I Believe … in Jesus

It is not often that this Name of our Lord stands alone in the Epistles, but it is, of course, very frequent in the Gospels. Indeed, there, it is His ordinary appellation. Given Him by the angel who announced His birth, it was the name by which His mother and sisters addressed Him, and was familiar throughout the mountain village, where He dwelt for 30 years. In their simplicity the Evangelists use this word almost constantly, - without preceding it by Lord, or following it by Christ, but uttering it in its unadorned humility.

It declares distinctly the human nature of our Lord, and is fragrant of Nazareth, nestling in its quiet nook apart from the great life of Rome or Greece, and recalls the carpenter’s home with its humble circumstances and humble fare. It suggests the thirst at the well-head, and the hunger in the early morning which searched the fig tree, the weariness that made Him sleep amid the storm, the loneliness that suffered without the gate, the thoughtful kindness that spread the

breakfast amid the haze of early dawn when the 45 silver ripples broke at His feet, and how He ascended in a truly human form. ‘‘ This same Jesus,” the angels said, ‘“‘ shall come again.” It was Jesus whom Stephen saw standing on the right hand of God. “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest,” was the arresting word to Saul on his way to Damascus. It is in the name of Jesus, the Son of Man, that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess allegiance, and it is Jesus who sends His angels through the ages, to tell His servants the things that must shortly be done. In every passage where the name Jesus stands alone, emphasis is meant to be laid upon the human aspect of His wonderful character.

But there is more in it than this. When the angel gave it to His parents He accompanied it with the explanation that He should be called Jesus because He would save His people from their sins. The full significance of this sweet appellation is seen in the original as we have it in “Joshua,” of which it is the shortened form, and which is really Yeho-shua, meaning Jehovah the Saviour. Whenever we utter this title for the Son of God our Saviour, we use that mystic wonderful word that Moses heard at the burning bush, and which for ages no Jew dare repeat — JEHOVAH. “Jehovah” carries in its very heart the message of salvation, for its announcement to Moses was accompanied with the declaration “T am come down to deliver them.” The redeeming saving aspect of the Divine Nature was always prominent in that great Name, but its reference is made still clearer by the addition of the word that saves. Jesus saves His people, not only from the guilt but from the power of sin. By the infusion of His own nature into their hearts He undermines their love of sin, sets shuttles working which weave the white garments of a pure and holy character, teaches us to hate what we once loved, and to love much that was foreign and distasteful. Those who open their hearts to the spirit of “¢ Jesus” live in this world with the solar light in their hearts, gracious words on their lips, are like the dew of the Eastern morning refreshing the thirsty herbage, and go to and fro amongst men performing beneficent and celestial service. Not only are they delivered from sin’s tyranny, but with deft hands they minister to men, stooping as good Samaritans over wounded and pillaged travellers, to whom they minister of the wine of the life-blood of their Lord, and the oil of the grace of His Spirit.

Once more, this Name, which the greatest hymnists have set to inimitable verse, which has inspired a Bernard, a Zinzendorf, a Guyon, a Cowper, and a Havergal, which is the first word that mothers teach their children, and the last word that dying saints breathe as they pass Time’s threshold — sets forth the human side of God’s character, and reveals features of His transcendent nature which must always have been present. We no longer dread the great God, or shrink before the light of the jasper throne, for in the midst of it is the form of a man, and we understand that He who lived in Nazareth and Palestine is the reflection in our human existence of qualities which are as integral to the Almighty as Omnipotence itself.