matthew 10 on Names

There is a story—likely apocryphal—of Alexander the Great discovering a soldier asleep at his post, a grave offense. When the guard was brought before him, the king asked his name. “Alexander,” the yo...

A recent article from Ars Technica shared a few hilarious stories of a few recent naming contests. The moral of the story is, be careful what you choose to allow others to come up with. For example,...

Dr. Joseph Hartounian, a former professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, came to America from Armenia. One day a well-meaning friend said to him, “Your name is difficult to pronounce and difficult...

The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...

What’s in a name? The history of the human race is in names. Our objective friends do not understand that, since they move in a world of objects which can be counted and numbered. They reduce the grea...

Have you noticed how difficult it is to remember someone’s name when you meet them? Within seconds of a person telling me his name, I’ve forgotten what he said. I may have even repeated it to myself. ...

The meaning of a name is not discovered through scholarly etymology or through meditative introspection. It is not validated by bureaucratic approval. And it certainly is not worked up through the van...

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a ma...

Now, in the Bible a name … reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as God’s gift…. To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God an...

Epithets can chip away at the image of God in us. Name-calling and identity theft are felonious offenses against divinity and humanity. Blasphemy. Those of us who have been victims of identity theft o...

What shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their own empire with garrisons of their own legions, nor can extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations? But Christ’s name is extend...

The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name” (Matthew 6:9). The term “hallowed” and the word “holy” comes from the same root word. It means “apart, or sanctified.” Go...

Back in 1958, a baby boy was born into the Lane family. The father, a man named Robert, chose to name his boy Winner. How could the young man fell to succeed with a name like Winner Lane? Several yea...

Is your last name Smith, Miller, Cooper, or Baker? Many surnames have their origin in the trades that your ancestors were identified with. Today, especially with the rise of the “gig economy,” people ...

In his wonderful book Run with Horses , Eugene Peterson reminds us of many of the ways in which modern life de-personalizes and degrades us. We become a number and not a name. We are valued for wha...

In the introduction to Tim Chester’s Book Truth We Can Touch , Sinclair Ferguson shares a conversation he had with a doctoral student from the Far East: I knew him as “Timothy.” But one day, when...

Have you noticed how difficult it is to remember someone’s name when you meet them? Within seconds of a person telling me his name, I’ve forgotten what he said. I may have even repeated it to myself. ...

At the beginning of the third century in North Africa, persecution of Christians broke out in Carthage. One of the cate­chumens taken into custody was Perpetua, a noblewoman still nursing her son. Whe...