Chapter 17 — Name Above All Names (Part 3: Divine Names)
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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"Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth." (Philippians 2:9-10)
The name of Jesus is above every name. Not among the greatest names. Above them all. At that name, every created thing will one day bow. That's not the language you use for a great man, or even for the greatest of angels. It's the language of the one who holds the highest place in the universe.
Part 3 of The Incarnate Christ and His Critics examines the names of Jesus, the "N" in the HANDS framework, and it may be one of the most underappreciated lines of evidence for the deity of Christ. In the biblical world, names aren't just labels. They carry identity, character, and authority. To bear a divine name is to share in divine identity.
Why Names Matter in the Bible
In the ancient world, and especially in the biblical tradition, a name isn't just a convenience for identification. It reveals something essential about who a person is. God reveals his name to Moses as "I AM WHO I AM" (Exod. 3:14), a name that's less a label than a revelation of his eternal, self-existing nature.
The Bible also uses "name" to refer to what we might call titles. Isaiah 9:6 gives the coming Messiah a fourfold name: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Those aren't birth-certificate names. They're revelations of his identity and role. God himself is called "Jealous" (Exod. 34:14) and "Redeemer" (Isa. 63:16) as names.
The New Testament gives Jesus a remarkable array of names, some of which are applied only to God in the Old Testament. Read those names carefully in their biblical context and a pattern emerges. The New Testament isn't just calling Jesus great. It's identifying him with the God of Israel.
The Major Names of Jesus
Over the next several chapters, we'll examine the names and titles of Jesus in detail. Here's a preview of what's coming.
"Son of God": In the Old Testament, this phrase could describe angels, Israel, or the Davidic king. When applied to Jesus, though, the New Testament fills it with an entirely new and richer meaning: the unique, eternal Son who shares in the divine nature of the Father (John 1:18; 5:17-18).
"God": The New Testament explicitly calls Jesus "God" in several places (John 1:1; 1:18; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1; 1 John 5:20). Not as many times as you might expect. The New Testament usually reserves the word "God" for the Father. But when it does apply it to Jesus, it means the same thing.
"Lord": Probably the most significant name of all. In Jewish practice, the divine name YHWH (the sacred covenant name of Israel's God) wasn't spoken aloud. Readers substituted the word "Lord" instead (Hebrew: Adonai; Greek: Kyrios). When the New Testament calls Jesus "Lord" in contexts that echo Old Testament passages about YHWH, it's making a stunning claim: Jesus is YHWH. The "Lord" of the Old Testament is the "Lord Jesus" of the New.
"The Word": John's Prologue identifies Jesus as the eternal Logos, through whom all things were created. This places Jesus in the role of God's creative, self-expressive agent from before the foundation of the world.
"I Am": In John's Gospel, Jesus uses the phrase "I am" (Greek: egō eimi) in ways that clearly echo God's self-declaration in Exodus 3:14: "I AM WHO I AM." When Jesus says "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), his audience immediately picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy. They understood exactly what he was claiming.
"Alpha and Omega": In Revelation, God says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 21:6). Then Jesus says the same thing: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 22:13). Same title, same claim, shared between the Father and the Son.
The Significance
Critics of the deity of Christ have worked hard to explain away each of these names individually. Maybe "Lord" just means "master." Maybe "Son of God" just means "a specially chosen human." Maybe the "I am" statements are coincidence. Maybe the texts that call Jesus "God" are textual variants or mistranslations.
But here's the problem with that approach: when you have this many divine names applied to one person, across this many books, by this many different authors, all pointing in the same direction, the cumulative case becomes hard to explain away. You can only dismiss each individual piece of evidence by ignoring the pattern they form together.
The names of Jesus aren't scattered theological accidents. They're a deliberate, consistent, coordinated witness to his identity. His name is above every name because he is above every name, because he's the one God who created all names and all things.
That name, Jesus, is the name at which every knee will bow.
Including mine. Gladly.