New Year's Eve

Luke 2:21 - New Years’ Eve - December 31, 2014         
God Names His Children

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We name our kids, and then our kids make names for themselves.  Their names stay the same – the outward syllables don’t change.  But in a name is more than what one is called out loud.  In a name is what one is, what he has done, what he’s worth.  One’s works and achievements fill the name he has and give it meaning – whether for good or for bad.  A name serves as a sort of symbol of who one is. 

In the Bible, for this reason, names are very important.  There is a lot of intended symbolism in biblical names.  Now, before I proceed, I should make clear that symbolism or allegory in Scripture never determines doctrine.  It’s not through obscure pictures that we learn what God is saying to us – as though figuring out a riddle.  No, he speaks.  His words have plain meaning.  God teaches us with understandable assertions.  But what God teaches us clearly in one place is often delightfully confirmed and strengthened by beautiful symbols and images in another place.  So, symbolism in the Bible doesn’t teach you what to believe.  Rather it adorns what it already gives you to believe, and it makes you happy to know it is true. 

When God gives a name, he knows what he’s doing.  God named the first man Adam (adam), because he had taken him from the earth (adama).  Adam then followed God’s example and called his wife woman (isha), because she was taken out of man (ish).  

Once Adam and his wife sinned, death entered the world.  But then God promised that through the woman’s Seed the devil’s poison would be conquered for them and all their children.  So as a confession of this blessing, Adam named his wife Eve (cheva), which means life, because she was the mother of all living.  Adam’s understanding of God’s creation taught him how to name the animals and his wife the first time.  But this was all from his knowledge of the law.  It was the gospel, however, that taught Adam to name his wife Eve.  Well named, Adam! 

But men do not always pick fitting names – even when they have good intentions.  Eve, for instance, with the Gospel in mind, named her firstborn son Cain (ka’in), which means acquired.  Supposing she had given birth to the Savior, she said, “I have acquired a man who is the Lord.”  Boy, was she wrong.  We know the story.  She first learned that she was mistaken when a twin boy was born right afterwards.  She named him Abel, which means breath (havel) – named after the sigh of disappointment she gave that her first son was evidently not the Savior after all.  Well, which one do you think was the disappointment?  The one who confessed Christ with his acceptable sacrifices and so acquired salvation from sin and death? or the one who murdered his brother? 

No, man is prone to give unsuitable names.  Absalom (father of peace) made war against his own father, King David.  Barabbas (son of the father) was set free from death row in order that the true Son of the Father might be murdered on a cross.  Yeah, we misname things.  And we often misname ourselves.  But God knows what he’s doing.  When he gives a name, he gives it for a reason.  God calls ‘em like he sees ‘em. 

We have a great example of this when God changed Abram’s name to Abraham.  Abram is the name his dad had given him.  It means exalted father.   I suppose he thought his son would bring him honor.  But then Abram had no children.  What a disappointing name.  But God made a promise to Abram much like the promise he made to Adam and Eve (in fact it was the same promise) that in his Seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. 

St. Paul explicitly tells us that this Seed was Christ (Galatians 3:16).  Abram believed this promise of Christ and his faith was accounted to him as righteousness (Galatians 3:6).  His faith was counted as righteousness because his faith was in Christ who would fulfill all righteousness and take his sin away. 

Well if disappointment afflicted Eve and made her name look inappropriate as she saw death instead of life, well then the same disappointment afflicted Abram.  He was not being exalted as a father even after God had made his promise.  So what did he do?  He and his wife took matters into their own hands.  Abram took Sarai’s maidservant Hagar and had a child with her. 

Isn’t this the way things go?  If God will not fulfill his promises according to our expectations, then we try to fulfill them for him.  God calls us blessed; he declares us righteous by faith.  And then we try to identify our blessedness in our good works instead, in our strong faith, in our devotion; we try to find proof in our lives that what God says is true. 

But our works do not fulfill our name.  God’s work does.  Abram made himself an exalted father by his own clever arrangement.  But Ishmael was not the child of promise.  And by his self-exultation, Abram only invited trouble into his home.  And Ishmael’s descendants became for many years to come a thorn in the side of God’s chosen people.  So also our own good works not only do not make us blessed, but they become a hindrance to the gospel when we trust in them. 

So there sat Abram, defeated, fallen, cast down from his exalted seat in the imagination of his heart.  He should have trusted God to keep his word. 

But God does not make his promises only once.  He repeats himself with clear words because he loves us very much and wants to renew our faith.  And so the Lord regarded the lowliness of his servant Abram, and spoke to him again.  He turned Abram away from his own vain attempt to make himself blessed, and confirmed what he had said before: “In you all nations of the earth will be blessed.”  He confirmed it by giving him a new name: “You will no longer be Abram (your blessedness will not found in how exalted you are); you will be Abraham (father of many nations).  What I will fulfill through you will be for all people: a Savior from vanity and self-righteousness, a Savior from sin.” 

We see in the case of Abraham how God links his gospel promise to the giving of names.  God also links his gospel promise to the giving of outward signs.  And so, to confirm Abraham’s new name, God gave him a sign to mark the promise of Christ in his own flesh. 

