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The Glory of the Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - God's Name a Self-Revelation

Chapter 2 - Jesus and the Name

Chapter 3 - The Hallowing of the Name

Chapter 4 - The Vessel for the Name

Chapter 5 - For the Sake of His Name

Chapter 1 - God's Name a Self-Revelation

Reading: Ex. 34:5-6; 1 Chron. 16:7-36.

"Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:28).

God's Name the Foundation of All God's Works

This answer of the Father to the prayer of His Son has a very wide meaning. "I have" reaches far back to the very beginning of all the Divine activities. "I will" reaches right on to the consummation of all God's works. "I have... glorified it, and will glorify it." His name always has been and always will be the foundation of all God's works and His name is inherent in all His activities.

God does not act in a nondescript, unrelated, abstract way. He acts in relation to His name, and He acts with the object of having a name put to His acts. If His acts provoke enquiry, that is exactly why He acts; if people are aware of things happening and ask from where and who, that is exactly what God is after in order to give a name to His acts. It is necessary to give a name to the source of all things and to the end and object of all things, for all things are summed up in His name.

The Name the Basis of the Whole Bible

We are always saying, as we come upon some great master-key, that this is the master-key to the whole of the Word of God. I do not know how many master-keys we have found, but there is a sense in which the Name is the basis of the whole Bible. The key to the story of this world and beyond is the name of the Lord. The Bible is concerned with the inherence, the all-pervasiveness, of the names of God, the name of the Lord. Everything is from that Name and everything is to that Name. It is the beginning and the end.

Now, it is quite an overwhelming business to take up this matter of the Name, with its varied meanings, content, challenge, effect, demands, values, glories, terrors and virtues. All these and so much more are bound up with the Name of the Lord throughout the Scriptures. It is quite beyond us to cope with it, but I am quite sure the Lord's message here is of very vital consequence for His people.

The Name of the Lord - the Revelation of the Lord

We will begin by noting that the Name of the Lord is the revelation of the Lord. Perhaps we might just look at a fragment or two by way of setting our feet on that fact. "And God spoke unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah I was not known to them" (Ex. 6:2-3). "If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, Jehovah thy God..." (Deut. 28:58). These two fragments imply the truth that the name of the Lord is a revelation, that by which He is known, and those of you who have knowledge of the Word will immediately find leaping up in your memories many parts of Scripture which emphasise how much is bound up with knowing the name of the Lord. You will be recalling: "They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee" (Psa. 9:10); "I will set him on high, because he hath known My name" (Psa. 91:14) and so on. There is a very great deal in the Word of God shown to be bound up with knowing the Name, because the Name is the revelation of Himself. God is known by His name. That does not mean that God is known by a title or a designation, but by a meaning which is represented by a name and which is in the very constitution of the name.

We know in the Bible that names were never given without very serious exercise. Names, both to those who gave them and those who possessed them, committed the possessor to something, and in so many cases the name that they bore governed their lives and was shown to be the sum total of their lives.

Now, there are many names of the Lord in the Bible. We could give a long list of them. I want to avoid anything that is only technical and try to get as quickly as possible to the spiritual values. We may refer to some of those names as we go on, but they are all partial expressions of the one inclusive name. The Lord God, or as in the Hebrew with the English accent and pronunciation, Jehovah Elohim, is the inclusive name, and you may count all the other names as emanating from that, expressive of that, being the various aspects of that Name's fulness.

What does this inclusive name, 'the Lord God', mean? It is a double name. Wherever you have the name 'Lord' in the Old Testament, you have the Hebrew 'Jehovah'; wherever you have 'God', you have 'Elohim', and these two are brought together in major presentations of God, the Lord God. That by the way. Being foundational, what is the fundamental meaning of this Name?

The Uniqueness of the Name

Firstly, the Word of God makes it very clear and gives tremendous emphasis to the fact of the uniqueness of the name of the Lord, Jehovah Elohim. Perhaps that does not get us very far. We should say it represents His absolute aloneness. There is not another, He is alone; He is the only one. I know that Elohim is a plural name. Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image." If we assume that the Trinity is in that very Name, we shall, before we are through, see the uniqueness of the Triune God in this Name. But first of all we just keep to this fact about the Name on the way to our main object. There is not another. He is one by Himself. He is unique.

The Exclusiveness of the Name

Then this Name speaks of exclusiveness. It is the expression of the exclusiveness of the Lord; that is, none can take His place and none can divide His place with Him. When you have said that, you are placed right into the realm of the great cosmic conflict of the ages: "I will make myself like the Most High; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God" (Isa. 14:13-14). The Word of God makes it clear that that one, in his pride of heart, in his wicked, iniquitous ambition, made a bid to be equal with the Most High, to divide the throne, to be very God, the object of worship. The name of the Lord will not permit anything like that. It is exclusive. Sooner or later, anything that seeks to take His place will come up against another aspect of that Name. That is, the effectiveness of the meaning that God is God exclusively.

The inclusiveness of the Name

Further, the Name means inclusiveness. That is, the Lord is self-sufficient; He is all-sufficient in Himself for everything and anything. He does not need any help; He does not stand or fall by the help of others. While there is a sense in which He needs our help, quite another sense, and while there is truth in the fact that He desires our help and has made marvellous provision for us to help Him, He is not dependent upon us; we are not indispensable to Him in the ultimate sense of His being sufficient. Inclusively He is self-sufficient, all-sufficient in Himself for everything. We ought to bless God for that. I trust that this is going to lead us into spiritual strength and spiritual wealth. It is a blessed thing that God does not break down when man breaks down, that God is not at the end of His wits when man is there; when all other help fails, that the Lord shall not throw up His hands and say, 'Well, I cannot do any more!' The whole Bible gathers itself up to show that when there is not another, His own arm brings salvation. He is inclusive in His self-sufficiency. That is the very name of the Lord.

The Supremacy of the Name

Then this Name expresses His complete supremacy. He is God over all, blessed for ever, supreme - that is His name. If you can get hold of an American Standard Version, you will find the names of God properly translated there. You will find that name Jehovah comes out in relation to these four things that I have mentioned: His uniqueness, His exclusiveness, His inclusiveness and His supremacy. That is the Lord God, and, "they that know His name will put their trust in Him." What a lot there is in knowing the name of the Lord!

The Glory Linked with the Meaning of the Name

It will then surely be seen that the glory is linked with the meaning of the Name. The Lord Jesus, in that moment of tremendous triumph, said, "What shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name" (John 12:27-28). When He prayed that prayer in that hour of conflict, testing and anguish, He was praying with the full knowledge of what the glorifying of that Name meant. In the midst of all the nations gathering together against the Lord and against His anointed One, all the hosts of evil were concentrating upon Him to break Him and triumph. All the heavenly intelligences were looking on, almost holding their breath. In that moment He prayed in the full consciousness that the glorifying of the Father's name demanded that it should be seen that He is God alone; there is none to divide dominion with Him; He is exclusive. He knew that God the Father is all-sufficient for this whole mighty situation; He can see it through; He is supreme in this universe which was focusing its attention upon that hour of the cross. So the cross became the focal point of the glorifying of the Name in the sense of making manifest what that Name means, for it was in the cross that the universal significance of that Name was being put to the test, tried in a great universal crisis. How did the name of the Lord come out of this ordeal? It came out gloriously, as we know. The Name was glorified in this fourfold meaning.

