God Has a Name

by John Mark Comer

The problem with universalism is that none of the conquered people think they are worshiping the same God as everybody else. That’s the view of the conqueror.

the Scripture writers have little or nothing to say about the problem of evil, at least not in the philosophical sense.48 They don’t debate its nature or theorize about its origins or have a crisis of faith over a tsunami. Why not? Because evil was assumed.

Put simply, God is incredibly good, but the world is a terrifyingly free, dangerous, beautiful place to call home.

It’s complex. Everybody agrees that God is King and his creatures are free. But nobody agrees on what exactly “free” means; it’s hard to work out. Some followers of Jesus give more place to God’s control over the universe, while others emphasize his creatures’ free will and autonomy. Beware of anybody who claims to have it all figured out. There’s a lot of mystery here, and we need to respect that.

when people interpret the bad events of their lives, they rarely give place for the free will of human beings, much less spiritual beings. And in my opinion, to the degree that we ignore Satan and his friends’ power and authority in the world, we end up attributing his evil to God.

All I’m saying is we need to get back to the worldview of Jesus and his Hebrew writer friends. Because when our worldview became shaped more by secularism than by Scripture, we created a philosophical problem with no good solution.52

In a secular society, the “gods” become nonspiritual—money, sex, power, more followers on Twitter, flatter

abs, anything that “takes the place of God in your heart.”

The temples become shopping malls and sports stadiums and senate chambers. Worship becomes the sacrifice of money or time or your health or your family or your virginity or whatev...

N. T. Wright says it this way: “When we humans commit idolatry—worshiping that which is not God as if it were—we thereby give to other creatures and beings in the cosmos a power, a prestige, an authority over us which we, under God, were supposed to have over them. When you worship an idol, whatever it is, you abdicate something of your own proper human authority over the world and give it instead to that thing, whatever it is.”

I wonder if it’s the nonspiritual things in our secular world that are the most spiritually lethal. As the infamous Keyser Söze put it, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

Worship isn’t a religious thing; it’s a human thing.

David Foster Wallace eloquently said, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”59

“compassionate and gracious” is rahum we-hanun in Hebrew.4

Rahum we-hanun is a word pairing in Hebrew. Meaning, not only do these two words sound alike, but they are laid side by side to help explain each other.

So, rahum, or “compassion,” is a feeling word. In contrast, “gracious” is an action word. In Hebrew, it’s hanun. It means “to show grace” or “to show favor.” It’s something you do. It has this idea of help. To hanun somebody is to help them out in a time of need.

come before God: not based on what you’ve done or what’s been done to you, but based on who God is—based on his mercy.

Here’s the point of the story: we all love that God is compassionate and gracious with us. Or with our friends. But what about when he’s merciful to our enemies? To people who skin our kings like an animal hide and burn our women alive and carry off our children into slavery? What about when God shows mercy to people who hurt us, stomp on us, gossip behind our back, lie about us to the boss, betray us, divorce us, and abandon us? What about when God is merciful to them?

Most of us want mercy for ourselves—and justice for everybody else. But it doesn’t work like that. God shows mercy to all.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”21 Thousands of years later, we still can’t quite grapple with the intensity of this statement. It’s one thing not to kill our enemy, but to love them? This is especially hard in the US,

A lot of Americans would prefer to bomb our enemies or waterboard them or call in a drone strike. Anything but love them.

Parents, one of the most important jobs you have is to show your kids the character of Yahweh. If you love them well, it will make it that much easier for them to believe in a God who is compassionate. But if you’re cranky and always biting their little heads off, and then you tell them God is their “Father,” don’t expect it to sink in.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as a literal, word-for-word translation of the Bible. It’s impossible to directly translate one language into another, especially an ancient Semitic language like Hebrew into modern English.

Unlike the other “gods,” Yahweh doesn’t have a temper. He’s not volatile or edgy or spasmodic. He doesn’t fly off the handle or slam the door and storm out of the house in the God version of a temper tantrum.

I’m not sure how you imagine God, but if you think of him as mercurial and ready to zap you with lightning the second you blow it, that’s just not what God is like. At all.

