israel and lead her in a new exodus out of this age and into the new creation, a new heaven and earth and Jerusalem, for all eternity. On the basis of the authority that God will give his Davidic king, Jesus exercises God’s saving reign to end Israel’s exile and thus save her.

What about Gentiles? Think back to Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 11, for example. When God restores Israel under the throne of David, the Gentiles will be drawn to the kingdom of God. They will come to abandon their paganism and idolatry to worship the true Creator, Yahweh. They will submit to the Davidide King and enter into his kingdom, as Gentiles, to worship the true God. In other words, when Jesus leads Israel out of her exile and into the new creation via new exodus, he will draw the Gentiles into his kingdom in the new heavens and new earth to join in.