Christian, you represent God in the world. You bear God’s name. Don’t bear it in vain. Bring him honor in how you live. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). The good news of the gospel is that God has done everything necessary to bless us through Jesus. Through Jesus we have the blessing we need: protection, God’s smile, and peace. But it also means that God has placed his name upon you.
One of the most significant events of your life took place without you having much to do about it.
One day, a long time ago, someone gave you a name. You were just lying there. They looked at you and made a decision about what you would be called from that point on. Maybe they’d already decided. Maybe they chose a name that was already meaningful. Maybe you reminded them of a certain name. But on that day, they gave you a name. And, for most of us, that name has shaped our identity from that point on.
Another one of the most significant events of our lives happens as we receive another name.
In Numbers 6, God instructs Aaron, the high priest, to pronounce a blessing on the people. This is a blessing from the heart of God himself. It’s a blessing that conveys his protection, his smile, and peace. It’s a microcosm of the gospel itself. And at the end of it, God says: “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them” (Numbers 6:27).
In other words, what we have in this passage is not only a blessing but a naming ceremony. As these words from God himself are pronounced on the people, God himself puts his name on the people.
The question is: what does this mean? This is not just something that Israel got to experience; it’s something that we get to experience too. Revelation 22:4 speaks of the new heavens and the new earth: “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”
God’s name is a precious thing. A name represents the person and the totality of their identity. “Our name is not tangential to our being. It marks us and identifies us. Over time, as people get to know us, our name embodies who we are,” says Kevin DeYoung.
So when God puts his name on his people, it’s deeply personal. God’s name can’t be separated from God himself. This blessing is meant not only to give you God’s blessing, but for God to put his name and his blessing on your life.
But what does that mean? That’s what I want to look at today. It means three things.
One: It Means That God Owns You
When God puts his name on us means so much. It means that he chooses to identify with us. It means that he identifies us as his people, the objects of his blessing. It means that he claims us as his own, that he marks us as his people.
I love books. The first thing that I do when I get a book is to open the cover and put my name on the first page. Why? Because I love books so much that I don’t want other people thinking that my books are their books, and so I put my name upon it and claim it as my own. To put our name on something means that we claim ownership of that item and declare to everyone that we own it; that it belongs to us.
And that’s what God does with his people too. God blesses them. He protects them, smiles upon them, and looks after them, and the whole purpose is this: that they become his. He writes their name on them. He claims them as his own.
It goes with what God said to them earlier in Exodus 19:5-6:
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.
God has made his people his exclusive possession. God’s people are his royal property. God is so committed to his people that he declares his ownership over them, that they belong to him. God states that everything already belongs to him — all people and people groups. And yet, despite this, his intention is “to bring close to himself a people that will join him for all eternity as adopted members of his family” (Douglas Stuart).
Israel could go through the wilderness and know that they had a unique relationship with God that no other nation had.
Similarly, if you are a follower of Jesus, you can go through your life and know what you also have a unique relationship with God. God has placed his name on you. This is the heart of what God intends for us. It’s why he saves a people: so we can belong to him.
If you have trusted Christ, God wants you to understand that you belong to him. You are not your own. He has written his name on you as one of his people. You are part of his treasured possession.
But this has a flip side. It also means that you don’t own you. The first question of the Heidelberg Catechism says this:
- What is your only comfort in life and death?
- That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
In his book You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble says:
A proper understanding of our personhood requires we recognize that we are not our own. At our core, we belong to Christ.