The name of God can be carried by anyone through whom He chooses to
‘manifest’ or reveal Himself. So men and angels as well as Jesus can carry
God’s name. This is a vital principle which opens up so much of the Bible to
us. A son especially may carry the name of his father; he has certain
similarities with his father, he may have the same first name - but he is
not one and the same person as the father. In the same way a representative
of a company may speak on behalf of the company; he may telephone someone on
business and say, ‘Hello, this is Unilever here’; he is not Mr. Unilever,
but he carries their name because he is working on their behalf. And so it
was with Jesus.
ANGELS CARRYING GOD’S NAME
We are told in Ex. 23:20,21
that God told the people of Israel that an angel would go ahead of them; “My
name is in Him”, they were told. The personal name of God is ‘Yahweh’. So
the angel carried the name of Yahweh, and could thus be called ‘Yahweh’, or
‘The LORD’, in small capitals, as the word ‘Yahweh’ is translated in the
N.I.V. and A.V. We are told in Ex. 33:20 that no man can see the face of God
and live; but in Ex. 33:11 we read that “The LORD (Yahweh) spoke to Moses
face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend” - i.e. directly. It could not
have been the LORD, Yahweh, Himself in person, who spoke to Moses face to
face, because no man can see God Himself. It was the angel who carried God’s
name who did so; and so we read of the LORD speaking face to face with Moses
when it was actually an angel who did so (Acts 7:30 33).
There are many
other examples of the words ‘God’ and ‘LORD’ referring to the angels as
opposed to God Himself. One clear example is Gen. 1:26: “And God (the
angels) said, Let us make man in our image”.
MEN WITH GOD’S NAME
One
of the passages which is most helpful in demonstrating all this is John
10:34-36. Here the Jews made the mistake which many do today. They thought
that Jesus was saying he was God Himself. Jesus corrected them by saying,
“Is it not written in your law, I said, You are gods? If He called them
‘gods’...why do you say of (me)...’You blaspheme!’ because I said, I am the
Son of God?’. Jesus is really saying ‘In the Old Testament men are called
‘gods’; I am saying I am the Son of God; so why are you getting so upset?’
Jesus is actually quoting from Ps. 82, where the judges of Israel were
called ‘gods’.
As has been shown, the full name of God in Hebrew is
‘Yahweh Elohim’ - implying ‘He who will be revealed in a group of mighty
ones’. The true believers are those in whom God is revelealed in a limited
sense in this life. However, in the Kingdom, they will be ‘mighty ones’ in
whom the LORD will be fully manifested. This is all beautifully shown by a
comparison of Is. 64:4 and 1 Cor. 2:9. “Men have not heard, nor perceived by
the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, besides you, what He hasprepared
for him that waits for him”. Paul quotes this in 1 Cor. 2:9,10: “It is
written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart
of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God
has revealed them unto us by His Spirit”. The passage in Is. 64 says that no
one except God can understand the things He has prepared for the believers.
However 1 Cor. 2:10 says that those things have been revealed to us.
The
priests were God’s representatives, and for a man to ‘appear before the
Lord’ effectively referred to his appearance before the priest. When we read
of “men going up to God at Bethel”, the ‘house of God’ (1 Sam. 10:3), we
aren’t to think that God Himself lived in a house in Bethel. The reference
is to the priests, his representative, being there.
JESUS AND THE NAME
OF GOD
It is not surprising that Jesus, as the Son of God and His supreme
manifestation to men, should also carry God’s name. He could say “I am come
in my Father’s name” (Jn. 5:43). Because of his obedience, Jesus ascended to
heaven and God “gave him a name which is above every name” - the name of
Yahweh, of God Himself (Phil. 2:9). So this is why we read Jesus saying in
Rev. 3:12: “I will write upon him (the believer) the name of my God...and I
will write upon him my new name”. At the judgment Jesus will give us God’s
name; we then will fully carry the name of God. He calls this name, “My new
name”. Remember, Jesus gave the book of Revelation some years after his
ascension into heaven and after he had been given God’s name, as explained
in Phil. 2:9. So he can call God’s name “My new name”; the name he had
recently been given. We can now properly understand Is. 9:6, where
concerning Jesus we are told, “His name (note that) shall be called,
Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father...”. This is a
prophecy that Jesus would carry all the name of God - that he would be the
total manifestation or revelation of God to us. It was in this sense that he
was called ‘Emmanuel’, meaning, ‘God is with us’, although He personally was
not God. Thus the prophecy of Joel 2 that men would call on the name of
Yahweh was fulfilled by people being baptised into the name of Jesus Christ
(Acts 2:21 cf. 38). This also explains why the command to baptize into the
name of the Father was fulfilled, as detailed in the Acts record, by baptism
into the name of Jesus.