Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name?” His point was that whatever we call something, whether a person or a rose, does not change the nature and essence of that thing.
I believe that this same thought holds true for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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There are a lot of people- and my experience with them is that they are exclusively Gentile- who are so obsessed with using God’s name, especially how to pronounce it, that they have created a new, Christianized form of legalism.
Okay, first… what is legalism, really? It is not obedience to the Torah, as Christianity has misinterpreted it, but rather obedience to the Torah IN ORDER TO EARN SALVATION. Legalism is doing what the Torah says to do, just to do it; faith is not a requirement. It is a performance-based salvation, and the reason why it can never work is that no one can be 100% obedient to the Torah 100% of the time.
So, why do I say these “Holy Namers” are being legalistic? It’s because they are so passionate about using the name of God that they have come to worship the name more than the entity it represents.
They insist the name we use for God must be pronounced the way they say it should be pronounced, and more than that, they misuse the term “in the name of..” to mean we should pronounce God’s name, when the proper meaning of that term has nothing to do with the title or name we use to identify God, but rather refers to the reputation and renown of God.
When you drop a name, such as “So-and-so sent me”, we recognize who so-and-so is, but the name isn’t as important as the person behind it, because when that person sent me, he was authorizing me to be there. It was the reputation, power, and authority of so-and-so that is what the person I am talking to recognizes.
So, to get back to Shakespeare’s question, what is a name, really?
According to the Oxford dictionary, a name is…
A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place,
or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.
Okay, that’s the definition, but why do we even need names? The answer is obvious- to identify something or someone as being unique from some other thing or person. I am called Steven so that when someone wants to get my attention, they call out, “Yo! Steven!’ and this way I turn around, but John, Harry, Eleanor, Mary Lou, and everybody else who isn’t named “Steven” will ignore the call.
We need names for the things on the earth to identify one from another, and that is because there are so many things that are similar, such as the many different types of flowers or animals, or people, who without names we could never be able to effectively identify or communicate with.
But what about God? I mean, how many of him are there?
There’s only one, and he is totally unique in the Universe, so there is, technically, no need for a name for him because he cannot be anyone or anything else other than…God.
And God, itself, is not a name as much as a title, like El Elyon (God on High), or Adonai (Lord) or HaShem (The Name) or…well, you get the point. He is known by his title, position, and authority, and even the Tetragrammaton, those 4 letters (יהוה) can’t be pronounced correctly because we have no idea which vowels are to go where.
No matter who says they know the true pronunciation, they can’t.
God says how he wants us to know him in Exodus 3:15 (CJB):
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.
Yes, the 4 letters are there, but (as I said) we don’t know how to pronounce them, so we should use the next description God gave us to identify him, which is the God of our fathers, etc.
People need to make God into what they want him to be in order to feel more comfortable. Because we are self-centered and sinful beings, we can’t raise ourselves to God’s level, so we have to bring him down to our level, at least, a little bit, so we feel more comfortable in our relationship with him.
One way to do this is to give him a name so he is more like the rest of us.
And the ones who can’t accept that he is above all things, including needing a name to identify him as separate from others like him (which don’t exist), insist on how to pronounce that name, and to use it every, single time the word “name” appears in the Bible, ignoring the proper meaning of the term “in the name of” or “call on the name..”
What I am saying is that legalism isn’t dead in modern Christianity, they have just redirected it from the Torah to God’s name. It reminds me of what happened to the brass snake Moses made, which went from a symbol of God’s protection to being worshiped as a god, itself.
Today’s message, in a nutshell, is this: don’t worship the name used for God, worship God.
He knows your mind and heart, and whichever name you know to mean the one who told us to know him as the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob will not be confused or upset when you use a name that you know to be him.
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That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
