The Significance of a Name

[Sam]

This is from the December 2010 Pentecostal Herald. It was written by David K. Bernard who is the General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church.

The Significance of a Name
By David K. Bernard

Parents today often choose a name for their child because they like its sound or because they wish to honor someone who bears that name. Many times they do not know the original meaning of the name they have chosen.


In ancient times, however, a name was usually chosen for its meaning. The Bible records many instances in which a child’s name related to the circumstances surrounding the child’s birth or to the aspirations of the parents for their child. A person’s name was regarded as the essence and expression of his or her personality.


In a similar manner, God used names and titles to reveal Himself. In the Bible, God’s name signifies His self-revelation, particularly His character, power, authority, and manifested presence.


According to the New Testament, Jesus was named by an angel before He was ever born. The name “Jesus” incorporates the Hebrew name for God –Yahweh (Jehovah)—and it means “Yahweh-savior” or “Yahweh is salvation.” The name “Yahweh,” in turn, is probably derived from the verb “to be,” meaning “He is” or “He will be,” and thus it refers to God as the self-existing, eternal, and all-powerful one.


Although others have borne the name Jesus, Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the only one who actually personifies that name in the fullest sense. The noted Protestant theologian Karl Barth wrote, “God himself, in his deep mercy and its great power, has taken it upon himself to exist also in human being and essence in his Son. … God himself has assumed and made his own our human nature and kind in his Son, just because God himself came into this world in his Son. … He gives himself to be the humanly acting and suffering person [on the cross].”


We confess that Jesus is the eternal, almighty God who became incarnate in order to be the Savior of humanity. As a human He is known as the Son or God, or God manifested in the flesh. In the words of Isaiah 7:14, He is Immanuel, or “God with us.”


Praying in the name of Jesus expresses faith in His divine character (love, compassion, and desire to help), power (ability to help), authority (right to help), and presence (immediate attention and availability to help). For this reason, the apostles in the New Testament prayed for the sick to be healed in the name of Jesus, cast out demons in the name of Jesus, and baptized all believers with the invocation of the name of Jesus.


We believe that God still answers when believers pray in the name of Jesus today. Thus, we expect to receive forgiveness, healing, deliverance, and the power of the Holy Spirit when we pray with faith in the name of Jesus. Not only is this name invoked upon us during the initial act of water baptism, but it remains with us to give power and authority that comes from the presence of Jesus Christ, who abides and actively works in our daily lives.

[Sam]

I thought I would post something that we can all agree on
and we don't have to bash the author
or bash the UPC
and we don't have to argue over the content
or put one another down.

[DaveC519]

I thought I would post something that we can all agree on
and we don't have to bash the author
or bash the UPC
and we don't have to argue over the content
or put one another down.
:thumbsup

[sandie]

I liked reading this, Sam.
Thank you for posting.
Jesus really touched me while I was reading ... Praise His Name.

[Sam]

from G. Campbell Morgan

The angel came to Joseph and announced the name, "You shall call His name Jesus." It was just an ordinary Jewish name, about as common in Judea as John is common to us. The name had not the significance that we understand today. It was a beautiful, Jewish boy's name, a common name of the common people. But here, as everywhere in the great spiritual movement, God took hold of the commonplace to show that there was something infinitely more than the common.

Jesus is a Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, meaning Savior. Other men have had that name. Many a mother called her boy Joshua in the hope that he would be a savior and break oppression and set the people free. Now the angel said: Give that name to this Boy; "It is He that shall save His people from their sins." Take the human name, sweetest of them all, and give it to the Child of the Holy Mystery; the Child Who is not of Joseph, but of God. Tell His sweet mother Mary to give Him this name Jesus. Moreover, the name means "Jehovah Salvation."

Mark the intention of it. They are "His people." Give Him the name as one of His people; calling Him by the ordinary name of His people; He is coming to identification with them. They are under a yoke, eating curds and honey; He is coming to eat curds and honey with them, as the prophet said. They are an oppressed and a devastated people; He is coming to identification with them; give Him the name signifying identification in all its deepest meaning. He is coming to suffer.

Then mark how the angel told heaven's secret in heaven's language. What the people thought they wanted was a Joshua who could reveal himself to this material Jerusalem as King, break the power of Rome, and set up an earthly Kingdom. The angel said the deeper trouble was not that of the Roman yoke; or that they had been beaten in battle; the trouble with them was that they were sinners - "He shall save His people from their sins." He will not come to battle with externalities, but to grip sin at its heart.

Adapted from The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 1, by G. Campbell Morgan.

Reverend Doctor George Campbell Morgan (9 December 1863 – 16 May 1945) was an evangelist, preacher and a leading Bible scholar. Morgan was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1904 to 1919, and from 1933 to 1943.

[Sam]

With regard to Israel it was true that "He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not." They did not receive Him, because partial blindness had fallen upon them even in regard to their own prophecies. It is remarkable that these people who possessed, and were supposed to be instructed in, the prophecies concerning the Messiah, had almost altogether lost sight of one side of the prophetic message concerning Him.

Isaiah had portrayed, in unmistakable lines, and with detailed definiteness, the picture of the suffering Servant of God. How wonderfully the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was realized in the Person of Jesus Christ. But these people had not begun to understand the fact of the suffering of Messiah; they had no conception of a lowly, despised, and rejected Deliverer. They expected One Who should set up a kingdom of earthly power. And when He came from lowly and despised Nazareth, and took the position of the Son of God, they were incredulous, unbelieving, simply because they had not understood their own Scriptures.

The same prophet had announced the fact of the incarnation. "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel." To the Hebrew that was a descriptive name, and the simple meaning of Immanuel was "God with us." It was the distinct foretelling of the stupendous fact that He should be the Godman, but they had never realized it. The people had largely lost their spiritual sense, and were looking only for the advent of a great prince who should deliver them from the bondage of Roman tyranny, unmindful of the more awful slavery of materialism. They had no conception of the Servant of God as lowly and suffering, neither of that deeper and sublimer truth that God would be manifest in the flesh; consequently there was no preparation for His coming, no official national recognition of the advent.

Adapted from The Crises of the Christ, Book I, Chapter VI, by G. Campbell Morgan.