This sign was circumcision.  It marked God’s people as his.  It indicated that God would fulfill his ancient promise through flesh and blood – that God would become true Man.  Circumcision showed that God would send the Seed of the woman not because of what man contributes, but despite what man contributes.  He would be born of a virgin.  And so the sign and seal of God’s gracious promise to send a Savior in Abraham’s Seed was placed on man precisely there where man’s contribution would come from. 

Circumcision indicated the weakness of man’s flesh to bring forth what God had promised.  It did this by removing flesh.  This shows us that in fulfilling his promise to save us, God removes all efforts of our flesh – he cuts them off and does it all on his own. 

Circumcision placed God’s people under the law.  It put them in the position to rely not on their own efforts, but on God’s.  It made them dependent on God’s grace.  That’s what the law does.  And so circumcision served as a sign of God’s goodwill.  It taught them that God would indeed keep his promise and be gracious for his own name’s sake. 

And so, “when the fullness of the time had come, God [kept His promise, and] sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” 

Circumcision was a painful, bloody, and humiliating symbol.  This was because the promised Seed would also feel pain, would also bleed, and would also humble himself.  As the Seed of the woman, he would be born without the taint of sin.   But as the Seed of Abraham, he would nonetheless submit to the law in our place by being circumcised the eighth day.  Jesus placed himself under the law on the same day, in the very moment, that he first shed his blood.  

Jesus was born in fulfillment of the ancient Christian hope first given to Adam and Eve.  He was circumcised in fulfillment of the promise he gave to Abraham.  And this is why it was customary among the Jews to name their sons on the day when they were circumcised just as Abraham was.  It was a confession that this covenant of God was what defined who they were.  God’s promise defines us too. 

But unlike with our own names, God chose the name his Son would bear.  The angel told both Mary and Joseph: Jesus (which means the Lord saves) for he will save his people from their sins.  Our Lord received this name when he committed himself to redeem us from the curse of the law.  He received this name the day he first felt a foretaste of the pain the cross would bring him.  And so it is in his name that we find ours as well. 

God eventually gave Abraham and Sarah a son.  We know that.  Both Abraham and Sarah laughed at the incredulity of it all.  Impossible! We’re old and our time is spent!  But as the angel told Mary concerning Elizabeth, “With God nothing shall be impossible.”  Isaac means laughter.  God chose that name to commemorate the disbelief of his parents.  It’s like he made a joke of their doubt.  But not until after he kept his promise to give them a son. 

And so God makes a joke of our doubt too: But I am old and dying, and my years are full of sin.  My thoughts condemn me and my desires have been unclean.  I have not trusted God with earthly things, and I have not made good use of heavenly things!  I must do something in order to call myself a child of God.  But here too, dear Christian, you who bear the name of our Lord, God makes a joke of your doubt by keeping his promise before your eyes.  He gives you his only Son.  He provides what your flesh cannot merit let alone produce.  He gives you faith to embrace what the darkness cannot comprehend by forgiving your sins and enlightening your heart.  He teaches you to laugh in the face of sin and everything that seeks to define you, as the hymn puts it:

Laugh to scorn the gloomy grave
And at death no longer tremble;
He, the Lord, who came to save
Will at last His own assemble.

God no longer assembles his own as set apart by circumcision.  Christ has fulfilled the law.  All blood has been shed.  He who lived the perfect life in our place has made full atonement for our sinful conception and our sinful years by bearing our sin on the cross.  And he claims us as his not by marking our bodies.  No he claims us as his by clothing us in the blood that bought us.  St. Paul calls this the circumcision made without hands (Colossians 2:11-12).  God sets us apart in Baptism. 

God does not remove a piece of our flesh as a sign of our new name.  No, he embraces it.  He drowns our flesh in the waters of Baptism.  Our Old Adam will contribute nothing to our salvation.  But the Seed of Abraham already has.  And in Baptism we are joined to him who died and rose.  In him we are reborn.  Through the woman’s Seed, God brings sons and daughters out of the water to emerge and live before him in righteousness and purity forever.  He gives us his name.  He saves us. 

God’s name is not just what we call him.  It is everything he is and does.  It includes all his promises and all that he has fulfilled.  We bear his name because God tells us that he is for us, that he works for us, that he has kept his promises for us. 

Do you live up to your name?  Do you want to?  Then you must know what it means to bear the name of Christ.  It does not mean to contribute something or make resolutions and keep them.  No, God cuts these off and has no use for them.  To be a Christian means to know where your life is found.  It is found where all human efforts are dismissed and damned, and all human error is absolved.  It is found where your sin becomes Christ’s and his righteousness becomes yours.  It is found in the name of the Father who blesses and keeps you, and of the Son who makes his face shine upon you and is gracious to you, and of the Holy Spirit, who lifts his countenance upon you and gives you peace.  And so as often as we must return to our true identity by hearing the name that we received in Baptism, we return to where this name is placed on us in remembrance of his mercy, as he promised to our fathers, to Abraham and to his Seed forever. 

This is not allegory.  This is not mere symbolism.  There is no riddle here.  When God names you he acts.  When God acts he names you.  Just as he speaks as clear as day when he named his Son: the Lord saves, so he speaks as clear as day when he names you his child and heir.  In the fullness of time, he sent his Son to redeem all your time – your 2014, your 2015, your many years behind you and your numbered years ahead.  God names you when he forgives you.  You fulfill your name when you listen and embrace the identity that defines you:

In Jesus’ name, Amen.