God Has a Name

by John Mark Comer

We act like the English word “God” is a common denominator, but it’s not. When we talk about God, it turns out we’re all over the map.

The twentieth-century writer A. W. Tozer made a stunning claim: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

Here’s a truth that cuts across the whole of the universe: we become like what we worship.

what you think about God will shape your destiny in life.

If you think of God as homophobic, racist, and mad at the world, this distorted vision of reality will shape you into a religious bigot who is—wait for it—homophobic, racist, and mad at the world.

Who God is has profound implications for who we are.

Here’s the problem: we usually end up with a God who looks an awful lot like us.

Here’s how you know if you’ve created God in your own image: he agrees with you on everything.

Often what we believe about God says more about us than it does about God. Our theology is like a mirror to the soul. It shows us what’s deep inside.

Much of what we read in the news or see on TV or pick up on the street about God and the way he works is wrong. Maybe not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we live.

In the modern world, we start with the assumption that we know what God is like, and then we judge every religion or church or sermon or book based on our view of God.

Jesus spent the bulk of his time helping religious people see that a lot of what they thought about God was wrong too.

For Jesus and all the writers of Scripture, the starting point for all theology is the realization that: we don’t know what God is like, but we can learn. But to learn, we have to go to the source.

I am a follower of Jesus,

So everything I think about God is through the lens of the Scriptures and then Jesus himself.

In ancient Hebrew literature like Exodus, to speak of God’s glory was to speak of his presence and beauty.10 Moses is asking to see God for who he really is. To see God in person.

when God describes himself, he doesn’t start with how powerful he is or how he knows everything there is to know or how he’s been around since before time and space and there’s no one else like him in the universe.

When God describes himself, he starts with his name. Then he talks about what we call character. He’s compassionate and gracious; he’s slow to anger; he’s abounding in love and faithfulness, and on down the list.

times. At the top of Mount Sinai was a cloud, not an engineering schematic. And everybody was invited up the mountain, but only Moses had the courage to step into the cloud.

“In the world of the Hebrew Scriptures a personal name was often thought to indicate something essential about the bearer’s identity, origin, birth circumstances, or the divine purpose that the bearer was intended to fulfill.”

Abram means “exalted father.” Abraham means “father of many nations.” It’s more than a new label. It’s a new identity, a new destiny.

bar. Names were your autobiography in one word.

When God comes to Abraham, he says, “I am God Almighty.”6 In the original language, it’s, “I am El Shaddai.” El was the Canaanite word for the king of the gods.

The Creator calls himself El Shaddai, which is a way of saying, “I’m like El, but I’m so much more.”

In other places, God calls himself “El Elyon” (God Most High)7 or “El Olam” (God Everlasting),8 to put it in language that would make sense to Abraham and his world. U...

And that’s when the Creator speaks his name. For the first time. Ever. I imagine a tremor in the ground under Moses’ feet . . . “I AM WHO I AM.” In Hebrew, it’s ehyeh-asher-ehyeh. One of the ways to translate this Hebrew phrase is “whatever I am, I will be.” Meaning, whatever this God is like, he’s that way consistently. He’s unshifting, stable, 24/7. So, for example, if God is compassionate, then he’s compassionate all the time. If God is gracious, then he’s gracious all the time.

Ehyeh means “I am.” Yahweh means “he is.” Which is why . . . When God says his name, it’s ehyeh. But when we say God’s name, it’s Yahweh.

I would argue that we need to get back to calling God by his name. I think the gradual shift from calling God “Yahweh” to using the title “the LORD” says something about the human condition. For all our talk about a “personal relationship with Jesus,” there’s a part of us that’s scared of intimacy with God. We see the fire and smoke up the mountain, and we shrink back in fear.

A few chapters later, Yahweh says to Moses: “I am the LORD [Yahweh]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name the LORD [Yahweh] I did not make myself fully known to them.”

way. If you treat God like a formula, you’ll just end up mad and confused. With God, the math rarely adds up. God is far more interactive and interesting.

We speak, and God speaks. We act, and God acts. We pray, and God answers, but not always in the way we want. We ask God to show mercy, and he nahams. This isn’t a formula. It doesn’t always play out like this. But it’s a way of being in relationship with God.

Dallas Willard wrote, “God’s ‘response’ to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do. The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best. And of course God does not respond to this. You wouldn’t either.”

From the beginning of human history, God, the Creator of everything, has been looking for friends, for free, intelligent, creative partners to collaborate with on running the world. That’s prayer.

In Hebrew, the word God is elohim. As I said before, it’s not a name; it’s a category.

It’s used for the Creator of the universe, but here’s the thing: it’s also used for all sorts of other spiritual beings.

An elohim is an invisible-but-real spiri...

the Bible claims something radically out of step with its time. It claims there is one true Creator God who made everything. And the world was born, not out of conflict or war or jealous infighting,

but out of the overflow of his creativity and love.

In the second book of the Bible, Exodus, we read about Yahweh saving Israel out of slavery in Egypt. There’s a line in Exodus 12 where Yahweh says, “I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.”10

By itself, an idol can’t do anything to you—it’s a hunk of rock; but the elohim that at times are lurking behind or represented by the idol, imbuing it with power, well, they can.

Ashtoreth is the goddess of Sidon (Lebanon on a current map). Molek is the god of Ammon (same place as modern-day Amman, Jordan). Chemosh was over Moab (in another part of Jordan). These are “gods” with power and authority over geographic regions and ethnic groups, or what we call nations.

Psalm 82: God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgments among the “gods.” This is one of several places in the Bible where we read about a collection of divine beings over the earth.26 The NIV translates the Hebrew as “the great assembly,” but a few other translations have “the divine council.”27 The divine council is well-known imagery from the ancient world.28 It is a way of envisioning heaven as an ancient Near Eastern throne room. Yahweh, the king, is there, with all these other spiritual beings around him.

Then the next stanza peels back the curtain to the inner workings of the universe. Keep in mind, this is Yahweh, speaking to the “gods” . . . “How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”30

Certainly many of the “gods” we read about were just projections of ancient imaginations. And certainly many of the ancient ideas about the “gods” were totally off base. But that doesn’t mean they are all make-believe.

And all throughout the story of God, the dominant sins of Israel are idolatry and her good friend injustice. Idolatry and injustice populate page after page of the Hebrew Scriptures.

But the temptation was never to worship Yahweh or ____. It was always, Yahweh and ____. For Israel to live in a polyamorous relationship with the “gods” rather than stay faithful to her true husband. And the by-product of this illicit affair is injustice—it tears apart the social fabric of the world.

But over and over again, Israel goes over to these other “gods,” because they give them what they want. The “gods” are like the politician who will do or say anything to get in power, so he makes all sorts of promises and claims it will cost the people nothing. But wh...

In the Old Testament, we don’t read one story about an exorcism. Zero. But the Gospels are chock-full of stories about Jesus casting out all sorts of demons. What exactly is going on here? Simple: Yahweh is answering Psalm 82’s prayer. He’s coming to put an end to the “gods’” injustice.

Even as followers of Jesus, it’s easy to get sucked into the secular framework. Yes we believe in angels, but we don’t really think about them, other than on Christmas Eve. And demons? Sure, I guess. But we act like all the demonic beings went into retirement around 70 AD and moved to Indonesia.

But is it the worldview of Jesus and the Scripture writers?