The Name of the Lord - His Reputation

You see, the name of the Lord is God's reputation. Name always involves reputation, but in His case as supreme above all other names, it is the supreme reputation that is centred in that cross. It would be helpful to recall all those prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament which point on to and prophetically mention the Christ in the hour of His cross, the compassing round about like bees, these evil forces, these spiritual hosts of wickedness, this prophetic cry to be saved in the dire hour. God's reputation is at stake, speaking after the manner of men. It is His name. If that One goes down, if that One's soul is left in Hades, if that One's body suffers corruption, the reputation of God, all His faithfulness, goes down. This One bears the reputation of God. That is what the Name means. God's name is God"s reputation; it is His authority; it is His power. How important, then it is, to know the Name of the Lord - not know the letters put together into a title and be able to say, "God is called Jehovah, Elohim and El Shaddai, etcetera" - that is not the point. The point is to know that there is none beside Him, to know that there is none that can take His place or share His throne or take anything from Him. Not one person is required to add anything to Him or who would be able to do so. He is all-sufficient without our help, without our groanings and strugglings and cravings to save ourselves. He can save us without any of it and very often has to let us exhaust ourselves in order to show that He can do everything by Himself and He is absolutely supreme. To know that, is to know His Name, and to bring us to that knowledge, He has to put us into the school of experience. There we discover the truth of what I said at the outset: all His works are related to His Name.

This school brings us into His works. They are deep works, dark works, unfathomable works; they are mysterious, strange works, works which are altogether beyond our power of understanding to know what He will do or how He will do it. He brings us there where we cannot imagine what God would do in order to show us the content of His name and to make us know His name, that we may put our trust in Him. So trust in the Name, faith in the Name, is nothing other or less than trusting God's reputation and God's ability to look after His reputation. It is having faith in God to stand by His reputation and not let His reputation be spoiled.

Now we ought to go back to Exodus 34:5-6 again. I remind you that four times in that section of Exodus the Name is mentioned four times. "And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth." That is the Name, the content of the Name.

In this time which has largely laid foundations, just stepping on the threshold of so vast a matter, we must be careful that we do not allow the tremendous implications of this to be easily rubbed out. We have touched the supreme thing in this universe. We have touched the matter of all matters which comes nearest to our very own beings of all matters. You and I, more than anything else, need to know the Name. If we do not know the Name, it is going to be a poor, sorry, lookout for us. This world needs to know the impact of that Name, and it will not know and feel that impact unless there is a people who know it. That is what we have to come to sooner or later in our contemplation, that the impact of that Name has to be registered as it ever was in the sovereign appointment of God, through a people who know the Name. "The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits" (Dan. 11:32). Yes, there is a great need for the recovery of that Name among the people of God in order to register upon this world filled with other gods, where there is a 'god of this age', where an attempt has been made to divide the throne with Him. The registration that He is God alone must come through a people and it must come, in measure, through individuals. I mean that you and I are constantly and personally up against issues where only the Name of the Lord will be sufficient.

Chapter 2 - Jesus and the Name

Reading: Isa. 50:4-10; 51:1-16.

"Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:28).

"I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world" (John 17:6).

"And I made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known" (John 17:26).

"Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11).

In chapter one, after taking some account of the place of the Name of the Lord in this whole universe as the foundation of all God's ways, we went on to the first phase of this matter to try and see how the Name of the Lord is the revelation of the Lord.

Our first survey of its meaning was in three connections: the uniqueness of God's Name, the exclusiveness of His Name, the inclusiveness of His Name. We mentioned the fact that His Name also refers to His complete supremacy. We went on to point out how the glory is linked with the meaning of His Name. God is glorified when that Name is really expressed and known in a practical way. We closed by pointing out that the Name of God is God's reputation. It is His authority and His power. That is the basis of everything.

The Name in the First Place Deposited with Israel

Now we are going to take our second step, which concerns Jesus and the Name. When He was to be born, the word from heaven concerning Him was that they should call His name "Jesus" for He should save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21); that is, Jesus means Jehovah - Saviour. Now, we who are Gentiles not Hebrews, cannot get very far with the Old Testament in relation to the Name of God and all its values and glories until that Name has been made the possession of all men, that is, available to all men, for the Name of the Lord was deposited in Israel. They were the only people who knew the Name of the Lord. He had, so to speak, made them the repository of His Name. He had chosen them for that very purpose. He dealt with them with only one object in view, that His Name might be made known by them and through them. They were called by His Name, separated unto His Name and disciplined to be brought into line with the Name which was among them. Everything having to do with His Name was in the first place their peculiar concern. There is a sense in which it was exclusive with Israel. We are not of Israel after the flesh, so in the first place that Name is not deposited with us. Something has got to happen for us to inherit that Name with all its meaning, values and glories. It has to be made available. We, in some way, have to come into the place occupied by Israel of old in order to inherit the Name of the Lord.

The Name of God Borne by Jesus, the Christ

Well, this is the inclusive message of the New Testament. The New Testament is all about Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, and the New Testament declares that the name of God in all its aspects is borne by Jesus, the Christ. The New Testament reveals that He shares the very Godhead by bearing the Name of God. All that we have already said finds its meaning and value for us in Jesus Christ because of two things. He takes up into Himself the deposit concerning which Israel utterly failed in the glorifying of the Name of the Lord. He takes up that holy deposit with Israel, fulfils all Israel's calling in Himself, (the glorifying of the Name and making it known), and then goes altogether beyond the limits of Israel. He as Son of Man becomes linked with all men to make that Name the inheritance of all through faith, so that in Him Jew and Gentile are made one in the Name. That is another aspect with which we are not going to deal with further at this time. The point at the moment is how Jesus the Christ stands in that Name to make all its meaning, content, value and glory available to all men through faith in the Name.

The core of this universe is love. Right at the very heart of this universe there is a heart. He is the God who is, above everything else and through everything else, love. We are led on, of course, to the great climax and pivot of that love of God, to show how God, as love, has embodied His love in His Son who has come to reveal the love of God and in that way manifests God's Name.

The Glory of the Name Secured by the Lord Jesus

That is the point at which we take things up. Jesus embodied all that the Divine names or name means, and secured its glory. On the one hand it is a long history of the disputing of the name of the Lord in this universe; the hosts of evil who are always challenging that Name and seeking to rob it of its glory and honour, and to bring it into reproach, shame and dishonour. On the other hand, it is the long history of man's failure to glorify the Name of the Lord.

Elohim - the God of Covenant in Creation

The very first form in which the Name of the Lord comes to us in the Bible is Elohim, meaning God the Creator and the Covenant Maker, especially in relation to creation. That is a big subject in itself, but you can probably begin to grasp its significance. It was in that Name that He created the heavens and the earth and man. He is the God of covenant in creation. That means He is the One who has committed Himself in an everlasting and eternal covenant to secure the creation for His glory. That is the basis of the spiritual challenge and of the history of man and the creation. Who will say that through history man has glorified the Name of the Lord? Where is the Name of the Lord with man? Where is the Name of the Lord in the history of this world? On the contrary we can see a great deal more of the dishonouring of God in the creation and especially in man. Man in his own person is no means of glorifying the name of such a One as God. The more we know of ourselves, the less we are inclined to think of ourselves as being very much to the glory of God. We think very much the other way. We will all agree that God's name and glory in the world are being challenged all the time. There is a battle going on over this matter. It has always been an issue in history.

The Vindication of the Name by the Lord Jesus

Now, Jesus came to take up that universal issue of the Name. The glory of the Name was the one inclusive thing which governed His coming. He came to vindicate the name of His Father God. He came to take up all the content and meaning of that Name, to answer the challenge to the uniqueness and inclusiveness and the dominion and supremacy of that Name, for other gods had sought to take the place of that Name, other lords had sought to share His place of worship and power. Men have taken the glory of God to themselves. We know it is the easiest thing in the world for us to be proud whenever we experience the slightest kind of advantage or blessing. It is in us to take glory to ourselves in some way, to attach merit to ourselves if only we can. Nine-tenths of our miserable struggle to try and be better is because we want self-gratification. We want to be something, but God does not look upon anything like that. He will never help us and answer our prayers when we are trying to be something in ourselves. It is all contrary to the work of the Lord Jesus. He came for that Name's sake.

