A New Song with a New Name
A New Song with a New Name.
“Let the upright sing for joy to the Lord; it is fitting for the pure to praise Him. Praise the Lord with melodies on the lyre; make music for Him on the ten-stringed harp. Sing a new song of praise to Him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.” (Ps. 33:1-3).
“Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord, praise His name. Each day proclaims the good news that He saves. Publish His glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things He does. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! (Ps. 96:1-4).
“Sing a new song to the Lord, for He has done wonderful deeds. His right hand has won a mighty victory. His holy arm has shown His saving power! The Lord has announced His victory and has revealed His righteousness to every nation! He has remembered His promise to love and be faithful to Israel. The ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” (Ps. 98:1-3).
“I will sing a new song to you, O God! I will sing your praises with a ten-stringed harp.” (Ps. 144:9).
“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song! Sing His praises in the assembly of the faithful. O Israel, rejoice in your Maker. O people of Jerusalem, exult in your King. Praise His name with dancing, accompanied by tambourine and harp. For the Lord delights in His people; He crowns the humble with victory. Let the faithful rejoice that He honors them. Let them sing for joy as they lie on their beds.” (Ps. 149:1-5).
“Sing a new song to the Lord! Sing His praises from the ends of the earth! Let the whole world glorify the Lord; let it sing His praise! (Isaiah 42:10, 12).
Michael W. Smith – A New Hallelujah (Live)
“I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what He has done and be amazed.” (Ps. 40:1-3).
A NEW NAME: “The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. Yahweh Himself will personally pronounce that new name. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem cradled in His palm and held aloft by your God for all to see.” (Isaiah 62:2-3).
What’s In a Name? Biblically speaking, a personal name represents that person’s character, destiny, identity, and calling. By dwelling in Christ and He in us, by hiding ourselves “in Him,” we are given a new character that duplicates that of Christ, a new destiny of eternal life, a new identity that matches up with Jesus, a new calling and purpose to our lives that reflect the priorities of God. Another way of saying this is that our new name highlights our spiritual rebirth in Christ, a spiritual do-over making us brand new creatures, complete with a totally fresh personhood. In Jesus, we have discarded our old identity and assumed the one that has been held all along by our Creator God. We can only find our new identity, our new name, in the Lord.
A New Character. “People conceived into life by the Father don’t make a habitual practice of sin. How could they? God’s seed is deep within them, making them who they are. His principle of life is at work in them. It’s not in the nature of the God-begotten to deliberately and knowingly practice sin. After all, they are children of the Father! They have His nature permanently within them! Whoever has been born of God will refuse to keep sinning, because they have been fathered by God Himself, and contain His nature. Here is how God’s children can be clearly distinguished from the Devil’s children: Anyone who does not demonstrate righteousness does not belong to God, nor does the one who refuses to love fellow believers.” (1 John 3:9-10). New spiritual life has to be kick-started with a seed, God’s seed, in order for the Holy Spirit to bring new spiritual life to a person. God’s seed has an active disposition as well, full of life and wired to develop according to God’s plan. This new creature has become a partaker of God’s nature, by receiving the seed from God Himself. When we are born anew from above, we are conceived according to the plan of God, and the Father’s very nature is passed on to us as new creatures. The Lord of new life has enabled each of us to share family characteristics, as His children, and God considers us His true sons and daughters. As the Orthodox Church puts it, “We become by grace what God is by nature.”
A New Identity: From the Image of God to the Likeness of Christ. God created mankind in His image. Because of the entrance of sin, that image has become marred, tainted, broken. Christ has come to bring wholeness to the broken image, restoring the image to its pre-sin existence. Christ is the image of God, and now we are to be remade into the image of Christ. “For He knew all about us before we were born, and He destined us from the beginning to share the likeness of His Son.” (Romans 8:29, TPT). The Message puts it this way: “God decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love Him along the same lines as the life of His Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity He restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in Him.” Believers are called to be “conformed to the likeness of His Son.” (NIV). Father Patrick Reardon put it still another way: “Christ is the original meaning of humanity. Christ is what God had in mind when He reached down and formed the first lump of mud into a man.” (Christ in the Psalms). We are to be stamped with the likeness of Christ. The Orthodox church believes that as Man, Christ is the image in which man was made and toward which man is moving. Christ is the perfect image of God, and believers are being restored into His likeness.
