YESHUA, IESOUS, JESUS

YESHUA, IESOUS, JESUS
Memorial of the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, 03 Jan 2025, Lk 2:21-24

What is the big deal about the Holy Name of Jesus? Well, it originates from the Hebrew Yehoshua or Yeshua, which means “The Lord saves.” To understand why this statement is a big deal, we have to complete it. The Lord saves whom? The Lord saves SINNERS! And why is that a big deal? Well, because the common presupposition is that the Lord cannot do that. He can only save the righteous and deserving; he has no choice but to condemn the wicked and undeserving into the fires of hell. This doctrine is often called RETRIBUTION. It is actually presupposed by most religions in this world. It is founded on the belief in the conditionality of salvation: only the good ones will go to heaven. All the bad ones will go to hell. Period.
Is that not the same doctrine that is taught by Christianity, you might ask? And the answer is NO. Christianity does not believe in a God who will save only the righteous and law-abiding ones and will burn all sinners in hell. We do not believe in such a powerless God. We believe rather in a God who is both just and merciful, and whose mercy is always greater than his justice. This is precisely the reason why we call Christianity a GOOD NEWS! The radical questioning of this naive and almost automatic notion of RETRIBUTION, OF salvation for the good and damnation for the wicked is what precisely constitutes the radical and revolutionary character of the Christian faith.
In the first place, Christianity does not classify human beings into good ones and evil ones, even if it presupposes that all of us human beings are capable of both good and evil actions. We presuppose, rather, that all human beings are by nature, good. We distinguish between our innate goodness as persons, and our capacity for evil in terms of action, on account of our free will. We all are in a constant battle between good and evil. No amount of evil that we are capable of committing can