THAT NAME

"Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which you are called?"(James 2:7).

The name of a person is the representation of the totality of that person. For instance, when you call someone by name, he answers by presenting his entire person, spirit, soul and body. So, a person's name is ultimately that person himself. The name of the Lord is the Lord Himself. When you call 'Jesus', the truth is that it is not His name perse that you need, but the person behind the name. The Pharisees and the Jewish council understood this perfectly. And so,

they made quite a lot of trouble to ensure that the disciples did not speak or spread the name of Jesus Christ. They knew very

well that to propagate His name is to entrench His person and what He stood for on the earth.

To make this point clearer, consider the Scripture that says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth

into it, and is safe" (Proverbs 18:10). Certainly, no one can run into a name because a name is not like a house. But you can run to the person who bears the name. Therefore, we must always have it at the back of our minds that our association with the name of the Lord is an association with the person and character of the Lord.

The import of the foregoing is that if we are called by God’s name, the world will judge us by His name. The Christian is therefore under divine and moral obligation to live up to the name of the Lord by which we are called. Here is what I mean. Every time you are called a Christian, the name of Christ and by extension, His person is projected. And then, Christ comes on trial in your life.

Everything you do is automatically measured against the person and character of Christ. If your life is right and lines up with the word of God, Christ is glorified in you. But if not, the Lord is blasphemed in you.

This is why the Bible says that all who identify with the name of the Lord should depart from iniquity (2 Timothy 2:19). A

departure from iniquity mean that we run away from every behaviour that we have not learned from Christ. Living like Jesus in thought, word and deed is what will make us worthy of being called by His name. That, every Christian must commit to with all seriousness.