The Crisis of the Cross and the Glory of the Name

As we pointed out in our previous meditation, in this passage in John 12 the Lord Jesus has come to the great crisis of the incarnation, the Cross, and it says that He groaned in spirit. This is such a tremendous thing that is on hand. Oh, here is something far more than a man dying, even though it will be a very painful death. There is something in the realm of His soul which is unspeakably terrible. He groaned. He says, "What shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour' - shall I say that? No, no! But for this cause came I unto this hour." For what cause? "Father, glorify Thy name. For this cause came I unto this hour... glorify Thy name." The Father responds to that at once. He says, 'Yes, I am with you in that. I answer when it is a matter of the Name and not Yours, not Your own deliverance, nothing to do with Your own good; when it is a matter of the Name, I am with You'. That is the very heart of everything. He came to take up the Name to secure its glory. He came for the reputation of God.

The state of things all the way through had not been to the glory of God. It had been something against the very reputation of God. That reputation had to be secured and established in creation, in man, the centre of the creation. That reputation had to be established in the whole intelligent and responsible universe - I was going to use the word, the moral universe, but that word is so often limited in the minds of people. What I mean is people who are morally responsible, or intelligences that are morally responsible, who have the power of choice, action, reason, of fixing their minds and coming to conclusions. That whole universe of intelligent, responsible beings has got to have this Name, this reputation, established at its very centre. It is a tremendous thing which the Lord Jesus came to do. Man had failed, Israel had failed, the creation had failed. There was a question in the moral universe of God, so the Son came. It is in this sense that He is the Son of God's love. It is not just an affectionate relationship. It is a devotedness to an object. He came to take up that great challenge and answer it, that great need, and fulfil it. Jesus undertook the vindicating and establishing of God's Name in this whole intelligent and responsible universe. That is the meaning of the Cross.

See what responsibility rested upon Him in that hour! He knew the vastness of the issues bound up with that hour. No wonder His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground. Have you ever carried an overwhelming responsibility? Have you ever, in your small way, felt the responsibility for some lives? Great things were at stake, hanging upon your decision, upon you. Well, you know what a thing like that can do for you in wakeful, sleepless nights and anxious days, until you are worked up to almost an unbearable, overwhelming distraction. But our incidents of life are nothing, butterfly touches, compared with what He took on and faced in that cross: the issue of the eternal glory of the Name of God in this universe. That was His responsibility. Sonship is responsibility, and He took up that responsibility in man form, not in naked deity, in man form. What an issue was involved in His Cross!

The Cosmic Battle over the Name

That explains so much. You see the cosmic battle in the Cross. Yes, you see from His birth with the hunting Herod prepared to slaughter every boy babe to find that one child, and all through His life the evil forces at work behind men. How often it is said that they took up stones to stone Him (John 8:59 and 10:31). "They... led Him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might throw Him down headlong" (Luke 4:29). They came to take Him and He said, "Ye are of your father the devil... He was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44).

Why the movement of these unseen forces through men? Why the Cross? Not just because this Man had been teaching things with which they did not agree. Oh no, there is a sinister background to it all; it is a cosmic battle. The Scriptures can be gathered together to show that this issue was a spiritual one. The whole realm of evil intelligences were deeply concerned about this issue: if possible to quench this One before He carried the matter through. It was a battle.

The Issue

"Wherefore God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name". There is the issue. He has vindicated the Name, He has established the reputation of God. Every one of us ought to be able to say, "Yes, God through Jesus Christ is proved true, as Saviour, Lord, Keeper, as all that the many aspects of His Name means. His Name is many-sided, all included in one name, and through Jesus Christ I know that His Name stands true". We may not have exhausted it yet; we may have much to learn about the Name and much to come into, but surely we have the foundation. How do we know that God is true and His Name and reputation stand without shame? We know through Jesus Christ. He has made the Name good for us. We know the battle goes on, but we ought to be knowing that that Name is triumphant, and knowing it more and more.

Well, He has taken the responsibility for the Name. The immense issue of the Name is involved in His Cross; there is the great cosmic battle swirling round Him when crucified. And then there is the issue that God raised Him, set Him at His own right hand, gave Him the Name which is above every name, and the little word, "Wherefore" is the explanation. "Wherefore God highly exalted Him" - because He has fought out the issue of the Name. Oh, think of all the implications of the name of Jehovah Elohim resting upon a man. What a burden! I could not take that, you could not take it, altogether we could not take it; we could not stand up to it for one hour of our lives. The vindication of God's Name and all the implications of that vast Name of the Lord in all its aspects and meanings rested upon one man, this Man, Himself man. And He plunged with that name into the depths of hell, triumphed with that name there, bore it up in triumph to the Father's throne. "Jesus, the Name high over all", in every realm. "Wherefore... God... gave unto Him the Name which is above every name." God committed Himself to His Son, to the Man Christ Jesus, committed His reputation, authority, power, and we watch Him, fascinated we watch Him closely, to see how He will bear that Name. Look at the whole list of the names of the Lord:

Elohim - God the Covenant Creator and Redeemer; Jehovah - The Eternally Self-Sufficient and Holy One; El Shaddai - God All-Sufficient; El Elion - The Most High God Possessor of Heaven and Earth pre-eminently; Adonai - Master, Lord, Husband; El Olen - God Unfathomable; Eloah - God Adorable.

And then all the compounds of Jehovah: Jehovah Sabaoth - The Lord of Hosts; Jehovah Jireh - The Lord the Provider; Jehovah Rophi - The Lord the Healer; Jehovah Nissi - The Lord Triumphant; Jehovah Shalom - The Lord of Peace; Jehovah Tsidkenu - The Lord our Righteousness; Jehovah Shammah - The Lord is there.

There are more, and you can trace every one of them in Jesus Christ. Is He not the Healer, the Lord Triumphant, the Lord the Provider? Oh yes, and He is the Lord of Hosts, Jesus, Jehovah, Saviour. "Thou shalt call His name Jesus" (Matt. 1:21). We see the tremendous inheritance, we see the responsibility, we see the tremendous triumph.

I trust that we shall see our inheritance in Him when we contemplate the unspeakably great thing that the Lord Jesus has done in taking up this Name beside which there is no other and proving that there is no other; taking up this Name which is all-sufficient and proving that He is all-sufficient and can do everything without our help; taking up this Name and showing that His throne cannot and will not be shared by another God; taking up this Name in all its authority and dominion and proving that it is so.

Oh, you want to start reading the book of the Acts now! "In His name"; "through faith in His name"; everything is in the Name - and it is happening, it is working. He is proving that through the Cross that Name has been vindicated and established. The book of the Acts is just a book of the proof, the vindication, of the Name. The book of the Acts did not stop with the laying down of Luke's pen, it did not finish with the twenty-eighth chapter of that record. One of the things known to the simplest Bible student is that it is an uncompleted story. It breaks off and there are lots of things you want to know. You are left with any number of questions when you read the last verses of Acts 28. What happened here; what happened to that one? Luke has not finished the story. He would have to have lived on until today to write the full story of the works which Jesus began to do. It is the continuation in virtue of the Name of God vindicated, the proving of it, the working out of it.

Chapter 4 - The Vessel for the Name

"And all the peoples of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of Jehovah; and they shall be afraid of thee" (Deut. 28:10).

"And Jehovah said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My name there for ever; and Mine eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually" (1 Kings 9:3).

"If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Now Mine eyes shall be open, and Mine ears attent, unto the prayer that is made in this place" (2 Chron. 7:14-15).

"...every one that is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, yea, whom I have made" (Isa. 43:7).

"Now therefore, what do I here, saith Jehovah, seeing that My people is taken away for nought? They that rule over them do howl, saith Jehovah, and My name continually all the day is blasphemed. Therefore My people shall know My name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am He that doth speak; behold, it is I" (Isa. 52:5-6).

"But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:15-16).

"Simeon hath rehearsed how first God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name" (Acts 15:14).

"That the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called" (Acts 15:17).

In connection with this matter of the glory of the Name we will now consider the vessel for the Name.

