The Importance of a Name

Summary

When the angel spoke to Mary he shared with her that she needed to give the son born to her a special name, a name with meaning. She must name him Jesus.

In Hebrew it is, Yehoshua, which means, “God saves.”

Today is the day that we remember the naming of Jesus, on the eighth day from his birth. Jewish boys’ names were revealed at the time of their circumcision a week after their birth. The day of their birth counted as the first day, and so, a week later the baby was named. The baby was named as the angel had commanded…Jesus. He was given the name that perfectly describes his reason for coming to earth, to offer salvation to the world. Another way to think of the name, is as the baby’s job title, “Savior of the World.”

I think it is important for us to remember Jesus’ name, as we ponder our own faith, as we look closely into our beliefs.

You see, Christianity starts with the Christ, with Jesus. It is God, in Jesus, who saves. God, in Jesus is the actor, he is the doer. We receive salvation from Jesus. He is the one who saves us.

We all acknowledge this, for sure, yet too often we then say something along the lines of, “But we need to be good enough for God to want to save.” or, “Of course, we need to make ourselves right with God first.”

This is not true!

Jesus’ act of salvation was for all people, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is nothing that we can do to make ourselves worthy of God, or to make ourselves “right” with God, or to simply be “good enough.”

God came down for us. The simple and plain truth is, God saves.

Listen again to what we read in today’s first lesson, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

Did you hear that? Jesus humbled himself in order to die for you, for us. He died that we might live. He is the one who gives us salvation. In other words, God saves.

So, what do we do? What is our role?

Let us see by continuing with today’s first lesson, “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

We confess our belief in him. We worship Jesus, our Savior. We thank Jesus for his gift of salvation. We open our hearts and our lives to his gift. We look to Jesus for all of our needs in life. We seek to follow him. When we fail we ask for forgiveness. We give forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. We try and love our neighbor. We accept the love of our neighbors. We seek to be obedient to our Lord, like Jesus was obedient.

In other words we enter into a relationship of discipleship with Jesus. Like those first disciples did, we walk with Jesus through life. We learn from him. We grow with him. We seek to stay centered on Jesus in our faith.

We do this by worshiping him, like we are this morning. We walk with him by daily Bible reading and prayer. We gather as a Christian community to support one another, and grow together. And, as disciples we share his name and the good news of his gift of salvation with the world…that they may find the joy we know.

God has called us to different jobs and vocations, different families and groups of friends, different schools and playgrounds, that we, as Jesus’ disciples might be his hands, his feet, and his voice in the world. Jesus calls us to react to his gift of salvation in belief, love and obedience…so, let us obediently share of our belief in Jesus, in God’s love with the world.

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