Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to
the faith among all nations for His name, among whom you also
are the called of Jesus Christ; To all who are in Rome, beloved of
God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 01:05-07, NKJV).
What's in a name?
Does it matter what something is
called?
The answer to the first question is
this: in a sane and sensible world, a name is meant to convey meaning
about the thing or person so-named. This was especially true in
ancient times, when a person's name was chosen precisely because of
something (or many things) about that person. That is also why a
person's name could change over time. Think of Abram (“Exalted
Father”) renamed to Abraham (“Father of Many Nations”), Sarai
(“Princess”) to Sarah (“Noblewoman”), Jacob (“Supplanter”)
to Israel (“Ruled by God”), Saul (“Desired One”) to Paul
(“Little One”).
When something (or many things) about that
person changed, then so did his or her name.
The answer to the second question is
similar, but addresses an even more significant issue. It matters
what something is called because words matter. The study of the
meaning of words is called, Semantics, and semantics are important
because of the way people are built by God to think.
Why?
Because words can be used, for good or
evil, in forming the hopes, beliefs and actions of people. That is
what God intended in creating us in His own image. We respond to
words because God gave us Intelligence, patterned after His own
Intelligence, and words are the nuts and bolts that enable that
Intelligence to be shared and communicated.
It is no accident that one of the names
of Jesus is, The Word of God. The word in Greek that we translate in
English as “word” is, “Logos”. And “logos” is also the
root of our word, “logic”. Underneath, at the very center of both
concepts (word and logic) is “information”, and underneath that,
is the foundational root of what was already mentioned above,
“intelligence”.
Because of all these things - the
meaning of names, intelligence, communication, logic and information
- it definitely matters what's in a name and what something is
called.
Which brings us to His name, and
what Paul has written in the verses above.
There are many names for God, and many
names for Jesus, and every single one of these is significant, and
has meaning for each one of us created in God's image.
Consequently, whenever the Bible speaks
of anything in regard to His name (either for His name,
or in His name) it is speaking of not merely of the name
itself, but all that the name signifies.
So, let's look at some of the many
names of Jesus and consider their meanings, starting with one already
mentioned, The Word of God.
In the first verses of the Book of
John, the apostle tells us that in the beginning was the Word
(Logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in
the beginning with God.
Just this passage alone, naming Jesus
as the Word, tells us many things about Him:
Because John is describing Jesus before
He was born in Bethlehem, he is conveying the fact that Christ is
pre-existent, meaning before there was anything – anything at all –
there was God, that mysterious, all-powerful, all-knowing, and
everywhere-present Being who exists as three Persons, yet One God.
He is all that God is: His power, His
intelligence, His presence.
In becoming a Man, He has conveyed to
us the very nature of God in a way that we could comprehend. In other
words, He has communicated to us all the information
we need to know about God so that we could understand who He
is, and what He is like. By becoming a Human (incarnating),
and speaking to us the very words of God, He has shared with
us all that we need to know, from A to Z (as the saying goes),
about our Creator and Savior.
In Isaiah 9, we are given yet more
names:
For unto us a Child
is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the
government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be
called Wonderful, Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6, NKJV).
Let's look at each of the bolded
words, above.
Jesus is called, Child. Why?
Because that indicates His utter humanity. Human life begins and
grows in the womb. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the body
of a young Jewish virgin, and developed in her womb as every human
being has since the Fall of Man in Eden. He was born of a woman as an
infant, and was nurtured and cared for as a human, and lived His life
as a human so that He could die on the Cross for our sins, as a
human.
Without Him dying as a Man, a sinless
Man, His death could not have saved us.
Next, He is a given Son. This
describes His relationship in the Three-Personhood of God (The
Trinity), something very hard for us to understand, but conveyed to
us in this way (His Sonship), so that we can at least get a glimpse
of what it means.
Firstly, a son is intimately a part of
his father. This is true in human nature, and since that is modeled
after divine nature (God's image), it is even more true with God. The
Son of God is God, and in Him is all the fullness of
the godhead, meaning that the Son, though distinct, is all
that the Father is.
From ancient times, to be called “the
son” of something is to indicate distinction (being different than)
and equality (being the same in nature and essence). So
while we may not understand all there is to understand about the
Trinity, we can understand that it involves Jesus' Sonship as the
cornerstone of the eternal and intimate relationship He has with the
Father.
Note that Isaiah tells us further that
the government will be upon His shoulder. This is a sweeping
statement about Jesus's authority and rulership. He is
the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the Sovereign of the
Universe. Jesus, Himself, says:
“All authority has been given to
Me in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28:18, NKJV).
Next, He is called Wonderful.
Literally, this means that all who look upon Him, and know Him cannot
help but to be filled with wonder and awe at His magnificence,
His nobility, His beauty, His power, His glory and His intelligence.
There is nothing about Him that fails to do this in us, and the more
we know Him, the more wonderful we realize He is.
The name Counselor is given in
regard to His all-encompassing wisdom. Paul writes in Corinthians:
For Jews request a sign, and Greeks
seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a
stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are
called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:22-24, NKJV).
All knowledge, anything that can ever
be known, indeed, the very meaning of knowledge itself, is possessed
in complete fullness by Christ.
Mighty God relates to His
power, the very same power that merely spoke and all the vast
galaxies leapt into existence from nothing. The power that made all
that is made, and that gives and maintains life.
The name, Everlasting Father,
can also be translated Father of Eternity. This means that
because Christ had no beginning and will have no end (which is what
being eternal means), and, because, by His sacrifice He provides us
entrance into eternal life, He is the initiator (the Father of) our
eternity. It also speaks to His equality with the Father.
Lastly, Isaiah tells us He is called
the Prince of Peace. By this, we understand that Jesus is the
One who makes peace with God possible - peace with God, and peace on
earth. You see, when Adam sinned in the Garden, he began a long war
with God, a war that is continued by all his descendants since. It is
a war powered by sin that can only be won by our complete surrender.
No truce is possible.
By dying on the Cross in our place,
Jesus made the conditions of our surrender something entirely amazing
- by surrendering we obtain victory. We become more than
conquerors. It is in surrendering that we exchange our sin for
Christ's righteousness, and thereby escape Hell.
Does Jacob's battle with the Angel of
the Lord in Genesis make more sense now? When Jacob was winning the
wrestling match, he was losing his soul. When he gave up the battle,
he was renamed from Jacob, which means “supplanter” or
“conniver”, to Israel, which means “ruled by God”. He was
made lame in his hip so that he would never forget that lesson.
But the most important aspect of His
name is the name Jesus, itself.
It is Yeshua in Hebrew, and it
means Yah (God) is Salvation. And it is that name which
conveys His mission of sacrifice on our behalf. It is in that name
that, through belief in all that it means, that we are spared the
just punishment of our sin, and given eternal life.
Do you love someone with all your
heart? If you and she believe in the name of Jesus, no matter what
befalls you in this life, you will never need say good-bye.
Do you fear death? If you believe in
the name of Jesus (all that it means), you have no need to
fear it, for Jesus has conquered death for you.
Finally, this means that if we live
for His name, which is what believing the gospel enables us to
do, then we will live forever in His presence in Heaven, and are
spared the unthinkable end of unforgiven sin.
