I AM: Salvation
The ancient Hebrews were not shy to include portions of the Sacred Name in their own names. Every Hebrew name that ends with the suffix “-ah” or begins with the prefix “Jeho/ Yeho” is some form of God’s name. Micah means “Who is like YHVH?” Jehoshaphat means “YHVH is Judge”.
Perhaps the most important of these contract names is Yehoshua. Sometimes contracted to Yeshua, it appears in our English Bibles as Joshua. The Greek language had no “sh” sound, and no “J”, so the Greek form of Joshua is Iesous, or Jesus.
The chosen name of the Messiah is Yehoshua, which means “YHVH is salvation.” YHVH saves. Of all the possible Hebrew names, the name that Gabriel commanded Joseph and Mary to give to the child Messiah was “Yehovah Saves”.
That is worth a pound of meditation. What is the fundamental character of the living God when incarnate among us? The self-existent, simple, eternal, immutable, ineffable, triune, ineffable I AM wishes us to know that He is fundamentally disposed to love us, rescue us, repair us from our sin and brokenness.
Remove Jesus, and you have only HaShem of Judaism or Allah of Islam. Judaism’s HaShem (“the Name”) is ineffable, but not incarnate. He is the God of Abraham, but His self-revelation ceased at Malachi. He becomes mysterious and impersonal. Not surprisingly, the mysticism of Kabbalah has rushed in to compensate for the facelessness of HaShem. Islam’s Allah seems to mean “the God”. Again, he remains remote, impersonal and without the covenant guarantees of love, loyalty and faithfulness.
These only come to us in the person and work of Jesus. If Jehovah is salvation, then we know more than His nature and essence; we know His intentions. We know He desires to redeem and deliver. We know He is merciful and gracious. We know He is patient and longsuffering, kind and good.
When we combine all the attributes of I AM, with all the implications of salvation, we have the conjunction of greatness and goodness, power and kindness, majesty and meekness. We have the lionlike Lamb and the lamblike Lion. Our response is the fear of the Lord: trembling joy, rejoicing reverence, delighted awe.
It is before this name that every creature will bow and acknowledge that He is Lord. Since His name means “The Lord is salvation”, to acknowledge His name will be to acknowledge His identity and vice versa. And for this reason, the union of Yehovah with a perfect human nature brings about the only name able to save. “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
This post first appeared on Churches Without Chests, the personal blog of David de Bruyn, who is the pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. We republish it here by permission.
Image by Eensteen used under aCC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.