5 Names of God You Should Know

In the book of Exodus, when Israel is oppressed in Egypt, we find the Israelites crying out because of their slavery: “And the sons of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage ascended to God” (Exod. 2:23). Their cries reached God, but they didn’t call out to him by name. And the text doesn’t presuppose they were calling out to him specifically. Nevertheless, their cries ascended, God heard, and he remembered his promises to their forefathers (Exod. 2:24–25). Just as God initiated a personal relationship with Abraham, here too he initiates the reintroduction between himself and his people.

God comes to Moses in a burning bush and commissions him to return to Egypt to be a prophet to Pharaoh so God may deliver his people (Exod. 3:10). But Moses hesitates.

Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God furthermore said to Moses, “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is the name for all generations to use to call upon Me. (Exod. 3:12–15, emphasis added)

This name of God, Yahweh—often rendered LORD in English Bibles—literally comes from the Hebrew verb “to be.” God is telling Moses not just that he is the God of his forefathers, but he is the God who is, the God who has always been. In revealing this name to Moses, God accomplishes two purposes: he establishes his eternal nature and he reaffirms a personal relationship with them.

This God who comes to the people of Israel in their affliction is the same God who called Abraham out of Ur, blessed Isaac with an inheritance, and grew Jacob and his sons into a great nation. He is their God. And he has always been their God, because he has always been. Because humans are unable to know God unless he reveals himself to them, to have the name of the one true God is incredibly special. In giving them the name Yahweh, he is allowing them to address him personally.

This is true for us as well. To know God’s name is to be able to enter into a personal relationship with the maker of the universe. And before we ever knew to call on God’s name, in every season of rebellion in which we have failed to do so, and even in times when we are swallowed up by the tides of suffering, grief, and despair, God is—and he is for you.

Moses is the first person in Scripture to call God “Father.” In Deuteronomy 32:6, Moses sings about the spiritual relationship between Yahweh and the nation he brought out of Egypt. Father depicts the unique and personal relationship of God to his people (1 Cor. 8:6)—both with Israel in the Old Testament and with the church in the New Testament—as well as the relationship God the Father has to the other Persons of the Trinity (John 16:28). As we know the first person of the Trinity to be God the Father, so the second person is God the Son, eternally begotten from the Father before all worlds began.

Jesus himself calls God “Father” (Abba) in Mark 14:36 when he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion: “And He was saying, ‘Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.’” Jesus was truly the Son of God, and we see this partly in how Scripture reveals to us his prayer to his Father.

But Scripture reveals that we are the children of God as well! Romans 8:15 even uses the same intimate name for Father when describing our adoption by God, “Abba,” that Christ used praying to God the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane: “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (NASB). The same use of Abba is also found throughout the New Testament. The apostolic writers continually describe believers as sons and daughters, as beloved children of God: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:6–7).

What does this tell us about God? God’s assurance that he is our Father and we are his children means that we are heirs with Christ—we suffer with him and we will be glorified with him (Rom. 8:17). It means that we can wait in great hope for creation to be redeemed, when this present suffering gives way to freedom (Rom. 8:21–23). It means we are not alone—we have many brothers and sisters, united with us to God in Christ (Rom. 8:29)! And it means our salvation is secured—“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:31–32).

Footnotes

• The Nicene Creed.

With praise and reverence, those seeking help and healing during Jesus’s ministry called him “teacher,” “master,” “Lord,” or, like the blind men who cried out to him in Matthew 9:17, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” All these forms of address are fitting the Second Person of the Trinity in his incarnation—he is indeed teacher, master, and Lord, just as he is also prophet, priest, and king. Let’s take a closer look at this title, Lord, found in both the Old and New Testaments, to unpack this image of a sovereign God who has descended to be with his people, a God to whom we can call out for salvation.

Kurios in Greek and Adonai in Hebrew are both translated as Lord in English. Kurios is one of the proper names of God, designating him the Almighty One, ruler and possessor. In the New Testament, it is also used for Christ, revealing him to be truly God, the same God Israel worshiped in the Old Testament—God incarnate (Luke 1:41–45).

Adonai is the name Israel uses to address God, often spoken in place of Yahweh. This usage points to God as the almighty ruler, which is demonstrated in his many acts of power in both the Old and New Testaments—power over kings, power over nature, power over death itself. God conquers vast armies, like sweeping away Pharaoh’s chariots (Exod. 15:1–6). God controls the elements of the earth, bringing plagues upon the land of Egypt (Exod. 7–12), stopping the sun in the sky (Josh. 10:12–14), stilling the fury of storm-swept seas (Luke 8:22–25). God exercises authority over the spiritual world as well—he proves himself over the false gods of the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Persians throughout the Old Testament, and Jesus continually casts out demons as a part of his earthly ministry. The Lord even has the power to raise the dead (1 Kings 17:22; Mark 5:35–42; John 11:43–44).

