The Names of Jesus - Elmer Towns

One who made this world and created all things, including the human race, voluntarily chose to
become a man without compromising in any way who He was. No wonder that name has such a
special significance for Christians. Certainly, if the unsaved Jews were so concerned about using
Jehovah's name in vain that they avoided any possibility of doing so, Christians today ought also
to reverence and respect the name of Jehovah incarnate, Jesus, and never use it in vain as a curse.
When we realize the true nature of Jesus, we have no problem understanding the
necessity of the virgin birth. It is not simply an early Christian legend which found its way into
the Bible or a novel little miracle to give us yet something else to believe. The virgin birth was
the only possible way in which Jehovah could become a man and at the same time remain
Jehovah. Jesus needed a human mother to have a human nature, but if He had had a human
father, He also would have received the sin nature of His father. With a pair of sinful human
parents, it would have been impossible for Him to be the Son of God.
When God created man, He made man holy-that is, without sin. But man's holiness was
conditional and ended when Adam fell. Since then, men have been born sinners by nature
because they inherited that nature from their father, Adam. “Wherefore, as by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned” (Romans 5:12). That would also have been the fate of Jesus had He been the physical
son of Joseph. In contrast, the Scriptures teach that Christ knew no sin (II Corinthians 5:21), was
without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and did no sin (I Peter 2:22).
THE MARVELS OF HIS OCCUPATION
When Joseph learned his legal son would be named “Jesus,” he was also told the nature
of His work, “For he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). He was the salvation
which would also provide salvation for His people. It is not clear that the full nature or extent of
that salvation was fully understood at first. Initially, it was widely believed that the salvation
provided by Jesus was exclusively for the Jews. This view is evident even in the book of Acts,
where Peter is reluctant to go to Cornelius' household and later where the Jerusalem Conference
becomes a necessity.
Surprisingly, it was the Samaritans who first recognized the broader extent of the
salvation that Jesus would effect. Their understanding of Jesus as “the Christ, the Saviour of the
world” (John 4:42), was unheard of in Jewish circles and largely ignored in the early days of the
church. One might argue that the extent of the work of Christ was never fully realized in practice
even by the church until the Moravian and later Methodist movements, with the possible
exception of the evangelistic outreach of the church following the Jerusalem Conference (Acts
15).
THE MAJESTY OF HIS REPUTATION
A name is a reputation. Sometimes one gains a reputation from a name, and at other times
a person gives his name a reputation. When I was growing up in Savannah, Georgia, my mother
would frequently remind me to live up to my name. “Remember, you're a Towns,” she would
say. Our family history went back several generations in Georgia and included several prominent