Names and titles in God’s kingdom
We use names to refer to people and things. God uses names differently. To God, a name is not just a title describing who someone is, but a description of how they are or could be. While parents name their children based on trends, tradition, or hopes of how a child will turn out, God perfectly knows each person’s actual and potential qualities. Names given by God can refer to past, present, or future circumstances—whether promised or potential.
The way God names people is much closer to the way the world bestows titles than how people name their children. In the world, titles are bestowed by authoritative individuals or groups as a recognition of prior achievement or as a call to future performance. While God uses names and titles to recognize a person’s past achievements,1 he also uses them to invite them to develop otherwise unseen potential qualities,2 forewarn them of danger,3 and to promise outcomes that would otherwise seem impossible.4 God’s names can combine any or all of these purposes. For example, God renaming Abram as Abraham was an example of recognition of his past accomplishments and present properties as well as an invitation to further develop his potential with a promise of an otherwise unlikely outcome.5
Appellations given by God are a call to action. Every name or title is either an invitation to do something or a record of it having been done. They can remind the recipient or those who know them of past actions taken or charge them to achieve certain accomplishments in the future.
Footnotes
- 1. For example, God called Jacob Israel when he overcame the struggle of approaching him. “And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” (Genesis 32:28) ↩
- 2. The Greek verb translated as “to name” (kaleó) also means to bid, call forth, and invite. ↩
- 3. The Lord called Simon to become Peter as an invitation to lean on him as the rock of his strength: “And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.” (John 1:42) ↩
- 4. For example, God commanded Isaiah to name his son Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (“quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil”), prophesying that before the child was old enough to say father or mother, the riches of Damascus and Samaria would be plundered by Assyria (see Isaiah 8:1-4). ↩
- 5. Abraham’s apostate father named him Abram (“my father is exalted”), but God renamed him Abraham (“all nations of the earth will exalt the name of God through your name”), “for I have given you all people not in my family, to rule over them; that through you they will be called to me and begin to understand how I am.” (Genesis 17:5, Author’s Reflection) The “many” (Hebrew hamown ) people referred to here links to the confounded people at the tower of Babel, where the organization of the human family was balkanized to limit their ability to self-organize for evil after rebelling against good (see Genesis 11:1-9). Abraham’s new name was given as a testament of the blessings God would give him, signifying that the entire world would come to know God through coming to know Abraham. In other words, that the God they would come to know would be “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” ↩