Israel as a Vessel for the Name

We have already seen that at a certain point when the name of the Lord had lost much of its significance and certainly a great deal of man's respect, God took one of those great crucial steps in the history of this world, and in the words of Stephen: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham" (Acts 7:2). And one of the outstanding things in that sovereign visitation and selection was that God made His name known to Abraham. Abraham was brought into a knowledge of the name of the Lord in a fuller way than had ever been known before.

Abraham was the father of a nation, and through Abraham God sovereignly chose that nation as the vessel in that dispensation in which He would deposit, make known, and demonstrate the meaning of His Name. To Israel were committed the sacred and holy and wonderful secrets of the name of the Lord. It was in the life and history of Israel that all those names included in the one name were revealed progressively. I gave you a list of those names in chapter two, the compounds of Jehovah and many other names, all included in the one name, and it was at certain times, because of certain conditions and circumstances, that the content of the one name was divulged to Israel in its many aspects. In a time of conflict, He became known as 'The Lord my Banner' - that is, the Lord Triumphant. In a time of sickness and suffering He became known as 'Jehovah Rophi, the Lord that healeth thee', and so on. By their history under the hand of God, Israel drew out, so to speak, the compound of His Name. Or shall we put it the other way: God led Israel into a many-sided experience in order to show them the content of His Name. Through Israel, as the vessel of the fulness of the Name, He made the nations know the name of Jehovah so that they were afraid.

Israel's Failure

We have seen the tragedy of Israel's failure concerning that great trust, that great deposit, and in the words which we have just read from Isaiah's prophecy - "My name continually all the day is blasphemed" - the context says in effect, if not in exact words, 'because of you'. 'Your condition brings blaspheming to My name; your behaviour has that result.' It was because of His name that the Lord had to break with Israel and hand them over to their enemies. They ceased to be, and have never again been in the full sense, the repository of that name. There was a small remnant, a little handful who came back, to whom the Lord could speak about His name or of His name, those "that thought upon His name" (Mal. 3:16). What a lot there is in that when you see the history, the meaning, the comprehensive and inclusive issue bound up with the Name. And these few are said to be those who thought upon His name. You hear them speaking: 'Oh, what a shame, what a tragedy, what an evil, that the Lord's name has been so reproached because of us.' They prayed for the recovery of the glory of His name and the Lord bent down, it says, and hearkened and heard, "and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon His name". Oh, how precious when the Name is taken to heart! But as a nation, Israel has never again been the repository of the Name in the same way. Men are not looking for the name of God in Israel now, they know it has gone. Whatever Israel was, that is one thing; what Israel is, is another.

The Lord Jesus the Vessel for the Name

But then we saw the next step of God, the mighty step, embracing all ages in the coming of the Lord Jesus who became the repository of that Name in all its glorious fulness, "I am come in My Father's name" (John 5:43), He said. He bore the Name. Christ was the One upon whom that name rested and all the conflicts of ages and of the universe centred in Him because of that name. He fought out the whole question of God's name, God's reputation, God's honour, God's glory and all that is inherent in God's name. He fought it out in a great spiritual fight and vindicated the name of God in hell, in heaven, in earth. "Wherefore... God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name." The Man, the Son of God, the Name.

The Church a Vessel for the Name

He took that name back to heaven in glory, but before going, He secured the vessel of the Name here. He called them and led them through a deep place, the way of His Cross. He broke that vessel, He shattered it, He scattered it, and by His death put to death what was of man and only of man and this earth and this world's glory for which they were so strongly reaching out all the time. And then in His resurrection He regathered, not on any man's name, but gathered in the heavenly name. So He secured the vessel known to us as the church as the repository of the Name on this earth. It seems almost a hopeless and despairing thing when we look at what has been and what is now, not only objectively, but at ourselves.

The church has no existence in the mind of God, only as the repository of His name. We love His name and we are devoted to His name, but I wonder how much we glorify it. That is where our hearts are sad and where the despair comes in. We are not speaking in generalities. If we think of ourselves and believe ourselves to be part of the church, the church of God which He purchased with His own blood, the church which Christ loved, for which He gave Himself, if we regard ourselves as being of that church, the very and only reason for our existence as such is to be in trust with the name of the Lord. He has deposited that trust with His church. He has called His name upon this new nation and this new house. He has said, 'My name is there.'

Well, that fact constitutes a very solemn responsibility. Consider Israel and the issue of the name in Israel. On the one side, the tremendous, unspeakable possibilities and glories of being entrusted with the name and what it meant when Israel was in line with the Name. It meant nothing less than the very God Himself, supreme, unique, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Upholder of all things, who by His Word spoke the universe into being, nothing less than that God being committed to them, saying, "I am with you; fear not, I am with you, I...". What tremendous things were possible when the Lord was there, when His name was upon them. On the other hand, see from the end how things worked out, the terrible story, the history of the Jews from then onward and from Christ's day onward. Is it not terrible? It is hardly readable; and that is because of unfaithfulness to the trust. This is God's great object lesson of what the name means when it is placed within a 'trust body'. What a responsibility, what a privilege, what tremendous things are bound up with that name in one way or the other for those people who are called by His name or upon whom His name is called, for it is nothing less than God committing Himself.

All that constitutes the vocation of the vessel. We think of Christian work in many terms, titles and designations. We give many names to the work of the Lord and to the workers themselves. There is only one vocation for the church and for everyone in the church. The vocation of the church is to bring honour to that name. Every soul that is saved from hell and the devil is an added glory and lustre to the crown, the diadem, of His name. It has to be regarded like that. Every bit of spiritual progress made by a child of God is something for the glory of His name, the enhancement of that name in them, bringing in more of His glory. We have to regard all spiritual life and growth in the light of this, that the Lord's name is getting a larger place. We have to view all our sufferings in the light of the Name, "I will show him"; it is his vocation: "I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:16). It is a part of the vocation. "To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf" (Phil. 1:29). It is given; it is a trust. Everything must be viewed in the light of the Name. How much glory has come to His name through suffering patiently and bearing affliction for His sake! It is the vocation of the church. It is a costly vocation, a glorious vocation; and also a great responsibility.

The Responsibility of Sonship

This is the very meaning and essence of sonship. God said to Pharaoh, "Let My son (Israel) go, that he may serve Me" (Ex. 4:23). The son was to bear the Father's name and the Father's reputation. The Lord Jesus bearing the Name is the Son. We in the church are the firstborn sons. "Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). And sonship is bearing the Name, carrying the Name, the great trust of the Name. You can test your sonship in that way, by the honouring of His name. What a challenge this is as to how our lives are spent for any time; our behaviour, conduct and our manner of life. What is the result? Failure in our supreme vocation? Failure in the very justification of our existence as a member of His church? Failure in the great trust? Are we betraying His Name? On the other hand, as we move through life, from place to place, here and there, leaving, perhaps never to come back again, what is the impress? What do they say about our having been there? "Very nice person, something strange about them", or different or worse than that "A difficult person to get on with." What do they say? Though they may not be able to put it into words, nevertheless they know that 'something' has been there, someone has been there with that 'something' that is not found among men in the ordinary. If they knew how to put it, would they be able to say, "God was with that man, with that woman. They reminded us of God, they seemed to tell us what God was like. We felt that God was present when they were here and it made us uncomfortable. It made us feel how poor our lives are and there is something more to life than we have." That is what the church is here for.

He called us into His Name, you have had His Name called upon you, you have been baptised into the Name. What does it mean? Do we not have to recover something of the meaning of these things which have become commonplace? You were baptised into the Name. That was something done so many years ago. We can remember it more or less, we know it happened. Is that all? The Name was then called upon us. We were set apart for the Name; we were called into the great vocation of the Name. We had the great responsibility of the Name committed to us and we had the assurance that He whose Name it is was ready to commit Himself to us. What does it all mean? A rite, an ordinance, a ceremony, or what? It means vocation.