God is slow to anger.

But on the other hand, God is slow to anger. He does get mad. Really mad at times.

Polish poet Czesław Miłosz argued that “the true opium for the people is belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

But here’s what you need to understand: stories about God killing people get all the airplay—they’re fodder for disenfranchised bloggers who are angry with the God they don’t believe in. I get it. But there are barely any stories like that in the Bible. Active wrath is the exception to the rule. Most of the time, it’s passive wrath.

If your heart is stubborn, cold, or in open rebellion against Yahweh, then the worst thing God can do is give you what you want and let all your desires come true.

One of the most frequent prayers in the Bible is, “How long?”23

The prophets, kings, politicians, farmers, and shepherds who write Scripture have no doubt that one day, Yahweh will bring evil to its logical conclusion. They just can’t figure out, Why does he delay? Why does justice usually come in the next life, and not this one?

Think of the common slang in our culture: “Hey, what’s good for you is good for you.” “Who am I to judge?” “Live and let live.” I can’t help but think, Really? Would you say that about an ISIS bomber? A deranged killer sneaking into an elementary school with a machine gun? A pedophile? I’m guessing no. So, clearly tolerance has a limit, even in our late-modern world. There’s a line; we just disagree on where to draw it.

To disagree with somebody is just to disagree. My wife and I disagree on a regular basis, but we love each other deeply. My point is simply that love and tolerance are not the same thing. The Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”24 At some point, tolerance starts to slide dangerously close to apathy.

The priests had become the aristocracy of the day and were in bed with Rome. The spiritual leaders of the nation had become corrupt. It’s a tragic story that we’ve seen play out hundreds of times. Here’s what they did: you would come to the temple with say, a lamb, to sacrifice to Yahweh. Maybe you had to walk for two or three days just to get there from your village. You brought a good lamb, one of your best, because the Torah said the sacrifice had to be “without defect.”27 But the priest would inspect your lamb and say, “I’m sorry, but you’re lamb isn’t good enough. But . . . we just happen to have one for sale that’s already been preapproved.” And then he would sell it to you for a rip-off.

Yahweh’s love is an attribute, but his wrath isn’t. The Scriptures teach that “God is love,”31 but we never read “God is wrath.” Wrath, or anger, is Yahweh’s response to evil in the world.

If you find yourself angry a lot, could it be that your view of God is warped by your own story? Or that you have yet to take on this aspect of God’s character?

Now, when you put hesed and emet together, it’s incendiary. “Abounding in love and faithfulness” is called a hendiadys. Any lit majors out there? A hendiadys is a literary device where two nouns are smashed together to help define each other.

God’s love is his faithfulness. God’s faithfulness is his love.

In the ancient Near East, a covenant was essentially a hybrid between a promise and a legal contract. It was relational.

Two (or more) people would make a promise and then sign a contract, with clearly defined blessings and curses for keeping or breaking that promise.

Abraham sees a vision of God, in the image of a “smoking firepot,” walking through the animals . . . all by himself.

moment. It’s Yahweh’s way of saying that even if Abraham and his children don’t keep their end of the bargain, he’ll still keep his promise. He’ll rescue and save the world through this soon-to-be nation. No matter the cost. And if blood has to be spilled, it won’t come from Abraham. It will come from Yahweh himself. He’s willing to die and become like these animals just to keep his promise to bring the world back to life.

To the Scripture writers, hope is the absolute expectation of coming good based on the character of God.

God is more concerned with your long-term character than your short-term happiness. And he’s more than willing to sacrifice the one to get to the other.

God quickly becomes a scapegoat for the immature or confused.

The nice thing about made-up gods is they agree with you on everything and let you live as you please. Unfortunately, they are incredibly boring and flat and humdrum—because they don’t actually exist.

prophet Micah speaks to the forgiving nature of Yahweh: Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.4

As one heavyweight scholar said in his commentary on Exodus 34, “He does not reluctantly forgive sins against himself and others; he does so eagerly, as a manifestation of his character.”5

“Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished . . .”