Christ Carries the Father's Name

When Christ comes back in Revelation 19, “his name is called The Word of God.” Many read this as the name of a second divine person who always existed beside God. But the Bible has a pattern that runs from Mount Sinai to that last day. God puts His name in someone He sends, and that one carries it for Him. Follow the name, and you see who Christ is.

Exodus 23:21

“Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.”

Exodus 23:20-21

God sends an angel, a messenger. To disobey him is to disobey God, because God’s name is in him. This does not make the angel a second God. It means he fully stands for the One who sent him. In Israel it was understood that a man’s messenger is as the man himself. This angel is the first picture of what Christ will be. He is not Christ before Bethlehem. He is the pattern Christ fulfils.

John 5:43

“I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

John 5:43

Jesus says how He came: in His Father’s name, not His own. Others come in their own name. He does not. And you cannot “come in” a name that is already yours. To come in someone’s name is to come for him, sent by him.

John 17:6, 26

“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world”

John 17:6

“And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it”

John 17:26

In John, the Father’s name is more than a title. It is who the Father is. To show the name is to make the Father known. That is the work of the Word made flesh: “he hath declared him” (John 1:18). So the name and the Word belong together long before Revelation calls Him “The Word of God.”

John 17:11

“And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”

John 17:11

The King James follows Greek copies that say the Father gave the disciples to the Son. Other Greek copies say it a little differently: keep them in your name, which you have given me. On that reading the Father gave His name to the Son. And you cannot give someone what he already is. A gift needs a giver and someone who receives. The Son holds the name as a gift, like the angel in whom God put His name.

Philippians 2:9

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:”

Philippians 2:9

Again the name is given. God lifts Him up. God gives the name. And who is lifted up? The one who “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death” (Philippians 2:8). The highest name is the reward of a man who obeyed, not a badge He always had.

The Bible says, “the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:11). It is no clash. The LORD alone lifts up, and He lifts up the one who humbled himself. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11).

Revelation 19:13

“And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.”

Revelation 19:13

Now the chain is complete. The name He came in, showed, and was given, He now carries openly. And it is “The Word of God.”

One verse earlier we read: “he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself” (Revelation 19:12). God’s own name is too holy to be spoken. The Jews, out of reverence, often said “the Word” of the LORD in place of that holy name. So “The Word of God” is the name in a form that can be spoken and known.

And it is the Word “of God.” It belongs to God. Christ carries it and does it. Two verses later a sharp sword goes out of His mouth (Revelation 19:15). Everywhere else in the New Testament, “the word of God” means God’s message, what God says (Luke 8:11). It never names a second God.

What this means

The name is put in, come in, shown, given, and carried. Every one of those words needs two: the One who gives and the one who receives. Christ carries the Father’s name as the one the Father sent. He is “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), the perfect messenger, in whom the Father’s name lives. That makes Him the highest of all, but it does not make Him a rival God.

I have tried to come in my own name. I wanted my own name to be great. Christ came in His Father’s name and humbled Himself, and God gave Him the name above every name. When I hear His voice, I hear the Father who sent Him.

Road to Eternal Life