My name

With reference to Acts 4:12—The New Testament treats very largely of the mystery of the Name. After Jesus rose from the dead, and before his assumption to the right hand of power, the kingdom and the Name were the especial topics of conversation between him and his disciples. They understood the doctrine of the kingdom better than of the name, until he opened their understandings that they might understand the scriptures of the prophets (Luke xxiv. 45). These in regard to the death, burial, resurrection, and assumption of the Name-Bearer, and the doctrinal use to be made of them, had been hid from their eyes (Luke xviii. 31-34). But when he had risen, the time had come to remove the veil, which still remains upon the understandings of all who do not comprehend "the truth as it is in Jesus." "0 fools," said he to two of them, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken; ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke xxiv. 25). On a subsequent occasion, when all of them were convened, he said, that according as it was written in the prophets, "it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead on the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached IN HIS NAME among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (verse 44-47). "In his name" is here an all-important phrase, for apart from this great name, there is no repentance nor remission of sins for Jew or Gentile. "There is salvation in no other; for," continues the Spirit in Peter, "there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts iv. 12); and again, he said, "to Him give all the prophets testimony, that whosoever believeth into him, shall receive remission of sins THROUGH HIS NAME" (x. 43). The Name is expressive of a personal existence "among men." In its first sojourn here, though it was the Deity's Name, it was a name of no reputation; it was without rule, being the name of a servant, of a humiliated, oppressed, and afflicted man, absolutely obedient to the will of the Deity, even unto the death of the cross. Wherefore "God also," says Paul, in Phil. ii. 9, "hath highly exalted him, and given him a Name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of heavenlies and of earthlies, and of subterraneans; and every tongue confess that Jesus Anointed is Lord to the glory of Deity the Father."