The Holy Spirit the Custodian of the Name

Go back for a moment to that passage which we read in our previous meditation in Exodus 23:20: "Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee by the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Take ye heed before him". It does not say, 'Take ye heed unto him' firstly. "Take ye heed before him, and hearken unto his voice; provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgression: for My name is in him." Whether that so-called angel was the third Person of the Trinity or not, we cannot prove. We do know that the guidance of Israel was personal. We do know that in the New Testament, that guidance, pillar, cloud, and fire in which the Lord was, is used in the New Testament as a type of the Lord Himself. We do know that when they crossed the Jordan and entered upon the land there stood a man with a drawn sword who said that he was the captain of the host of the Lord. This is all the same. Is this the Holy Spirit? We cannot prove it. In Exodus 23 he is called "an angel" and I do not know anywhere where the Holy Spirit is directly called an angel. But in the New Testament there is no doubt about it that the Holy Spirit takes the place of that angel for the church. All that the angel in the wilderness meant is taken up by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit does all that in relation to the church which was done by the angel in the wilderness. If they are two different persons, they have in common that which makes them one person: they both have the name of the Lord with them. The factor which gave them their real Divine authority and power and everything else was the Name: "My name is in him."

What I am getting at is that the Holy Spirit is the custodian of the Name. He always was, whether angels separately are or not. What this one called an angel did, the Holy Spirit does on the same ground, by the same means - the Name. That is tremendously helpful. Take up the book of the Acts now and see the Holy Spirit getting to work by means of the Name, taking up the Name. The Holy Spirit came in the very first instance in this dispensation upon the vessel which was chosen for the Name, upon that nucleus of the church on the day of Pentecost, and you notice that the one thing which sprang up was the Name. They started preaching the Name, working in the Name. One thing which emerged from the coming of the Spirit was the Name. The first thing that the Holy Spirit did was to reveal that Jesus of Nazareth bore the Name which is above every name, and coming upon the vessel of the Name, the church, He made the Name the one supreme and exclusive issue.

At every point all along the way of that book of the Acts the Name is the issue, who this One is. Whether this is, after all, only the man called Jesus or whether this is very God, the name of Jehovah is in Him. That is the issue all the way in their preaching, in their working, in their defence, in their sufferings, their afflictions; it is all the issue of the Name. The Holy Spirit has taken up the Name in a very practical way in the vessel and has sovereignly acted for the honouring and the glorifying of the Name. This all amounts to the building up of that vessel which, in its fulness, is to show forth in the effulgent glory the meaning of that Name through all the coming ages.

The Holy Spirit is committed to build that vessel for the Name. Get to the New Jerusalem and you have the place of the Name. His Name is there; the glory of God is in it. That New Jerusalem is the church and the Holy Spirit Himself is committed to the Name and this demands the building up of an adequate vessel for the everlasting display of the glories of that Name.

This is tremendously encouraging because we do feel our helplessness in this matter. We almost feel, in the face of this responsibility, that we would like to drop out, to be relieved of any more responsibility. We know the hundreds of times in which we have failed, broken down, let the Name down, failed to bring glory to His Name, to register the excellence of His Name and to bring Him in so that others could recognise the Lord. But our deliverance is that the Holy Spirit is the custodian of the Name. If only we will let the Holy Spirit have His way, if only we will be truly in league with the Holy Spirit, if only we will be in heart concerned for this Name, we shall find that we are linked with the Infinite One whose concern is sufficient to make good our defectiveness, to glorify the Name of the Lord in and by such as we are. Has not the Lord's Name been glorified in very puny creatures? He chose deliberately the weak and the foolish and "the things that are not" that no flesh should glory in His presence, but that the Lord should get all the glory (1 Cor. 1:27-29). The Holy Spirit does it. If we think we can do it we shall very soon find that it cannot be; we had better give it up. But in league with the Holy Spirit the Name can be glorified.

There was no man who was more conscious of his frailty and his utter dependence upon the Lord for life and ministry than Paul, who said with absolute honesty: "Our sufficiency is of God" (2 Cor. 3:5). That man could say without boasting, in all that humility and dependence, "They glorified God in me" (Gal. 1:24). To him it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened, that they glorified God in him. What he meant was that they said, 'Oh, praise God for Paul; praise God for His grace in Paul; praise God for what has come to us through Paul; oh, glory be to God for Paul!' "They glorified God in me." You say you are not a great Paul the apostle, but if you were alongside of Paul, you would find that Paul in his own estimation was the meekest of men, all the time speaking of how much the Lord was and how utterly he depended upon the Lord. You would not find he was Paul the great apostle if you were with him. He is just a man needing the Lord as much as we do. "And they glorified God in me." Do you not covet that? It would be a grand thing for this to be written on our graves if it could be true. If only that would be the summing up of our lives!

"My name is in him." I did not go on reading those verses in Exodus 23, I read only the dark side: "Take ye heed... He will not pardon...". There is a sin against the Holy Spirit. There is the other side which I did not read. If you do honour him, what is going to happen? 'I will bring you into the land and all your enemies shall go down before you.' That is what the Holy Spirit can do when we are one with Him in His one inclusive business - the honouring, the glorifying of the Name.

Let us ask the Lord in our hearts to bring home to us above and beyond what we shall remember in words spoken, the mighty impress of the greatness and the implications of that Name and of our having that Name on us. The Name of the Lord rests upon you; if you are His, it rests on you. What are we going to do about it? The Lord help us!

Chapter 3 - The Hallowing of the Name

Reading: Exodus 23:20-25.

"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name" (Matt. 4:9).

Now we come to the meaning of this clause in the prayer, "Hallowed be Thy name."

First, we must step back for a moment to that name itself, the name of Jehovah, usually translated "Lord" in the Old Testament. The name Jehovah means the content, the qualities, which are in God. We saw in the previous chapter that the first name by which God is known in the Bible is Elohim, the God of covenant in redeeming the creation. And then follows this name Jehovah, which contains those features of God's nature which are implicit in His covenant work, particularly righteousness and holiness. If Elohim is covenant love, Jehovah is love as holiness, or holy love. If Elohim is God as Saviour redeeming the creation and covenanting that it shall be a glorious and glorified creation, then Jehovah means that that glory is the glory of holiness. And glorification will come, but only along the line of holiness, or if you prefer, righteousness. That is why righteousness has such a great place in the Word of God. The very covenant God made with the creation in order to glorify it is the covenant of Jehovah Who is the Holy One. Everything that He takes up must partake of His own nature: His holiness, holy and true.

This helps us, perhaps only a little, but it does help us a little towards this prayer, "Hallowed be Thy name", for the name of the Holy One had been dishonoured. Isaiah cried as from the Lord: "My name continually all the day is blasphemed (Isa. 52:5) - blasphemed among the nations because of you, Israel". The Name has been dishonoured; the creation and man, even the chosen people of God have grievously brought dishonour upon the name of the Lord and failed to manifest the meaning of that Name. As we say, they have 'let down' the Name. And when the Lord Jesus included this particular petition in the great prayer, He was only in another way saying, 'Pray that you do not let down the Name!' That is bringing it into common, everyday language and very near home. When you pray, pray: 'Our Father, Who art in heaven, save us from letting down Your name.' To put it positively it is: 'Help us always to honour the Name and to bring honour to the Name.' How far-reaching a petition that is!

It goes right back to the beginning when the meaning of that met its first great challenge. I am not going back again to break up that Name and to repeat what has been said about the challenge to the Name. Its uniqueness, exclusiveness, inclusiveness and supremacy were assailed by one trying to step into its place or to divide that uniqueness and that exclusiveness. A great effort was made to be equal with the Most High, to be God, by one who had no right thereto, a created being. All that is here. The consequence of that challenge after that one was hurled from his high place, determined to be an everlasting enemy of the Name, has been seen all through history. The desire to put other names, other gods, other governments, rulers, dominions and powers in the place of Jehovah is a result of this challenge to the Name. This is a story far too big for us to ever comprehend; the great, terrible story of the defaming, the dishonouring of the name of Jehovah; the challenge to that name.

