Last week, for example, we came to Revelation 2:17, and spent some time reflecting on this promise from Jesus that everyone who stays true to him will receive “a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”
I've always loved this verse and think about it a lot in my work as a pastor. It's a powerful image on its own, but it actually ties into a significant pattern we see throughout in the Bible, where God gets a hold of someone in a dramatic way, and as he does, he gives them a new name. He re-named Abram (Abraham, the “exalted Father”); he renamed Jacob (Israel, the one who “wrestles with God”); he renamed Simon (Peter, “the Rock”) and so on.
In each story, God’s new name for the person goes right to the heart of something true about them and their relationship with God; and in each story this divine act of re-naming becomes a defining moment for the person, one where they come to see themselves as God himself sees them.
In Revelation 2:17, then, when God promises to give all his victorious followers a “white stone with a new name written on it,” I think we’re supposed to take all sorts of encouragement and hope from that truth.
Certainly our Bible study group did the other night.
Because the Good News is that God, and God alone, knows our “true names.” He knows our true identities, that is to say: who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. He knows it even better than we ourselves do. And as we live victoriously in him, he promises to reveal it to us, giving us eyes to see ourselves the way he sees us, and in doing so, giving us our true names, written indelibly for us on a precious stone held only between ourselves and him.
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