The Many Names of God –

Names of Jesus – Part 1


Isaiah 9:6, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
Daniel 7:13; Matthew 9:1-8, 25:31-34, Son of Man
Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 3:11-12, Son of God
Matthew 20:29-34, 21:9, 22:41-42; Son of David

Luke 3:23, 4:16-23; John 1:45, 6:41-42, Son of Joseph/the carpenter's son
Random Walk in a Gallery of Religious Art, Step 59: Matthew 2:13-23, The Flight into Egypt, by Bernhard Plockhorst
Mark 6:1-4, Son of Mary
Isaiah 7:10-14; Matthew 1:19-23, Emmanuel
Acts 4:9-18, 5:27-29, Jesus

John 18:3-8a; Matthew 2:22-23, Jesus of Nazareth/Nazarene
Isaiah 9:6; Wonderful, Counselor
John 1:1-3; Revelations 19:13b-14, Word

More Names of God

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Isaiah 9:6, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (2/3/2009)

My eldest granddaughter, Hannah, was writing down tips that I was giving her for doing genealogy. Two tips were: "Check everything! Trust no one! (Except Aunt Terri.)"

Imagine my surprise when John Wesley's commentary on today's verse included the following: "Mighty God - ... it is a true observation, that this Hebrew word El is never used in the singular number, of any creature, but only of the almighty God." Now, John Wesley was a very great scholar and theologian – definitely the "Aunt Terri" of scripture for any United Methodist. Since I told you not long ago that El means God or god, depending on the context, I immediately started looking at every occurrence of El in the Hebrew text in order to overwrite my brain cells with the correct information. But amazingly, Wesley was wrong! This reinforces what I always tell you: Don't take my word for this stuff! Read the Bible for yourself! Trust no one! Not to mention that it shows the value of an electronic concordance, without which I could not have found verses such as the following: "The LORD alone guided him, no foreign El was with him" (Deuteronomy 32:12). To be fair to Wesley, there only seem to be a handful of "els" out of the 237 occurrences that do not refer to God.

However all that may be, it is certainly true that the name "Mighty God" pretty much rules out King Hezekiah as the person to whom this verse refers, which has been proposed by some scholars. Wesley says this name "cannot without blasphemy and nonsense be ascribed to Hezekiah, nor indeed to any mere mortal man. ... This title can agree to no man but Christ."


Daniel 7:13; Matthew 9:1-8, 25:31-34, Son of Man (2/4/2009)

For the next five days we are going to look at Jesus as the son of .... Biblical usage of the phrase "son of X" is not always the same as our ordinary usage. Usually when we say someone is the "son of X," X is either the mother or father of the son in question. Biblical usage includes the ordinary usage that X is the parent, and certainly this is the most common meaning. However, "son of X" is also used to mean Thus you see "son of Belial" (1 Samuel 25:17), which literally means "son of worthlessness" and is rendered as "worthless fellow" in some modern translations; son of wickedness (Psalms 89:22); son of the morning (Isaiah 14:12); and sons of the prophets (1 Kings 20:35), the singers (Nehemiah 12:28), the mighty (Psalms 89:6), the sorceress (Isaiah 57:3), or the stranger (Isaiah 62:8); and the daughters of music (Ecclesiastes 12:4) and the land/Jerusalem/Zion/Moab. In each of these cases, physical descent from X is not implied, but rather that the sons or daughters take on the characteristics of X.

"Son of Man" is used in the Bible to denote a mortal person, i.e., a person who has the ordinary characteristics of mankind. You could read any chapter of Ezekiel to see this usage clearly. It is also occasionally used as a Messianic title, i.e., a divine person who takes on the characteristics of mankind. Our verse from Daniel is clearly of that sort: an ordinary person is not going to come with clouds of heaven. So the name can be a little ambiguous. The person who most frequently refers to Jesus as the Son of Man is Jesus himself. Usually he just says "The Son of Man this or that..." and lets it go at that. I suspect he intended it to be a little ambiguous, because very often he was trying not to attract so much attention that he couldn't get any work done. But today we read two passages in which Jesus unambiguously lays claim to the Messianic title, "Son of Man."


Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 3:11-12, Son of God (2/5/2009)

So where do you stand on demons? In our society, belief in demons has fallen way off and belief in angels has (in my opinion) gotten out of hand to the point that some people substitute them for God. But since demons and angels are essentially the same species, I think you have to accept or reject both together. You have to discount a fair amount of scripture to reject both demons and angels, so I'm inclined to accept them, even though I've never knowingly met one.

The main thing that distinguishes angels from demons is their attitude about obedience to God. Admittedly, I myself have occasionally argued that angels are distinguished from humanity by their lack of free will, but I think I'm mistaken about that. If angels have no free will, where do demons come from? God created everything, and everything created by God was good at least initially (see Genesis 1). Therefore demons went bad after they were created, like humanity, which can only be explained by free will. Even though demons have free will, Jesus successfully forced many of them to leave the persons whom they had taken over.

Most of the human people who met Jesus either rejected him outright or took a while to recognize him as anything more than a teacher or prophet. Ultimately, quite a few disciples, not to mention all orthodox Christians, recognized him as the Son of God. In contrast, not only angels but also demons recognized Jesus as the Son of God immediately. Presumably they had met before.

Note that in this case, "Son of..." is describing a specific relationship, not implying that Jesus is taking on the characteristics of God.


Matthew 20:29-34, 21:9, 22:41-42; Son of David (2/6/2009)

One thing that everybody knew (and still knows) about the Messiah was that he would be a descendant of King David, because God had promised David that one of his descendants would be on the throne of the kingdom forever (e.g., 2 Samuel 7, Jeremiah 23:5). When 1st-century Jews – from beggar to Pharisee – referred to the Son of David, they were using the second meaning of "Son of..." that we learned the other day, namely, a more-distant descendant, and they are also specifically talking about The Messiah.

I rarely translate the Greek kurios as "Lord" until after the resurrection, because it can and usually does mean sir or master. (A lot of real translators make this same distinction.) But in today's first passage, I use "Lord" because the blind men not only called Jesus kurios but also "Son of David." Furthermore, they confidently requested a miracle. Obviously they didn't mean "sir." They addressed Jesus as The Messiah, and they meant "Lord."


Luke 3:23, 4:16-23; John 1:45, 6:41-42, Son of Joseph/the carpenter's son (2/9/2009)

Did you know that surnames weren't invented until roughly the 12th century? English surnames like Hunter, Farmer, and Cooper tell you the occupation of your 12th-century ancestors in the direct male line. Another very common source of surnames in many languages is "son of...". Bar- (Hebrew), Mac- (Scottish), O'- (Irish), Ap- or P- (Welsh), -son (English), and -sohn (German) all mean "son of...". Before it turned into a surname, "son of ..." was used in such diverse times and places as the ancient Kingdom of Israel and the British Isles prior to the 12th-century to designate family relationships. So sometimes when Jesus is called the "Son of Joseph," it just means, "Jesus the son of Joseph, as opposed to Jesus the son of James." Our first two scriptures are of this sort. Philip even adds an address, presumably to distinguish Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth from Jesus bar Joseph from some other village. (This was before Jesus was famous.)

Other times, this phrase can carry the connotation of "a guy we've known since he was a little kid." Anybody you've known since he was a little kid can't possibly be important! Parents often have this response. Our second two scriptures express this kind of skepticism.




Mark 6:1-4, Son of Mary (2/10/2009)

Did you see the article in the paper the other day about President Obama's brother getting busted for having a little bit of marijuana? Now, it's illegal, and I'm not defending him. But here's a fellow I never heard of before, who lives far, far away, and suddenly the President of the most powerful country in the world is getting some bad press because a half-brother that he hardly knows has gotten into trouble. Not to mention that the brother is getting international notoriety for a very minor crime. We saw the same sort of thing with Bill Clinton's brother and Jack Kennedy's father, and probably others that I don't remember. (I don't think Clinton and Kennedy were arrested; they just did something embarrassing.) Sometimes it just doesn't pay to have a family.