The Lord Jesus takes up the whole of that in this one simple clause, "When you pray, pray, 'Hallowed be Thy Name'". That word 'hallow' is the same word in the original languages. There are two other words we use: consecrate and sanctify. Three English words for one original word: sanctify, consecrate, hallow. And there is this element that is at the root of the original word - not so much what the Name is to be separated from (although it is that) but what it is to be separated unto. In the Old Testament, while there is much from which that which is of God is to be separated, that is, sanctified, consecrated, hallowed, the real emphasis is upon what it is unto. We are sanctified not only by being separated from things (that is the negative side), the positive side is the emphatic side - what we are separated unto, what we are consecrated unto. Christ consecrated Himself unto the will of God. That involved detachment from other wills, His own included. It is unto, and this petition carries the force of that with it. 'Hallowed, consecrated, sanctified, be Thy name; Thy name come to Thee with all honour, with all glory; be separated unto Thee.' This is something for God; not only taken away from other powers, interests and defilements, but that this Name should be reserved as unto God alone; full of glory, hallowed, separated, sanctified, consecrated unto God. That is why we are not allowed to take the name of the Lord our God in vain, because it is a positive thing for the Lord, something consecrated and holy to the Lord.

How the Name is Hallowed

A great deal of detail could be brought in there, but we have now come to this point, that life in all its contact, character, work, life, in all that we are, in all that we have and in all that we do, is to be brought into accord with the Name. That is how the Name is hallowed, by all life being brought into accord with the Name, brought on to the ground of the holiness of the name of the Lord; set apart unto God. Those who bear the Lord's name have to have their whole life in accord with the Name and in that way alone is the Name hallowed. "Ye shall be holy; for I Jehovah your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2); "that we may be partakers of His holiness" (Heb. 12:10); brought into accord with that Name which means His holiness and His righteousness. These are the Lord's. What we are, our character, demeanour, behaviour, spirit; our impact and registration upon others and upon this world; our activities and our interests, all immediately and unavoidably affect His name. And the Lord says to His own: "Make this a matter of prayer; you want to know how to pray, you say, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' Well, look here, you are on this earth related to God, to the Father, you are His children; as such you bear His name. You have to pray constantly that your whole life will be in accordance with that Name; that the influence of your life, the impact and registration of your life, in what you are, what you do, how you do things, in everything, shall keep that Name from dishonour, shall be the hallowing of that Name."

That is, I know, very simple as a statement. It does not sound very profound, but you and I know only too well how often we trip up on that and therefore very much prayer is needed that the Lord's name shall not be dishonoured. And we must not divide our lives up into compartments, what we call our spiritual life and our other life, whatever it might be, in business or elsewhere. We are carrying the Name all the time wherever we go; in whatever situation we are found, we are carrying the Name, and even if we have not announced it and no one is informed about it, it is coming out sometime and somehow or other. It is going to be discovered that we are professing Christians and at once the Name is involved. We are here for the Name if we are His, and it is a matter for constant earnest prayer that, so far as we are concerned, the Name shall be hallowed.

The Universal Effect of Hallowing the Name

This goes beyond our personal lives - we shall speak more about that again, but you see, this is a universal thing. I believe that the Lord Jesus comprehended the whole range of the Name in this petition. Wherever and however the Name was involved among spiritual intelligences on the evil side, you and I have got to give an answer for the Name that those evil forces shall have no ground upon which to encamp or be gratified. Their great abiding desire for the Name to be dishonoured, must not be satisfied by their getting ground because of us. We are told that the other celestial intelligences are looking on, and they are greatly concerned about the Name. "I send an angel before thee... Take ye heed before him, and hearken unto his voice; provoke him not... for My Name is in him" (Ex. 23:20-21). There is an interest and a concern for this Name among angelic forces. Celestial intelligences are watching, very concerned about that Name here, and it makes a very great difference in that realm whether we observe and honour the Name.

Remember those five verses we read from Exodus. If you do honour the Name, there will be victory and blessing. If you do not respect the Name, see what will happen on the other side. The evil forces are concerned about this. It is a great universal thing that is centred in the Name and therefore centred upon those who bear the Name. God commits Himself to His name.

"Hallowed be Thy name." This name, His name, is the Lord's one concern. It is His exclusive concern, His only concern. How much we could gather up from the Word about God's jealousy for His name and what He says about doing things for His own name's sake. "I do not this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name" (Ezek. 36:22). That is a note that He very strongly strikes in the Word. His name is His concern; He is jealous for it.

That brings us to a very positive ground. If you and I are really on the ground of the Name, committed to the Name, jealous for the Name, seeking everything only for the sake of His name, if we are taking that interest in His name which angels and demons are taking, or let me go further - if we are in fellowship with Him, the Lord, in His own jealousy for His name, we have the ground upon which God will commit Himself. That is what the Word of God says everywhere. Do you want to find the ground where the Lord will meet you, answer you, commit Himself, be free to move? That ground is the ground of His name. Wherever He puts His name, there He is. Not just the word, the title, but where the Name in real meaning is found, there God is committed. A good deal of discipline and searching has to take place to get us absolutely there. Sometimes we go through very severe fires in order to get us on to the pure ground of the Lord's interests, away from our own.

How often the Lord has to challenge our prayers. Why do you want this? What is it you are after? And even when we would be very honest and say that we want it for the Lord, He knows the mixture deep down in our hearts, those hidden motives. He does not always immediately respond until we come to the point where it is a matter of real anguish for the Lord's glory. And how often the Lord raises that issue in the life of His people in some acute form to bring them to the place where this matter - while it does affect us and involves our own interests and convenience or our own pleasures or even our own honour - ultimately and most deeply touches the name of the Lord, and we are drawn out in agony on that and we let all the other go. The Lord takes that line with His people very often, in order to bring them to the place where they discover God has committed Himself. We do not get there all at once. You may tag your every prayer with "in the Name", but oh, what does it mean if the Lord takes us to task? Are you quite sure that deep down at the very springs of your being it is the Lord's name that is your concern, or is it that there is some personal interest in this matter? Are you really prepared for Him to do it only for His name's sake? That is where God is.

On the one hand, it is the explanation of much fiery purifying of heart and motive. On the other hand, it is the ground of absolute assurance. Get onto that ground, and you can be assured that the Lord is for you. Out of the very jealousy that is in Him for His own name, He is going to watch over it and see it through. His name is involved and God Himself stands or falls by His name, and if it is tied up with that situation, you may be assured the Lord is not going to let His name be dishonoured.

There is a large section of our lives where we cannot find the Lord at all, where the Lord is absolutely neutral. You pray, and the Lord takes no notice. You are not aware that He is answering one way or the other. You are not aware that He is doing anything in you about it. It seems as though He is standing back and leaving the whole thing. You cannot find Him cannot get at Him at all. Why? You are not on His ground. The Lord is not at all interested in your name and my name. He is not at all interested in our interests as such. He is not at all concerned for our things, the things for which we are so much concerned. The Lord is only concerned for His name. There will be that vacuum where there is nothing at all with God until we have come onto His ground. But see how positive He is when that ground is there. If things are really contrary to His name, dishonouring to His name in you and in me, we shall have a terrible time under the hand of God. There will be real discipline; we shall go through it if there is something which is dishonouring His name about which He has spoken to us.

This Name brings in positive factors one way or the other. Either God is absolutely for something, or on the other hand, completely against it. The Name means that, and you have only to read the Old Testament again in that light to see what happened when the Name was sanctified in the midst of His people, among the nations. Oh, how God came out for His name. Yes, He sovereignly transcended much weakness, much imperfection, many faults, but when His people really sought the honour of His name, then He committed Himself. See, on the other hand, what happened when His name was continually blasphemed. Away they went into captivity, handed over to the fires of judgment. The Name was involved.

