Revelation 2:17

THE NEW NAME

‘I … will give him a … new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.’

Revelation 2:17

Rightly to understand this passage, we may with advantage go back to the beginnings of the Jewish race. ‘Thou shalt no more be called Jacob, but Israel’ (not Supplanter, but Striver with God), said the mysterious Personage with whom Jacob had wrestled, openly and manfully, perhaps for the first time in his life. The blessing he won was the blessing of the text.

I. It told him that his God thought better of him; that for God, whatever man might say—for God, and therefore also for his own consciousness—that mean and unworthy past was gone, never more to haunt and to degrade him. And the blessing was not merely negative, repealing his base traditions; it also spoke clearly of the character of his better life. Effort, and even painful, permanently crippling effort, was the condition of his new life. He is to be called the Striver with God; for his highest honour is to have striven successfully, like one to whose life bad habits, evil associations, bloated and long-indulged appetites are clinging. Israel is the name which belonged to him; so much he won in that strange battle with a combatant willing to be overcome.

II. As Jacob by overcoming won his new name, so Christ says to all men—for whoever hath an ear is bidden to hear His message to the Churches: ‘To him that overcometh will I give … a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.’ Is this a little thing? To him that overcometh is promised the hidden manna, the morning star, to rule the nations with an iron rod, to sit down with his Master in His throne. In company with such gifts, what is it to receive a new name? So hollow, so unreal one might think it, to receive, in reward for a life of struggle, a name that is never to be divulged. But so it was not, to Jacob. It was the very turning-point of his existence. Think what multitudes of men and women must long to do better, but find themselves tied and bound in the chain of their own past. With health lost, reputation lost, purity lost, what sort of man is this to aspire to saintship? And if he aspires, plenty of people are ready to tell him how absurd it is. But Christ does not tell him so. He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and unfeignedly believe His holy gospel. And having pardoned He says, Go in My strength and you shall overcome. And when His strength in you has conquered the bad old habit, the fierce old temptation, then you shall find the effects reaching down to the very root of your being, and working a blessed revolution there. According to the old Hebrew notion, that a change of character should bring a change of name to tell of it, He offers to each man for himself a new name, a new characterisation.

III. Oh blessed thought, that Christ Himself shall see and observe in me something more really myself than my failures and disgraces; that He shall bid me put away the memory of all the haunting horrors that laugh at my desire for goodness! And this new name is a reality. Jacob is called Israel because he has really striven; it is not a compliment at all, but a fact divinely recognised.

—Bishop G. A. Chadwick.