How very often the Name of the Lord is brought before us in the holy Scriptures, for in that Name there is expressed all that the Lord is in Himself, and in all His dealings with His creatures, whether it be with those that are nearest to Him, or with the nations who do not know Him. To the patriarchs, who sometimes used the Name of Jehovah, He was known as the Almighty, and to Israel He made Himself known through Moses as the great I AM, the self-subsisting God, the covenant keeping Jehovah. To the righteous, the Name of the Lord was a strong tower to which he could flee for safety (Prov. 18:10; Song of Songs 1:3). There are many names and titles that set the Lord before us, and tell of His excellencies and glories, some of these we shall now consider.
Immanuel
Long before the Lord Jesus came into the world, the Spirit of God announced His coming to the wicked king Ahaz through His servant Isaiah. The forces of the kings of Samaria and Syria were confederate against Judah, and the Lord was about to deal with these kings, and while speaking of them, and of the deliverance that He would bring to His unfaithful people, He introduced into the scene the Name of the One who would bring deliverance to His people at a later date. Immanuel, as we learn from Matthew 1:23, means “God with us,” and this is interpreted for us as being the Name Jesus, the One who would save His people from their sins.
The great Immanuel would not only deliver Israel from the forces of the kings around them, but He would deal with a very much greater problem, the sins of His people. In Jesus God came down from heaven to make God known to men, and to deal with the sin question, but this could only be dealt with in the cross, if God was to be glorified regarding sin and sins, and if we were to be blessed. The Lord came, in the first instance, to His people Israel, with a view to dealing with all their problems, but on being rejected by Israel God opened a wider door – the blessing of all who trusted in His Son. This door into heavenly, spiritual and eternal blessing still stands wide open, but after it closes, and the Lord takes the church to heaven, He will return as Immanuel to solve every problem belonging to His earthly people Israel, according to the promises in Isaiah.
Wonderful
We have seen the coming of Immanuel foretold in Isaiah 7:14, now in Isaiah 9:6 we have the prophecy concerning the same blessed Person with other names. Immanuel is presented as the son of the virgin, here the One called Wonderful, is a child born for Israel, a Son given to His people by God. This is the One through whom the people sitting in darkness would see a great light (verse 2), the One who would break the rod of the oppressor, and upon whose shoulder the government of Israel, and indeed the whole world would rest.
As we gaze upon the Babe of Bethlehem, we can only exclaim “Wonderful,” when we catch a glimpse of the divine glory belonging to that apparently helpless Babe lying in a manger. What a holy mystery this is! Here is the creator of the vast universe, the One who upholds all things in the material and spiritual worlds, and yet He is lying in infant weakness, dependent upon the care of an earthly mother, while the glorious hosts of heaven, who had ever obeyed His commands, look on in amazement. He was then “seen of angels,” and had come for blessing of fallen men, and the mystery surrounding it all was something that “angels desire to look into.”
When we contemplate this blessed Person in the details of His pathway on earth, at His baptism, in the temptation, during His ministry, when He was wearied with His journey, as hungering and thirsting, in the sorrows of Gethsemane, before the leaders of Israel, Pilate and Herod, submitting to all the indignities that the evil heart of man could devise against Him, and being crucified and slain by wicked men, what other word can we utter but WONDERFUL. There are depths unfathomable in every step of that wondrous pathway, and divine enigmas into which we can only enter in a very feeble way.
Everything concerning the holy Son of God must be wonderful, and here on earth, as in eternity, it is the privilege of those who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus to contemplate the wonders of His Name, and all connected with His Person. Like the Name Wonderful, the other Names that belong to the Son of God in this verse of Isaiah 9, bring before us features of the fame of Jesus that were yet to be revealed through His coming into this world, and passing through death to enter into His Father’s presence in heaven, then to come again to establish His glorious kingdom.
Jesus
We have seen from the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel that the Name of Jesus is linked with the Name Immanuel, but we also learn that He had come as Jehovah to save His people from their sins. The Name Jesus actually means, “Jehovah the Saviour.” In the Old Testament the Name of Jehovah is ever before us, but there are special mentions of it as “Jehovah-jireh,” in Genesis 22:14, telling us that the Lord will provide. Other Scriptures give us Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-rapha, Jehovah-shalom, Jehovah-tsidkenu and Jehovah-shammah, each one giving some special feature of the Name of the Lord. Every one of these precious names is enfolded for us in the Name of Jesus, and brings us down in worship and adoration before Him whose Name it is.
Others had borne the name of Jesus, but there is only One who has expressed what the name means, and only One worthy to bear it. The mention of the Name of Jesus brings only One Person before the saints of God, and it charms the hearts of those who have known Him as Saviour, and whose delight it is to contemplate Him in His lowly path of sorrow on earth, a path that brought infinite delight to God, and the wealth of heaven for ruined man. With hearts filled with praise and yet with sorrow, we see the Name of Jesus written on the cross, but it is with deepest joy we look up to see Him on the throne above, and look forward to the day when, at the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Phil. 2:10). While waiting for Him to come and take us to be for ever with Him, we hear Him speak to us from heaven, saying, “I, Jesus” (Rev. 22:16).
The Word
If the Name of Jesus brings before us the salvation secured by our blessed Lord, and the sweetness of the grace manifested in Him here below, the Spirit of God also delights to present Jesus in His glory to us as The Word. This blessed Name surely conveys to our hearts that all God is finds expression in the Person of the eternal Son of God. John’s Gospel opens majestically with “In the beginning was the Word,” calling attention to the existence of the Son of God before time was. However far the human mind can travel into the past, be it into eternity, the Word was then, for there was never a beginning to His existence.