When Jesus visited Nazareth after he became famous, people used the fact that they knew his mother Mary and his brothers and sisters as an excuse for discounting what he was saying and doing. They said, "Isn't this Mary's boy?" It's sort of ironic that the Catholic Church venerates Mary because she was Jesus' mother, when his own neighbors spurned him for being her son!


Isaiah 7:10-14; Matthew 1:19-23, Emmanuel (2/11/2009)

We have read a number of scriptures that everyone in the Judeo-Christian community agrees are Messianic prophecies. We have read some that scholars disagree about, but not necessarily along Jewish/Christian lines. Today we read two passages that most Christians accept as parallels: a Messianic prophecy and a New Testament fulfillment. It appears to me that (1) many, perhaps most, Messianic Jews agree with that interpretation, and that (2) some few Jewish scholars take the OT passage as a Messianic, without, of course, agreeing that Jesus' birth is the fulfillment of it. It also appears that many Jewish scholars and some few Christian scholars do not think the OT passage is Messianic in the first place.

Although I'm going to spare you the details – because frankly even I did not find them riveting, the discussion centers around two points:
The first point is that alma possibly could mean "young woman" and is sometimes translated that way, but some scholars maintain that it is never used in the Bible except to mean "virgin," and more to the point, that the Greek Septuagint, prepared about 300 BC by rabbis for Jews, uses a Greek word that means "virgin." The second point is the whole you/y'all problem that we've seen many times.

The one thing that practically everyone does agree on is that "Emmanuel" or "Immanuel" means "God with us." (At least one person argues earnestly that it in fact means "God is with us," a distinction without a difference, since we've already learned that "to be" is rarely written out in Hebrew.) Emmanu or immanu is Hebrew for "with us," and El is one of the Hebrew names for God that we've seen several times before. Many years ago, I heard the Rev. Russell Parchman preach a wonderful Christmas sermon in which he pointed out that God is not for us, like a football fan in the stands, but with us, right here on the playing field.


Acts 4:9-18, 5:27-29, Jesus (2/12/2009)

Did you see in the paper the other day that Val Kilmer says he has such good "name recognition" that if he runs for governor of New Mexico, he will win, period? Do you have "a good name"? Do you "have a name for" something? Do you shop for specific "brand names"? These are modern illustrations of an extremely old idea: the name and the person (or object) are identical.

We all know that Jesus' name was "Jesus," but I think we have gotten out of the habit of thinking about the person Jesus and the name "Jesus" as identical. Consequently we occasionally fall into the trap of thinking that the name "Jesus" is some kind of magical incantation. We say "In Jesus name amen" to ensure that our prayers are valid, without stopping to think about whether Jesus would pray for the same thing. We disobey traffic laws designed to protect public safety, secure in the belief that our "WWJD?" bumper sticker and our dashboard Jesus will keep us safe.

Peter, John, and the High Priests and Council did not make this mistake. Peter and John knew that "the name of Jesus" had the power to heal, not because of a magical incantation but rather because Jesus is innately powerful. The High Priests forbade preaching or teaching "in this name" because they knew that Jesus himself had the power to change lives. We dilute the power of Christ and the effectiveness of the Church when we use "Jesus" as an ordinary word instead of letting Jesus use us as an ordinary tool.


John 18:3-8a; Matthew 2:22-23, Jesus of Nazareth/Nazarene (2/13/2009)

Nazirites were people who made – or had made on their behalf – special vows (Numbers 6). These vows were usually for a specified time, e.g., 3 months, but they could be life-long. The primary vows were (1) to refrain from wine, liquor, and all other grape products, (2) not to cut the hair, and (3) not to touch anything to do with dead bodies. The purpose of the Nazirite vows appears to have been that the Nazirite (Hebrew nazir) was holy to God and separate from the rest of the Israelites for the period of the vow, serving as a model of how the people of Israel should be holy to God and separate from the nations surrounding them. At the end of the vow, the Nazirite shaved his or her head and made an offering for sin. Although there is some debate about this detail, many rabbis believe that the sin offering is for not drinking wine during the period of the vow. Not only are there festivals and sacrifices that require wine, but also wine is one of God's gifts, and refusal to enjoy God's gift is a sin. The main Nazirite you have heard of is Samson of the long hair (Judges 13-16). He wasn't a very good one, because he broke the Nazirite vows about grapes and dead bodies on a regular basis, and in fact, many rabbis subscribe to the idea of a "Samsonite" Nazirite for this reason.