"Hallowed be Thy name." That is said thousands, perhaps a million times on this earth every week or every day. What does it amount to? Do you not see how necessary it is for us to pray intelligently, not to just say prayers, but to know what we are talking about? Here, in a phrase so often mechanically repeated, is a universe of concern and meaning; it all centres there. May we be therefore those who intelligently take up not just a phrase, but life accordingly, to have everything that is ours with the Name upon it. Oh, put the Lord's name on your home, put the Lord's name on everything that you have, everything that you earn, put the Lord's name on it. Take the Name with you wherever you go. Bring everything under the Name and into the Name and you will see how the Lord will honour. I know what it will cost, but you want the Lord, do you not? You want to know the Lord, you want the Lord to be manifested in your life. Very well, bring everything under the Name, write the Name upon it, and by doing so see that there is nothing that does not hallow His name.

Chapter 5 - For the Sake of His Name

We have been occupied with various aspects of the glory of the name of the Lord. In the first chapter we saw that the Name is a revelation of Himself; in the second, it was Jesus and the Name; then it was the hallowing of the Name; then the vessel of the Name. Now it is a matter of seeking to bring into view a few other things concerning the Name as they are brought to us in the New Testament, particularly after our Lord was risen from the dead.

Salvation in the Name of Jesus

The little fragment of Scripture which will underlie what we have to say now is found in 3 John 7: "For the sake of the Name they went forth."

As they went forth preaching, their preaching would be concerning the name of the Lord Jesus, and seeing that in the first place their preaching was to a world of unsaved, unregenerate men and women, their preaching would be salvation in the name of Jesus. That is the meaning of the name Jesus: God our Saviour, Jehovah Saviour. Their Lord had told them that that was what they should do. We have it in Luke 24 and it runs like this (these are nearly His last words to them after His resurrection before He was received up into heaven) "And He said unto them, These are My words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their mind, that they might understand the scriptures; and He said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem."

The Name of Jesus, the Name of the Lord

But here is the statement of the fact that their preaching of salvation was salvation in the name of Jesus, and you know how they did it. Just pass on to the book of the Acts and to the very first preaching of the gospel to the world needing salvation; yes, to religious, orthodox Jews needing salvation, for it was to them that the first preaching took place. In Acts 2:21, this is declared in this first preaching, "And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

And that, as you see, is a quotation from the Old Testament. So they have their gospel from the Old Testament as He told them, and they proclaimed that it is in the name of the Lord that men shall be saved, and the apostles here are making it clear. To them it is a settled conclusion that the "name of the Lord" applies to the Lord Jesus, because presently when Peter had paused or finished his address to these people, they did begin to call and he directed them immediately to the name of the Lord Jesus. Answering their cry, "Brethren, what shall we do?" he said, "Repent ye, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 2:37-38). The two things go together. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord" and, "Be baptised... in the name of Jesus Christ." This means that the name of Jesus was the "name of the Lord". That was what they were getting at; that was really their point.

You go on to Acts 4:12, and again you have this declaration made in their preaching, "And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved." You could not have anything more emphatic than that. Salvation is in the name of Jesus.

And that is said again by the apostle Paul in other words well-known to most of us, in Romans 10:10-13: "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon Him: for, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Therefore salvation is in the name of the Lord Jesus, and it cannot be received in any other way than by calling upon His name. I emphasise that, because there are a lot of people, some of whom I have met, who say, 'Yes, we are quite prepared to acknowledge God and go to God, but we cannot recognise Jesus is essential to get to God.' Well, God says otherwise, and you can try it if you like, but you find that it just will not work. What I am really getting at is this, that when they (the religious Jews who were always calling on God yet were not saved) did call on the name of the Lord Jesus, something happened at once. They knew God in a way, they knew all about God's name, and probably could teach us a very great deal about God's name. These Jewish people in Jerusalem knew all about the name of the Lord, but they did not know the salvation of the Lord at all. But when they called upon the name of Jesus then they discovered His salvation.

Later a very outstanding and distinguished example is brought to us in the case of Saul of Tarsus. What Saul of Tarsus did not know about the name of God and about God would not be worth knowing. For he did not know the Lord until, with his face to the ground, he called upon the name of the Lord Jesus and then the great thing happened in his life. The great thing made him Paul the apostle. God has shut up salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look at one more passage in Romans 10:14: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" That is the challenge. The apostle said, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved... How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" (v.9-14). What does believing in the Lord Jesus mean? It certainly does not mean believing that He was a very good man, and it does not mean believing that He was the very best man that ever lived; it does not mean believing that He died for His convictions, laid down His life in His devotion to God and all that sort of thing. That is not believing in the Lord Jesus. It is believing that Jesus is Lord, and Lord in this Old Testament sense of God being the Lord God. The Lord Jesus has the name of God upon Him. Now, that is going to be seen in another way in a moment, but we are pressing this right at the outset, and it is good for us, the Lord's own people, to have this brought to us anew. The real meaning and basis and nature of our salvation is centred in Him because He is the Lord. "Salvation is of the Lord" (Jonah 2:9), and the Lord is the Lord Jesus. So first it is calling on the Name of the Lord, but realising that when you do that, God switches you immediately right over to His Son Jesus Christ. You cannot come direct to One whom you call God, ignoring or leaving out His Son. The two are One. They are the same. Jesus is God incarnate, and there is no salvation in the Lord except in and through and by Jesus Christ. If you will put that to the test, you will find that there is an answer. Calling because you believe, calling on Jesus Christ.

Baptism in the Name of Jesus

Then notice, they linked with that call when they began to cry out, when the feelings that were going on inside of them began to be audible, and they said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" The answer was, "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ." You have that several times in the book of the Acts. You have it in 2:38, in 8:16 and again in 19:5 - "baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus".

You know that the commission to the apostles by the risen Lord was to "go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). Now in the book of the Acts every time it is, "in the name of Jesus"; not once do you find the full formula used of: "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". Has something happened to change the whole thing? Well, you see, you are at once brought right to this very point that the name that Jesus bears is the name of the Triune God. It never says 'in the Name Jesus'. When Paul said, in Philippians 2:9, "Wherefore God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow", he did not say, 'in the name Jesus'. The name 'Jesus' need not be the name that is above every name, because probably there were tens of thousands of people with that name among the Jews. It was a common name. Joshua is Jesus. Hosea - it is another form of expression for the same name 'Jesus'. Although the name Jesus of Nazareth is precious to us, God invested Him with the name of the Triune God, so that He Himself said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9), and "that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (John 5:23); and, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me" (John 14:6). Well, we are anticipating a little. That was the whole point of the persecution. The persecution of the apostles and the early Christians was because they invested the name of Jesus with God, with Godhead, and the Jews said, 'That is blasphemy!'; therefore they persecuted them.

That was true not only with regard to Jews, but also Gentiles. They had their gods, their deities, and to put this One in the place of all the others and say that He is superior was provoking. The implication was that Jesus is not just a man like a multitude of other men with a common name such as Jesus, Joshua, or Hosea. No, God has invested Him; He inherits a more excellent name than the angels (Heb. 1:4); He has the Name. And what is the Name that is above, if it is not the name of God Himself, Jehovah the Lord? So when they baptised in the Name or into the name of Jesus, they were baptising into the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the same thing. I am only concerned at the moment with the Name, and you cannot separate these. This is not another doctrine, to baptise in the name of Jesus as over against baptising in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is not something other, it is the same thing. It is that and it proved to be that, because they found God and they found the Holy Spirit when they were baptised into the name of Jesus.

But what did being baptised mean? At the beginning, it was a matter of going down into water, being buried and coming up again. It was a symbol, a figure of dying, of being buried and then being raised in newness of life. If they were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus, they had died to every other name. They had the attitude that they died to every other name. No other name was of account to them; no other name was to be lived for or unto. There is only one name now which covered and embraced the whole of their universe. They were on new ground, in a new position, in a new relationship, and that ground and position and relationship was the Lord Jesus. Paul put it in another of his letters: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:14,15). "Unto Him." So you see, baptism into the name of Jesus declares that you have died to every other name, including your own name; you bear His name now. It is what we were dealing with in the previous chapter: bearing His name, His name called upon us, called by the name of the Lord - God's man, God's people, the children of God - called by His name.