A New Calling and Purpose: “Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). What does it mean to become a “little Christ,” a human version of the divine Messiah? How do we go about becoming little Christs? We certainly can’t assume the role of Messiah, but we can become little messiahs-in-training. We do know that as the anointed Messiah, Jesus was empowered to be a prophet, a priest and a king. He completed these anointed offices of the Old Covenant and summed them up in the one office of Messiah. So it follows that each follower of Jesus is anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit to, to some degree, fulfill human versions of those three divine offices. Each believer has embedded within him/her the power and inclination to participant in His mission by being a little prophet, a little priest and a little king. These roles are summed up in that of little Christ, without developing a Messiah complex. It is not the believer’s job to be the one holy and anointed Messiah. Believers are asked to be juniors-in-training, little versions of the Senior-in-charge. Believers are called to be servant-prophets, servant-priests, and servant-kings. Nothing more. Nothing less. Believers don’t have the authority or ability to be anything but little versions of Jesus Christ, doing much the same thing that He did on the earth.
A New Destiny. “And this is the promise that He has promised us – Eternal life.” (1 John 2:25). The Father and the Son have promised eternal life from the very beginning. Scripture has made it clear that God’s creation-destiny, His desire, is that we have eternal life. In fact, St. Paul told Titus that God has promised eternal life “before the beginning of time.” (Titus 1:2). Creator God had desired eternal life for mankind when He made them in His image, but sin entered the world and derailed those plans. Sin brings death, and that was the end of eternal life for humanity. But God brought forth a Savior, His very own Son, who would bring eternal life to those who believed in Him. This Savior changed the destiny of mankind. And so now, “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3). God’s desire for mankind to have eternal life is so strong that out of love, He gave the world His Son, so that instead of perishing in sin, mankind would have the hope of eternal life (John 3:16). “For the wages which sin pay us is death, but the lavish gift of God is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). Jesus came into the world to forgive sins and to offer eternal life to believers in Him. So promising eternal life was second nature to Him. He promised eternal life to all of those who are fully committed to Him (John 18:30). And eternal life was declared in His name from Peter (John 6:68), to John the Baptist (John 3:36), to John the Apostle (1 John 5:13). Our eternal destiny starts right now with faith. We don’t have to wait for eternal life to start. Eternal life does not get delayed until we die. Eternal life begins the moment we believe in Jesus. Life everlasting has already begun in Him. Jesus is the only eternal Being. Eternal life starts with Him. Either we follow Jesus and live into eternal life with Him now, or we don’t get eternal life at all… a bountiful life, fulfilling life, satisfying life, expanding life, overflowing life, eternal life. When we live into Christ through His Spirit, we are living into eternal life, right now.
What Name Do We Answer To Now? “My servants shall be called by another name by which they will be blessed, on whom a blessing is invoked on the land.” (Is. 65:15). The names we answer to now are largely determined by who we answer to. We have our own versions of what the world has called us, much like what Isaiah says in 62:4, names like Ruined, Forsaken, Rejected, Desolate, Abandoned. Maybe we have answered to names like Stupid, Shameful, Ugly, Lame, Worthless, or Hopeless. But now in Christ we don’t even have to turn our heads to listen to anything other than Friend of Jesus, Child of the King, Holy Temple of the Spirit. We can totally ignore what we are called by anyone if it’s not God’s Beloved, the Lord’s Handiwork, or Messiah’s Servant. We can turn a deaf ear to every name that comes our way unless it’s Soldier of the Cross, the Savior’s Delight, Brother/Sister to Jesus. We now completely reject any name except the true ones, such as Prize Package, Precious Jewel, Special Treasure, or Forgiven Sinner. Adopting our new identity means we have discarded all of our old identities. Because we are new creatures in Christ, we have new names that define who we truly are.
“God’s Spirit is speaking to you in the churches. You should understand what the Spirit is saying to you. You have ears, so listen carefully! To everyone who wins against Satan and I thus an overcomer, I will give some of my special food called the hidden manna. I will also give each of them a white stone. I will write a new name on that stone. Nobody will know that name except the person who receives it.” (Revelation 2:17). Each follower of Christ has a new name waiting, a name held in secret by Christ, because He is the only One who knows us so intimately and profoundly that He is fully aware of our true identity, our true eternal self, created by Him.
New Name Written Down In Glory / Jesus Is Mine (Feat Charity Gayle, David Gentiles, Denita Gibbs)