By Gustav Kros
About two months ago, I was in a meeting with a few Christian leaders, when one of them said that we must remember that when God said we should not misuse His name, it includes all His names. As he said it, it broke through to me in a new way. I know that God has plenty of names, to the extent that there are actually different books written on the names of God. At the same time, I know it says in the Ten Commandments; You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name (Exo 20:7). But I have never thought about it in the context of all the different names He has.
In English we predominantly use God or Lord when we speak of God, but at the same time we hold the same reverence for Jesus or Christ, and so it is actually quite obvious that God doesn’t have just one name. When we specifically look at the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, the list continues to grow: Yahweh-Jireh (The Lord will Provide), Yahweh-Elohim (The Eternal Creator), El Shaddai (The Almighty, All-Sufficient God), Adonai (Sovereign Lord, Master) and so the list goes on.
When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3, and Moses wanted to know by what name He should be called, God answered him as follows, (quoted from the Complete Jewish Bible for greater context). “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh [I am/will be what I am/will be],” and added, “Here is what to say to the people of Isra’el: ‘Ehyeh [I Am or I Will Be] has sent me to you.’” 15 God said further to Moshe, “Say this to the people of Isra’el: ‘Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Adonai], the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitz’chak and the God of Ya‘akov, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered generation after generation.” (Exo 3:14-15)
This is thus the name that God gives Himself, and when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, we see that they don’t recall the name in exactly the same way, but it is shortened to the Lord, the God of Israel (Exo 5:1). From here on forth, The Lord, the God of Israel, is one of the names used most often throughout the Old Testament and into New Testament (Matt 15:31, Luke 1:68).
This name, that links God to the nation of Israel, gives us great insight into how God feels about the holiness of His name and the reverence we should have for it.
Ezekiel 20:9 But for the sake of my name, I brought them out of Egypt. I did it to keep my name from being profaned in the eyes of the nations among whom they lived and in whose sight I had revealed myself to the Israelites.
Ezekiel 36:20-23 And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, ‘These are the Lord’s people, and yet they had to leave his land.’ 21 I had concern for my holy name, which the people of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.
22 “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
Ezekiel 39:25 Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will now restore the fortunes of Jacob and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name.
God surely is zealous for His holy name, and we can see it clearly through the way He has dealt with the nation of Israel and continues to deal with them. They are linked to His name, and it has influenced their entire existence. In a similar way, we as Christians are also linked to His name the moment we confess to be Christian. We connect ourselves to Him and so we need to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of His holy name.
In this process of dwelling on God’s names, I have become mindful of the reality that when I pray the Lord’s Prayer and say hallowed be your name, it includes all His names, including the God of Israel, and secondly, if I truly want to hallow His name, then it starts with how I portray Him to those around me.
