Day 11: Saviour

Scripture gives many wonderful titles to Jesus. Each one tells us something special and important about Jesus Himself. Out of the many titles given to Jesus, I've chosen certain ones to share with you which I believe will specially bless you.

We have already studied five main titles of Jesus. They were as follows: Wonderful Counsellor; Prince of Peace; The Word of God; The Lamb of God; The Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

The title that we are going to begin to study today is perhaps the simplest and yet the most wonderful. It is Saviour.

This title, of course, was given to Jesus by revelation through an angel to Joseph, the husband of Mary, when Mary was not yet married but was his espoused wife. This is what the angel said, "She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name of Jesus because he will save his people from their sins." So that indicates, which we know also from language study, that the name Jesus means Saviour. It's important to see that this name was given by God Himself directly through the angel and it was given before birth. It was the revelation of why God sent Jesus. He sent Him to save His people from their sins.

In Hebrew the name Jesus is Yeshua which is another form of a name familiar from the Old Testament, Yehoshua which is what we use or call Joshua. And that name, Yeshua, or Yehoshua means salvation of the Lord.

It's interesting to glance for a moment at the role of Joshua in the Old Testament. God brought Israel out of Egypt under their great leader, Moses. But Moses was not able to bring Israel into the promised land. It required the rising up of a new leader, Joshua, whose name means salvation. And there, I think, is a picture of what Jesus does for us in the New Covenant. He is the leader who alone can bring us into the land of God's promises, the land of salvation.

It's very important to see, in the giving of this name and its application that salvation is in a person. It's not merely in religion or commandments or rituals. All those may be good, but in themselves they're insufficient to provide salvation. Salvation takes a person. This is brought out again later in the story of the baby Jesus. In Luke, chapter 2, verse 30, when his parents took him to the temple to offer the appropriate sacrifices that were required by the law, the old man, Simeon, directed by the Holy Spirit, took up the infant Jesus in his arms and he prayed a beautiful prayer in which he said to God these words: "For my eyes have seen your salvation." What was your salvation? It was just that little infant in his arms. But in that little infant, in that person, Jesus was God's salvation.

Later, in the public ministry of Jesus, there came a time when He invited Himself to the house of a tax collector named Zacchaeus. Everybody thought that Zacchaeus wasn't good enough to have Jesus come to his house and they began to murmur. But after Jesus had entered the house, he said to Zacchaeus, in Luke, chapter 19, verses 9 and 10:

“Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (NIV)

How did salvation come to the house of Zacchaeus? Salvation came in the person of Jesus. When Jesus came into that house welcomed and received by Zacchaeus, then salvation entered the house. God's salvation is not just in law or religion; it's in a person and we have to know the person to know salvation.