It is right that we call God Lord. He is indeed powerful to save. And with the blind men in Matthew and with his disciples tossed on the stormy seas, we too, faced with our sin and the sovereign reign of our most holy God, should cry out to him: Lord save us! We are perishing!

Footnotes

• The Hebrew consonants for Yahweh are left in biblical texts but the vowels are often replaced with those for Lord (adonai). Many English Bibles use LORD in all capitals to show that those particular uses of “Lord” refer specifically to the proper name of God in the original texts.

The Son of Man appears frequently in Matthew’s Gospel. Quite often, Jesus uses it to refer to himself, occurring some 30 times between Matthew 8:20–26:64. This title shows up in the Old Testament several times as well. In using this title, Jesus identifies himself with passages like Psalm 80:17–19:

But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,
the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
Then we shall not turn back from you;
give us life, and we will call upon your name!
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

It appears notably in the visions of Daniel, as he sees “one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him” (Dan. 7:13). He is given an everlasting dominion over all peoples, nations, and languages, and his kingdom will not be destroyed (Dan. 7:14). This designation, the Son of Man, points toward the Messiah, the one God will raise up to save his people, the long-awaited “hope of all the earth.” In the immediate context of this psalm, we see that it is through the Son of Man that we will be restored, revived, and will call upon the name of God.

The Son of Man is also used in Psalm 8:4, “What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him?” Although the psalmist is referring to humanity in general, bearing the dignity of God’s image, the author of Hebrews clarifies that Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of this description of humanity (Heb. 2:6–10). He writes, “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of His suffering death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). Dane Ortlund describes the first and last verses of Psalm 8, “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth,” as bookends. He says, “[T]hey also anticipate the end of all things, when Christ’s enemies will be made a footstool for his feet and his name will be majestic through all the earth.” Christ’s coming inaugurates these last days—we live in the kingdom of God which is being ushered in but has not yet been fully realized. Jesus, the Son of Man—that long-awaited Messiah—has conquered death and will one day return to bring us home to everlasting life.

In Matthew 16:13, Jesus asks his disciples who people think the Son of Man is, and then who they think he is. Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). It is in this context of confession that Jesus declares this is the rock upon which his church will be built, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). May our knowledge of God lead us to this same confession and praise!

Footnotes

• Charles Wesley, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”

• Dane C. Ortlund, In The Lord I Take Refuge, “Psalm 8” (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 28.

• Ortlund, In The Lord I Take Refuge, 28.

Jesus is sometimes referred to as Immanuel. This is a direct fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name Him Immanuel” (Is. 7:14). This is the prophecy quoted in Matthew 1:23 after Joseph has been told in a dream that Mary has conceived a child by the Holy Spirit and that this child will “save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The Hebrew meaning of Immanuel is “God with us,” an appropriate title for this incarnation of God himself. Under the old covenant, God tabernacled with his people so that his glory was always in sight of Israel (Exod. 40:34–38). Now he has come in human flesh. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

This theme of God being with his people is present throughout Matthew’s Gospel and is a central part of his depiction of the Christ. From calling Jesus Immanuel in Matthew’s first chapter to Christ’s declaration to be with us “always, to the end of the age” in the last, God’s nearness is evident. He is not a God who is far off (Jer. 23:23). We can’t escape his presence (Ps. 139:7–10). And because of this, we can live with boldness, confident that God keeps us—he is with us wherever we go (Josh. 1:9).

Although Immanuel refers specifically to Christ, it reveals a truth about all three Persons of the Trinity. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell with the saints:

• God’s presence with Israel is seen both by his physical tabernacling among them and with the reminder—so often repeated through Scripture—that he is near (Deut. 31:8; Is. 41:10, 43:2; Ps. 23:4, 139:7). He does not abandon his people.
• In the incarnation, God the Son takes on flesh and dwells among humans as a human—in every way like us but without sin. He can sympathize with our weaknesses, our suffering, our lives, and even our death. Because Jesus lived among us in perfect obedience and died our death for us, we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our need” (Heb. 7:16).
• The Holy Spirit dwells not only among us but in us (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Tim. 1:14; Ezek. 36:27). It is by the Spirit that we are able to live uprightly, obediently, and in a manner pleasing to God (Gal. 5:22).

That God is a God with us means we can trust in his care for us. It means we have a God who understands us deeply, to whom we can bring our sorrows, our joys, our petitions, and requests. And it means we can become new people—people marked by the fruit of the Spirit.

Footnotes

• Kupp, David D. Matthew’s Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God’s People in the First Gospel. Monograph Series / Society for New Testament Studies, 90. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).