What's in the Name?

John 17:26

I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

While on Mount Horeb, Moses clearly hears the Voice of the Almighty Creator of the universe telling him to go to His children. Fully aware of the cynical nature of man, Moses. proceeds by asking the Voice, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" (Exodus 3:13). The Voice cryptically answers, "I AM WHO I AM."…"Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"(Exodus 3:14). In those preceding words, the Mighty One reveals the fullness of His nature. Using a superlative conjugation of the Hebrew verb, ‘to be’, He calls Himself the Everlasting Existential One. This same connection with the verb ‘to be’ is also found in the etymological root of the tetragrammaton used in the Hebrew Bible for the Name of God.

Later on in the conversation the Almighty also tells Moses, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD (tetragrammaton in the Hebrew text) I did not make myself known to them (Exodus 6:3)”. This is strange because Abraham, praised the Father using the tetragrammaton (Genesis 22:14). Are those contradictions? To add to the confusion, Yeshua comes and claims to reveal the Name of the Father as if no-one ever knew it before (John 17:26).

No; these are not contradictions. When the Scriptures talk about the Name of the Father, they are not talking about a sound bite attributed to the Almighty to help us refer to Him in conversation. These statements about His Name are speaking of His nature, the character of His revelation which is different in every column of the Scroll. In Abraham, Adonai is the One who provides; in Moses, He is the Avenger; in Yeshua, He is the Savior, the Atonement, the Shield who covers with acceptable blood. How does Yeshua reveal the Name of God?

Like Joshua was to Moses and Elisha to Elijah, Yeshua is a model disciple of the Father. He was in such unity with the Father that He said they were one, meaning that he who saw Yeshua saw the Father. It didn’t mean that if you saw Yeshua in the market place you went home and said, “Hey, I saw God today in the market place today”, it simply meant that Yeshua followed the Father so close that He could be seen through His appearance. When Yeshua says that He came to reveal God’s Name, He simply says that by His lifestyle He revealed the Father’s nature to us.

Yeshua also said that we should be one with Him. That means that when people see us they should be able to see Him, and through Him, the Father (John 17:20-21). It’s a tall order for each one of us, but if we seriously live in the injunctions the Master gave us directly or indirectly through His apostles, we should be able to shine some of the light of the Farther on this poor earth.