On Naming and Identity
In a famous and often overused passage, William Shakespeare once questioned the value of names. Essentially asking: is there any significance at all in what an object or person is called or is there more to identity than a simple title? After all, coffee, if called by another name, would still taste just as good and still provide me with what I need in the morning to get my brain working. Does being Ben Bartosik hold any importance to who I am at my core or am I more than what my parents chose to call me at birth? I recognize that in our cultural context names are often nothing more than a reflection of the trends of a particular decade or occasionally an homage to a loved one or icon; which is why I believe we need to look cross culturally in order to further consider this question. What’s in a name?
This idea was sparked while I was reading through Ephesians 3 this morning. Paul writes, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on earth is named…” Then he goes into this amazing section on the power of the Spirit in understanding the love of Christ and the fullness of God and just breezes right on by those first two verses which become understandably overlooked against the rest of the passage. So that’s where I backed up and got hung on this naming stuff.
In the Hebrew culture a name meant something. It said something about you. [Isaac - "he laughs", Noah - "rest/comfort", Benoni -"son of my sorrow."] Your name was not just something that sounded nice to your parents, it was directly related to who you were. Often it was representative of where you came from. Other times it was something to be earned; to live up to the name your parents gave you. Whatever the case, there is something very important we can understand.
To be named is to be be given an identity.
So what does it mean when Paul writes that we have been named by God? To be named by our heavenly Father?
We find a really amazing picture of someone being (re)named by God in Genesis 32. Jacob is out in the wilderness fleeing his past and hiding from his brother when he has an interesting encounter with God. It says that during the night he was alone and “a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.” This man is unable to defeat Jacob and asks to be released but Jacob replies, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” The stranger asks Jacob for his name (who he is) and then says something that changes Jacob’s entire identity.
“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
Through this encounter Jacob finds a whole new life. He is given a whole new identity. He is changed. He is remade. He is restored. He goes from being called Jacob ["Heel-Catcher" or "cheater"] to being named Israel ["He strives with God"]. And this name is given to him by the very God he struggled with and demanded a blessing from.
I can’t help but enjoy the significance of that. Through struggling with the divine, his father’s God becomes his God and he finds a whole new life in the process.
To be named by God is to be given a whole new identity. It is to be remade into a new person. It is to come face to face with the creator and walk away changed.
So then what is this name that Paul is referring to that God has given all of us?
I think the answer is found in the wording. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on earth is named…” God has named us his children. He has named us his heirs. This is who we are. This is where we find our significance and where we find our calling. In being named God’s child we are named his own. This is intimate and personal and life changing kind of stuff. And it means something that should change the entire way we view ourselves.
To be a child of God is to be loved by God.