The second Nazirite you have heard of was John the Baptist (Luke 1:15). Before Christmas I allowed as how John never drank wine and was a Nazirite. Your fellow reader Daryl L. wrote and said my logic was faulty: If I had said that, it indeed would have been faulty. I just said was he was a Nazirite and quoted some scripture; however, Daryl has caught me in errors before, so I couldn't very well ignore him. After quite a bit of research, I concluded that the correct logic is as follows: Matthew says is that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy that the Messiah would "be called" a Nazirite. Some people believe that Jesus was a Nazirite, although I don't exactly see why. We have no scripture indicating that Jesus didn't cut his hair. We do have scripture saying that he drank wine (e.g., at the Last Supper) and that he touched dead bodies and burial items (Mark 5:41; Luke 7:14). (The bodies didn't stay dead, but they were dead when he touched them!) And we have scripture saying that he was without sin. Nevertheless, as we see today, Jesus was indeed "called" a Nazirite.


Isaiah 9:6; Wonderful, Counselor (2/2/2009)

Our scripture for today has long been considered as a messianic scripture by both Jewish and Christian scholars. (Not unanimously, of course, but apparently by most.) Have I mentioned lately that Hebrew only has two tenses? The first one is "perfect," or "all wrapped up." This is typically used for action that is complete, but it is legitimately and frequently used for action that is "as good as done." Even in English we say, "It's a done deal" to indicate that something that has not happened yet is nevertheless c ertain to happen. "A child is born" and "a son is given" are both in the perfect tense, but in Hebrew that doesn't necessarily mean that the baby is already lying in the manger – only that the prophet considers the birth a done deal.

The second tense is "imperfect," or "not all wrapped up." It can be used for action that is going on right now or hasn't happened yet, and it can also be used to indicate that an action is, was, or will be ongoing. In colloquial English, we return from a shopping expedition to say, "So I'm down there at the corner, and this guy just sails through the red light right in front of me." Our emphasis is on the on-going nature of the action, not on the fact that it was an hour ago. "Shall be" and "shall be called" are in the imperfect.

How does this affect our understanding of the verse? First, God promised us the Messiah long before the birth of Jesus, but when God makes a promise, it's a done deal. Second, these are not obsolete names for the Messiah, rather, Wonderful and Counselor are on-going names of the Messiah. "Wonderful" could easily be translated as "Wonder" or "Miracle" – it's a noun, not an adjective. The Messiah is an on-going wonder and our constant counselor.


John 1:1-3; Revelations 19:13b-14, Word (2/16/2009)

Both Jews and Greeks knew the importance of words. The Jews held that the scriptures were the word of God, and it wasn't up to human beings to change even the slightest portion of it. About 700 BC, the Masoretes, which may mean "Counters," began ensuring the correctness and consistency of the scriptures by counting the words and letters in each book. If a copy of the scriptures didn't have exactly the correct letter exactly in the middle – by count! – then that copy was not suitable for use in the synagogue or Temple. Jesus said that not even a jot or tittle of the Law would be changed until it was fulfilled – these are tiny marks about the size of a period and an accent mark. The Greeks, on the other hand, had the concept of Logos, or "Word," which was kind of the ideal concept of any particular worldly thought or item. John's Gospel thus speaks to both Jewish and Gentile Christians.

There is a kind of speech in which the speech act itself brings about the condition being spoken of, for example, "I now pronounce you man and wife." This type of speech act has an ancient history, because the first recorded act of God was to speak the universe into existence. John says that Jesus is the very Word of God through whom all things were spoken into existence.
More Names of God
Names of God - Introduction
Sacred Names
Other Names
Names of Jesus - Part 1
Names of Jesus - Part 2
Names of Jesus - Part 3
Names of the Spirit

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