"I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name." 1 John 2:12
John says, ‘your sins have been forgiven on account of his name’. What is it about the name of Jesus that allows John to say you have been forgiven on the account of his name?
There is nothing inherently powerful about a name. It was not Martin Luther King Jr’s name that made his speech great, it was the contentsof the speech. And the man who wrote that content has been remembered for his speech and what he represented.
Winston Churchill’s second world war speech is not remembered because Winston Churchill is such a great name, but because the contents of the speech and the man behind it were so significant.
It is not the name that made the man, or what they did, famous. But it is that the name identifies the individual with the brilliance of what was accomplished.
And, so it is with Jesus – but in the most profound way we can possibly imagine. God was so pleased and so impressed with the perfect work Jesus accomplished that he gave him a name. And, by that name God identified him as the most excellent of all beings.
Watch how Philippians demonstrates this with crystal clarity. After saying that Jesus made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant by being made in human likeness, Paul says this: ‘And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!’
How did God react to this condescension on Jesus’ part? Philippians says, ‘He exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name.’
So, God raised up the incarnate Jesus who had humbled himself to the dust and seated him in the best and most exalted position of all.
And he did not do it without attaching a name to him so that every creature would know which being was the greatest of all. So that they would use his name to refer to his fame.
And there’s more: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee, knowing him for the awesome deeds he has done, should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth – that’s the whole created order! And every tongue acknowledge, the truth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’.
Jesus has been given the greatest name in all the world – in all the history of the world - because he humbled himself and became a man and died to redeem lost people like us.
One day every person will honour him for that reality.
And so, his name is indelibly connected to his work which is why John can say ‘your sins have been forgiven on account of his name’.
Let’s make sure we love the name of Jesus! All the angels in heaven right now - at this very moment - are worshipping Jesus who Revelation says has his name written on his robe and on his thigh: ‘kings of kings and Lord of Lords’ – all because he died and rose and reigns victorious: son of man and Son of God!
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