Part 1: Jesus Christ – His Names (iv)

Actually, this series is from Understanding Bible Truth booklets by Robert Hicks and Richard Bewes (1981), but I have expanded some texts for modern readers (to make it easier to read) and added Scripture quotes (I’m using ESV Bible) into these writings to clarify its points more clearly. My purpose of making this series available in the internet is single: So that you can be clear the essential facts about the Bible’s teaching in a readily understandable form.

First, What is “Name”?

A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. Wikipedia further explained: “In the ancient world, particularly in the ancient near-east (Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia) names were thought to be extremely powerful and to act, in some ways, as a separate manifestation of a person or deity”.

The many different names of Jesus Christ reveal the distinctive characteristics of His person and the work that He came to do. Below are six of His most important names in the Bible:

Son of God

As no one else, Jesus taught His disciples to think of God as their Father in a particularly intimate way. But because of His use of the terms “My Father” and “Your Father” (John 20:17) it is clear that He saw His own relationship to the Father in a quite different way from that of His followers. “It is clear that,” write J.I. Packer, “just as Jesus always thought of himself as Son of God in a unique sense, so he always thought of His followers as children of His heavenly Father, members of the same divine family as himself”.

The Jewish authorities recognized this and accused Jesus of making Himself equal with God. When Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:16), they “were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (v.18). [The term ‘Son of God’ occurs most frequently in John’s Gospel].

The Word

The Old Testament tells us that God created all things by His word. He spoke and it came to be. “Let there be…” and it be (Genesis 1). “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:6, 9).

The Apostle John in the New Testament shows that this Word was in fact God’s Son, without whom nothing would exist. The Word involved in God’s creation in another important way. He is the perfect expression of God to men. Because Christ is the Word, He did not merely bring us God’s good news, but He is Himself that good news. John 1:1-3 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

High Priest

This title, given to Christ in the book of Hebrews (7:23-28), is drawn from the Old Testament system of sacrifices. A sacrifice had to be made every year by the High Priest on behalf of God’s people to atone for their sins (Leviticus 9:7-8). Christ, by His sacrificial death (never to be repeated) are the perfect mediator and High Priest. “…we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God…” (Hebrews 4:14).

Messiah

For centuries the Jews had looked for a future King who would be a descendant of David. This person was called the ‘Messiah’ by the Jews (which in the Greek language is ‘Christos’, from which we get ‘Christ’). He would have God’s authority and power to bring in the end of the age and establish the kingdom of God.

It was Simon Peter who made the first clear declaration that Jesus was the Christ. Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus, however, saw His messianic role as one of suffering and death for the salvation of men. Matthew 16:21 continue, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Son of Man

Jesus used this name more than any other to describe Himself. Although it seems to speak of His humanity, in reality it is a pointer to His deity, for the term is drawn from the book of Daniel, where the Son of Man rules an everlasting Kingdom (See chapter on “The Son of Man is Given Dominion”, Daniel 7:9-14).

Jesus used the title in three ways – when speaking of His earthly ministry, His death and His coming glory. It is suggested that He favored this title because it carried no nationalistic association, it implied identification with man, and it had both “overtones of divinity and undertones of humanity” writes Leon Morris, in his commentary of The Gospel according to Matthew.

[Refers to Matthew 8:19-20, 20:17-19, 24:30]

Lord

To call Jesus Lord was, in the New Testament church, the mark of a true Christian. To use this name invited opposition – from the Jewish authorities on the grounds of blasphemy (because it equate Him with God) and from the Romans on the ground of treason against the Emperor (because the Romans thought that their emperor is God). This was the name that ascribed all the authority to Jesus. Paul writes, “…no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Jesus said, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am” (John 13:13). The Scripture declares,

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).

My Conclusion about Jesus’ Names

Here we only described 6 most important titles, but there are more than 700 names of Jesus throughout the Bible. To really know God, you must get to know Him by name. The names of God in Scripture are really a self-revelation of God in His nature and attributes. The sheer number of such names and titles in Scripture suggests something of the immensity of God. “A devout Moslem exhausts his knowledge of his god when he knows the ninety-nine names and attributes of Allah in the Koran” writes Elmer L. Towns, “But the Bible identifies more than 700 descriptive names and titles of Jesus Christ”. And as Charles Haddon Spurgeon once put it, “God the Father never gave his son a name which he did not deserve.”
Jesus’ names are all about Him for He deserves such names. Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.