A New Name at Ninety-Nine

There is something almost comic about the renaming in Genesis 17. Abram, whose name means exalted father, becomes Abraham, father of a multitude. He is ninety-nine. He has one son by a servant. Sarai becomes Sarah, princess, mother of nations and kings. She is eighty-nine and has never carried a child. God hands them names that describe a future neither of them can see, and expects them to answer to those names immediately.

Abraham's response is telling. He falls facedown, which is worship, and he laughs, which is something else. He says to himself that a hundred-year-old man does not father children and a ninety-year-old woman does not bear them. Then he offers God an alternative: if only Ishmael might live under your blessing. He is asking God to accept the son he already has instead of the son God has promised. God says no. Sarah will bear a son, and his name will be Isaac, which means he laughs.

The one idea to carry from this chapter is that God names people by what he will make of them, not by what they currently are. He called Abraham a father of nations while Abraham was still chuckling in disbelief. He gave Sarah a royal name while she was barren. The names came first; the reality followed.

This is how the New Testament speaks about believers. Paul writes to churches full of ordinary and frequently failing people and calls them saints, holy ones. He is not flattering them. He is naming them the way God named Abraham, by the finished work rather than the present condition. If you belong to Christ, you are called a child of God, forgiven, righteous, beloved. You may laugh at that on a hard week. You may want to offer God a lesser version of yourself that seems more realistic. He does not accept the substitution.

Today, in worship, answer to the name you have been given. Not because you have grown into it, but because the God Almighty who gave it does not hand out names he cannot make true.