There are many names seeking to take the place of His name, and it is going to be more and more so towards the end-time in which we live. There are names making a bid for world domination, to set up worldwide dominion in a name, a single name, if possible. You see the tide sweeping on. In the first World War we had several dictators, every one of them trying to get the whole world under his sway. But the thing has moved since then and it is becoming a single issue and the movement is clearly in the direction of the whole world under one name. The final issue is becoming clearer. There are two names in this universe and "His name shall endure for ever" (Psa. 72:17). The other will be gone for ever. It will be a good thing to be in the name of Jesus in the last resort. "Neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved" but the name of Jesus.

The Constituting of a People by the Name

The next thing which follows in relation to the Name in the New Testament is the constituting of a people into a defined people by the Name. I am not going to talk about the church. I am keeping to simpler terms, a people constituted as such by the Name. You will remember that when the early church came up against some difficulty over Jews and Gentiles, the problem became acute in regard to the union of Jews and Gentiles who had been before this time kept strictly apart. This problem arose when they preached the Gospel. I am so glad that the thing came up spontaneously; it was inevitable. You cannot preach one name and have two people. If you are going to preach one name, everybody has to come onto common ground, and so the very preaching of the name of Jesus raised the issue of the separation of people; Jews on the one hand and Gentiles on the other. And so it arose, as it was bound to do, and they had to meet and have a serious talk about it. In the discussion Peter, who had proclaimed this Name in the very first preaching, and had been the mouthpiece of the rest on that great day of Pentecost, this Peter got up and said, "Brethren", and then he began to quote an Old Testament passage, saying: "God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name" and ultimately, "that the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called" (Acts 15:6-17). "A people" - singular - a people constituted such; a single and a singular people by the name of the Lord. And that is implied in their baptism, for Paul wrote again elsewhere and said, "In one Spirit were we all baptised into one body" (1 Cor. 12:13); constituted a single people. We talk about the Body, the church, but here, a people constituted by the Name.

There are a lot of practical values in that, but we will concentrate on two quite simple ones for the present. The simplest is that all who own Jesus Christ as Lord, all who are upon the ground of His name as Saviour, are one. It is that that constitutes the oneness and unity of the church. It is the Name. There are many ways of bearing that out and carrying that home. One of the most powerful ways is to recognise how Satan hates the name of Jesus so utterly that his major business ever since that Name was proclaimed as the basis of salvation, has been to split and divide God's people. Every division, every separation of the Lord's own people is a dishonouring of the name of the Lord Jesus, whether it be between two or between even multitudes. It is the work of Satan to dishonour and bring reproach upon the name of the Lord. Listen to that great heart-cry from the Lord Jesus recorded in John 17, where His heart is going out to the Father: "I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me"; "I made known unto them Thy name"; "That they may all be one, even as We are one"; how? We bear the same Name. "I have given them Thy name; the men which thou gavest Me, I have given to them Thy name". It is in the Name that the oneness is found, and that cry to the Father was born of the knowledge of the work of the great adversary as the divider and schism-maker, the one whose work has ever been to cause God's universe to be shot through with discord, disruption, hatred and wars. The Name is the ground of a constituted oneness.

Remember that, and do not make something more than that the ground of oneness.

I know that we can be experientially more and more one, and this increasing oneness comes about as we go on with the Lord and discover together more and more of what the Lord is, but our basis is not the more and more. It is not the plus, the extra. Our basis of oneness is that we bear one Name, the name of the Lord. That is simple, but it goes to the heart of a lot, and therefore we must deal with every matter of division, everything coming between us, even two of us, or between companies of the Lord's people. We must deal with it all for the sake of the Name. If we are out of harmony, if we are divided, there is reproach upon the Name, and we must say, 'This does not glorify the name of the Lord, His name is dishonoured by this.' And that is sufficient motive for dealing with it all; a constituted oneness by the Name, recognising that it is on that ground that we are one.

Their commission to this world was in the Name. "For the sake of the name they went forth." That is a simple statement, but it embraces a great deal more in the New Testament. It is quite clear from the very consequences themselves, that is the outworking of things, that they were conscious of being commissioned by this Name, that they were going into the nations solely in the interests of this Name, to bear this Name, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me", their Lord had said, "in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). "Witnesses unto Him". And how did they witness to Him? Simply by declaring Him, His Name, Jesus as Lord. The commission was the commission of the Name.

Do we add something extra to that? If so, that accounts for a lot of the trouble. We have a lot of names, labels, titles, a lot of things that we have not seen clearly to be a matter of the Name. If only in all the work of God, in all Christian activity, one single issue was kept in view - His Name. It would settle all the disputes among Christian workers. It would settle the question of divisions among Christians in Christian work. It would be a mighty motive behind which the Holy Spirit would be the dynamic, for it has ever been so. The Holy Spirit has committed Himself to that Name. He never commits Himself unless the Name is the one single and all-governing concern; not a teaching, a movement, a campaign, an institution, not anything else, but only the name of the Lord Jesus. If that was brought to bear upon everything in Christian work there would be a tremendous difference. The Lord would come in in a new way. It is not a matter of this or that thing, teaching, interpretation, name or anything else. The Lord sweeps all the names out and brings in one Name! Do not talk about things by names, keep the Lord always in view; it is the Lord. So their commission was the Name, by the Name, and nothing else.

Suffering for the Name

And in their going forth for the sake of the Name, the Lord being with them and working through them in mighty ways, they found that they had to suffer for the Name. That Name involved them in suffering, because the name of Jesus is the name of the Lord, and there are many other gods and lords belonging to this world. There is, over all the other gods and lords that men worship, the one who is called the god of this age, who "hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving" (2 Cor. 4:4). If you come up against that other system with its great head, that involves suffering. They found it to be like that, but they knew it would be like that, and to know it is to really undercut a good deal of the poignancy and the trouble that comes upon you. If you do not expect it, you are very much disarmed and broken down, but if you are aware this is what will happen, it is a help on the way.

These first Christians went forth for the sake of the Name and they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the Name (Acts 5:41). They took joyfully the spoiling of their goods (Heb. 10:34). "To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf" (Phil. 1:29). Now, this is an easy thing said, and it is easy to get ourselves into trouble by saying these things. That is put to the test very soon. But we observe the fact that they had reached the position where the Name involved them in suffering and they did not interpret this as something gone wrong, as something unexpected. They took it as a part, not only of their commission, but of their privilege. Why? Because the Name was so dear to them. They would suffer anything for that Name.

Vindication by the Name

My last word for the present is that going forth for the sake of the Name, having the Name ever and always as the one interest and concern, governing everything, and accepting all the consequences of their faithfulness to that Name in much suffering and affliction, the early Christians were vindicated by the Name. Oh yes, some of them died the death of martyrs, were executed in different ways, but they were vindicated. There is a New Testament, there are their names! Are they vindicated? Read it. What do we owe to this New Testament? We owe all our knowledge of the Lord to this. We owe our comfort in the conflict and suffering to this. It bears the name of these people. They are vindicated! In us they are vindicated; in the whole history of the church they are vindicated. They are vindicated in heaven and we are going to see their vindication, and if it please God, we who bear the Name and suffer for the Name are going to be vindicated with them. That is declared here. They, without us, cannot be made perfect (Heb. 11:40).

What vindication do you want? Do you want tangible rewards, houses, lands and all that sort of thing because you have lost them? They all go sooner or later anyway. If you get them back, they still have to go. We brought nothing into the world, and we shall take nothing out (Eccles. 5:15). All we desire is to know that we have been well-pleasing unto Him, that we have been able to serve the interests of His Name, and that there is something that stands for all eternity to the glory of His Name by our having borne it. So they went forth for the sake of the glory of the Name.

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - God's Name a Self-Revelation

Chapter 2 - Jesus and the Name

Chapter 4 - The Vessel for the Name

Chapter 3 - The Hallowing of the Name

Chapter 5 - For the Sake of His Name