September 9 - LD 36, Day 7: The Blessed Privilege of Confessing God’s Name

Psalm 116:13 - “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.”

Let us not forget, we are viewing this commandment, and all the commandments, in the light of what we are by grace. We are those whom He has delivered out of the house of bondage, whom He has freed from sin and death and hell.

Because we have so often taken God's name in vain, failing to honour Him with fear and reverence, failing even to worship Him with the attention due to His name, failing to confess Him as we ought in the midst of the world, Jesus stood before God to bear the wrath that had to be borne for the violation of this precept. God would not hold Him guiltless. Though Jesus was perfectly innocent and without sin in Himself, yet He took our sins upon Him. For our sins He experienced in His own body and soul what it meant when God commanded that such profanity of His name be punished by death.

By Christ’s perfect satisfaction of God’s justice we have been reconciled unto God, received by Him into the very fellowship of His covenant life of perfect love. In that light, we rejoice in the name of the God of our salvation. When the Spirit of this great God, the Spirit of Christ, dwells in us, we view these commandments with a love that motivates us to walk in them out of thankfulness to God. God’s name is glorious, and rich blessings accumulate with the right confession and worship of him.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," says the Scripture in Matt 12:24, Luke 6:45. When our hearts are the dwelling places of the Spirit, we cannot be silent bystanders, but must glorify God in all our words and works. We bear His name and have been formed to show forth His praise. Thus the third commandment lays the greatest calling upon us, and gives us the most blessed privilege. Let us live in thankfulness to Him. Let us be aware of the name that we bear, and of Him Whom we are called always to reverence. For in His name is also our strength and our salvation.