“The Case for Jesus Christ: His Name”

The Lord Jesus Christ: What a Name!

His eternal sameness throughout all of the centuries of time and throughout all of the eons of the ages surely inspires us to stop and think of what there is in His Name.

To most men, generally, the name of ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ means nothing more than a distinguishing label.

To some, it has a sense of mystery to it and, to those who do not know Him livingly, He strikes a chord of fear even at its utterance.

And, unfortunately, to others, it is a convenient name to use in profanity and obscenities.

But - the question is: what does the name of ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ mean to us personally?

What lies in that Name that causes us to bow humbly before Him?

What is it that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ as we focus on that Name?

Let us quickly look at each of His names together as we depend upon His Holy Spirit to grant us a greater revelation of it. 

And I pray the Lord will use it to continue His further work in us.

We start with the name ‘Jesus’: Jesus is the name of the Man, His humanity, that joins us, in our humanity, with Him.

It was a fairly common name in those days when Jesus was on earth.

So, men, when they looked at Him, saw no special significance in Him as a man - nothing more than what they would see in us and in our names.  

The Gospel writers used the name of ‘Jesus’ over and over again.

But - if you were to examine the epistles carefully, you will find that the name alone is not used very often.

The places where it is used are, for the most part, for the purpose of putting strong emphasis on His manhood, to accent His participation with us in the common conditions of life.

For one quick example, the phrase ‘Jesus died’, as in 
1 Thess 4:14, immediately identifies us with His humanity and the mortality associated with humanity.

You can see that if you read through the passage dealing with that.

His manhood shows us that His death is not just about the Messiah having come and died for man, but it is an act of our ‘brother’ Who took this upon Himself to help us understand His work as a man better.

‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’   (John 15:13; 1 Jn 3:14-16)

Our love is sometimes so hollow, so powerless, often limited and imperfect and these words can be just an ear-tickling, sanctimonious phrase.

But this Man, Jesus, laid down His life for the brethren.

He bore a manhood like ours in which His love, as a Man in giving Himself for us, demonstrated what love really is.

The agonies and stresses of life, the physical pains, the wounds He bore are not foreign to any of us, as far as the physical goes.

The feelings of His infirmities are things we can understand.

And His manhood, in facing and coping with these irritations, reminds us that He, too, had to always live by faith.

He lived among men, touching relationships as we do every day.

In the middle of temptations, devastation, hunger, scorn-laden debates and accusations, and all of the agitating passions and conflicts involved in life, Jesus lived as a man with such peace that He could offer it to His disciples, saying to them: ‘My peace I give unto you...’.

And in that place of perfect tranquility that He lived, He found God in all the daily, ordinary and, sometimes, demoralizing events and relationships.

He was tempted just as we are but He learned obedience to the will of His Father.

He, in His manhood, lived it all Himself first, where His heart was taught to gravitate ‘homeward’ to His Father.

He, too, was called upon to look to God, His Father, for divine sustenance, strength, and guidance.

In His human wisdom, He, too, sought the Center of His being as He learned to live ‘out from His Father in heaven’ and, as He did that, He was being made unto us wisdom.

Do you think, for one moment, that that was an effortless life He had to live to attain to spiritual stature?

I do not think so!

I think it must have taken every sinew of His body, every thought that crossed His mind, every emotion He ever felt to hold true to the goal that God, His Father, set before Him.

It never eased up for Him for He told His discciples toward the end of His life, ‘You are the men who stood by Me in all that I have gone through, in the troubles that have tested Me.’ (Lu 22:28)

Now, He stands before us as an example of how life is to be lived - has given us a goal and a purpose of life. 

So - in His earthly experiences, He so thoroughly identified with us that He was not ashamed to call us His ‘brethren’.

Jesus - the Name of the man, Man in His humanity - the name to be later declared by God as the Name that is above every Name.

Now - what about the name of ‘Christ’?

We are also called to embrace the Name of ‘Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the crucified One, our Savior’.

This brings us to Him as the Redeemer, the Man Who died was the Christ Who died for our sins - this Man ‘Jesus’ is the Christ.

It is not so hard to see why many did not believe Him to be the Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus remarked about this to the people: ‘You have seen Me but still you have no faith.’ (Jn 6:36)

Even His mighty works did not convince them, as we see in Mt 13:58.

In Lu 22:67, they asked: ‘Art Thou the Christ? And He said to them, ‘If I tell you, you will certainly not believe Me.’

‘Though He performed so many signs, so many miracles in their presence, they still had no belief in Him, put no faith in Him.’ (Jn 12:37)

It was not so easy then, just as it is not easy, nor different today, for men to believe how someone who walked about and lived as we do, could have been God’s Christ, God’s Anointed One.

Yet, it must be known and heard that an acceptance of Jesus, the Man, without a heart’s acceptance of the ‘Jesus as the Christ’ is missing the mark of His office and His work.

Unless His humanity leads us to this, we have nothing better than a pious form of religion.

Jesus as the Christ is the principal force to giving His manhood its full force.

We say ‘Jesus died’ - so what?

What is that to me that a man who has called himself ‘Jesus’ died?

‘He is no different to me than any other man’, I may say.

So, what makes it ‘Gospel’?, I wonder.

To this question, I need to know Who it was Who died and why He died.

Paul gave the answer: ‘I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures’. 

I need to know that this Man’s death was because He died as the Christ Whose death was for the expiation of my sin.

I need to know that He died for my sin because ‘God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation...’ by Him. 

To know that puts my faith on that line which takes Him as a man who suffered as we do to the Messiah, the Christ Who ‘also suffered and died’, that ‘they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.’  (2 Cor 5:15; Heb 2:9)

We live unto Him so that, as He lived, we live.

He gave the way out of all our human predicaments, revealing a way of living with Him and living with man that gives life eternal purpose and meaning.

He is the only One Who can reach us to do that.

He knows who and what we are - He stood where we stand - He understands why we do what we do.

It is in the Christ that we are given the assurance that He 
can and He does overcome and does transform just as He can find utterance, expression, and incarnation in people such as we are.

That is the gospel we preach, and preach it we must, by our words and by our lives to the very end of our days.

Yes - Jesus is the Christ!  
  
And, lastly, in Luke 2:11, the heavenly announcement came, saying, ‘For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ, the Lord.’

And that brings us to His next name of ‘Lord’.

Yes - Christ is Lord!

His manhood is exalted to the highest degree - ‘Lord’ - that kingly, divine Name of supreme authority and power!

‘He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords’, we often sing.

What a Name when we utter ‘Lord Jesus Christ’!

There is none like Him!

He ‘...Who though the divine nature was His from the beginning, did not cling to His prerogatives as God’s equal but laid it aside, stripped Himself of all privileges and rightful dignity and took upon Him the form of a slave, being changed into the likeness of man.

And being recognized as truly human, He humbled himself and showed obedience, even unto death, yes, death upon a cross.

And that is why God exalted Him to the very highest place and gave Him a name that is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow...and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’  (Phil 2:6-11)

He suffered in His life of lowliness and hardships.

It led Him to the humiliation of the Cross.

But - exaltation followed - all the dignity and all the divine prerogatives were given to Him when God highly exalted Him and made Him far superior to His humble state on earth.

He crowned Him King - Lord!

Now - sad to say - even dare to say - that one of the reasons why the Church today is not grasping the fullness of the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ is because we only half-believe this to be true.

Yes - we believe parts of it; of the others, we sometimes are not so sure.

I ask you - did Jesus Christ ever only half-cure any one - ever only half-deliver anyone - perhaps die for only half of a man’s sinful nature?

Of course not!

I cannot give a specific reason for our doubtings and our hesitations that keep us in our half-believing mode - of holding back and staying on the edge of spiritual attainment.

Perhaps there are many.

But - for one reason or another - the Church seems to put a ‘seal on the door of the tomb’ that holds in the power of His Name.

It is just not enough for the Church to say that our Lord Jesus Christ is in its midst and then to doubt and be unwilling to believe, trust in, and rely upon the power of that Name wholeheartedly.

If we persist in accepting only what is ‘comfortable’ to us, or only what we think may be so about Him, it is like going to the doctor for healing and then refusing to take the medication he has prescribed for the healing.

Can the truth of the power and victory of His Name possibly do us any good unless we begin with the acceptance of Him, go on to assenting of our wills to Him, to the outgoing of our hearts to Him, and finally, to the yielding of our entire nature to His Lordship?

We are all either rock or we are soil.

If you watch the rain hitting the rocks, the water just bounces and flows away.

If it is hitting the soil, the soil that is thirsty for its nourishing growth, it will start soaking up the water.

It is the same rain: on one, it runs off and there is no blessing of the rain to show for it.

On the other, it sinks in and the dormant seed starts to spring into life to blossom into beauty some day - to reach its fullest potential.

We are all one or the other, and what happens with each one of us, and with the Church, in general, depends upon how we grasp the truth of His Name.

Loving Jesus, trusting Christ, and bringing our obedience to Him as Lord, doing homage to Him as King, completes the Gospel in us that makes us know the power of the name that is above every name - the name  ‘Lord Jesus Christ’.

I leave you with these thoughts tonight to take with you and encourage you to ponder them throughout the week.

I pray they will be such an encouragement to every heart that each of us will be able to say with the Psalmist as he spoke with the Lord, and this is an expanded translation of Ps 94:19 which I would like to leave with you:

‘When my mind is burdened with worry, when cares abound,
when doubts crowd into my mind, in the multitude of my inward perplexities, Your comforting gladdens, cheers, delights, and encourages my soul.’

And it will follow Paul’s example of ‘Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Who ‘...in due time, will show forth Christ Who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords.’ (Eph 5:20 and an excerpt from 1 Tim 6:15)

The Lord bless you abundantly this week.

Let us pray.

Song:  “O the glory of Your Name, 
        the splendour of Your Name,...”

Amen! So be it!