Verse 1 also says, “and the Word was with God,” most surely telling of the distinct personality of Him who being with God was perfectly acquainted with all His mind and thoughts, and was therefore competent to make them known. Lest however anyone should think that He was less than God in His own Person, the Spirit of God declares, “and the Word was God.” If distinct in Person from the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Word is one with them in the unity and fulness of the Godhead, and this from all eternity, for it is written, “The same was in the beginning with God” (verse 2). His being with God had no beginning, it was ever so, for back in eternity the Word shared all the thought, will and counsel of the Godhead.
It was the Word that brought the creation into being, in Him was the source of life, and coming down into this world the life that dwelt inherently in Him was the light of men. Coming into the world in flesh, the eternal Word dwelt among men, making God known in the fulness of grace and truth. How full and perfect was the divine revelation of God in His nature, and in His grace for men, and the glory of the Person, though veiled in flesh, was not completely hidden, for John wrote, “We behold His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (verse 14). John and his fellow disciples had the privilege of being “eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word” (Luke 1:2), being the companions of the Son of God in the days of His public ministry, and seeing “the Godhead glory shine through the human veil.” It was an immense privilege for the disciples to see the Word become flesh, and a wondrous privilege for the saints of this day to know Jesus as the eternal Word, and to hold fast to this precious truth.
Son of God
Each of the Evangelists writes of Jesus as Son of God. In Matthew 11:27 it is written, “no man knows the Son, but the Father,” and by divine revelation Peter confesses Jesus as “The Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:16). Mark presents Jesus as “The Son of God” (1:1) as the divine Servant and Prophet in this world, Luke writes of the Holy Thing born into this world and called “The Son of God” (1:35), while John brings Him before us as “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father” (1:18).
Jesus is the eternal Son as loved by the Father before the world was (John 17:5, 24), He is God’s beloved Son in time, as declared at the waters of baptism and from the holy mount, He is declared Son of God with power, by resurrection of the dead (Rom. 1:4), and was preached as Son of God by Paul after he had seen Him in the glory (Acts 9:20). Paul writes of Jesus as the Son of the Father’s love, the creator of all things (Col. 1:13–16), and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews presents many of the aspects of Christ’s Sonship in the first chapter of that book. How glorious is Jesus in His Sonship, whether as viewed in time or in eternity.
Son of David
The genealogy of Matthew 1 traces the lineage of Jesus to king David, for He “was made of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3), and although refused the throne that was His by right, receiving instead from the leaders of Israel a malefactor’s cross, yet it has been decreed that “the Lord God shall give to Him the throne of His father David” (Luke 1:32). Although rejected by Israel as the rightful king, there were those who acknowledged Him to be so, for Nathaniel said, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel; and a poor blind beggar could cry, “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18:38).
Solomon, the son of David, was a type of Messiah, the rightful king, reigning in glory, wisdom and righteousness marking his reign. Psalm 45 brings the glory of the true Son of David before us, where the sceptre of His kingdom is a right sceptre, and where all His garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia. Another beautiful description of the coming kingdom of the Son of David is “A Psalm for Solomon,” Psalm 72, where it is written, “His Name shall endure for ever…all nations shall call Him blessed,” words that could only refer to Jesus, the Son of David. Just before the Lord was crucified there was a very beautiful anticipation of what is yet to come, when the Lord entered Jerusalem, and the crowds cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord” (Matt. 21:9). The hosannas were soon stilled, and the cry Hosanna will again be heard, and when a willing and redeemed people will welcome the Messiah, the Son of David, as He brings to them salvation and millennial blessing.
Son of Man
The chief prophecies regarding the Son of Man are found in Psalms 8 and 80, and in Daniel 7, where He is seen in relation to the creation where the Name of the Lord is excellent in all the earth, in relation to God’s people Israel, and with universal and eternal dominion. The first mention of the Son of Man in Matthew’s Gospel is where He has no place to lay His head (8:20), such was the place given by men to the One who shall fill the universe with glory in the coming day, but the Lord accepted this place in meekness and grace, being a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
When the Lord spoke of Himself it was usually as the Son of Man, and in the Gospel of John where His divine glory shines most brightly, the blessed Son of God speaks so often of Himself as the Son of Man. He takes this Name in speaking to Nathaniel, He tells Nicodemus that the Son of Man must be lifted up so that the believer might have eternal life, and He told the Jews that all judgment was given to Him because He is Son of Man. In John 6, as Son of Man He gives His flesh for the life of the world, and the flesh of the Son of Man must be eaten, and His blood drunk, if life is to be appropriated.
Although blessing for men is secured by Jesus as Son of Man, the glory of God is also procured because the Son of Man goes into death. This is brought before us in John 13:31-32, where the blessed Lord is glorified by His obedience unto death, and as securing for God the glory of redemption, and having glorified God the Son of Man is glorified in His present place on high at God’s right hand.
So that we can see the moral glory of Jesus as Son of Man in His pathway of perfect obedience, and in His death on the cross. Then we see Jesus as Son of Man glorified now in heaven, and this is what Stephen saw when he looked stedfastly into heaven, and his testimony was, “Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56). Soon we shall see Jesus as Son of Man in His kingdom glory, as He said in Luke 9:26, and as was seen by the three disciples on the holy mount, when His face shone with splendour, and His garments were white and glistening.
The seer saw the Lord in His official glory as Son of Man, as recounted in Revelation 1, and when he saw Him he fell at His feet as dead, yet it was the same blessed Person in whose bosom John had lain on the night of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Then in Hebrews 2 the Son of Man is seen with all things under His feet in the world to come, the Spirit of God giving us the full meaning of what was considered in Psalm 8. How blessed is the contemplation of this precious Name of Jesus, the Name so often used by the Son of God in Manhood here, and which brings before us so much of His grace and His glory.
R. 25.11.69