[AI translation] You know that every month, in our communion service, we use the next Word of the Ten Commandments as the main hymn for the sermon. And now I am particularly pleased that for Reformation Day we have chosen this particular one, the Third Commandment. Many people think - I myself thought for a long time - that this commandment is: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." (Exodus 20:7a), can be best and most succinctly summed up as follows: "Thou shalt not blaspheme, thou shalt not blaspheme the holy name of the Lord. Well, to avoid any misunderstanding, let me say at the outset that this commandment has little to do with blasphemy in practice. Those who blaspheme are only demonstrating their own general lack of education. They think they are covering up their own inner insecurity and lack of self-confidence by wanting to say something big! And I believe that we do not need to say to those who blaspheme: man, do not profane the name of God, do not drag this holy name down into your own filth - because people who blaspheme are usually insensitive to such talk and have no idea of faith in God. So: not people of faith in God!Commandment III goes much deeper than that. It is for people who do not blaspheme, who consider blasphemy not only to be bad manners, but downright sinful. Commandment III is for people who believe in God! Not to those who only take the name of God and Jesus into their mouths when the horse doesn't pull, when the tyre punctures or when they trip over something and drop, say, the china dishes, but to those who believe in the living God. That is why this Word is so appropriate for the celebration of the Reformation.
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," says our hymn. We people of the 20th century no longer understand the meaning of the name as clearly as the people of old. There, in the East, in the old days, a name was almost a second name for someone. The name one wore was related to one's being, one's essence, one's mission. You could know someone by their name. Not just to distinguish it from others, but to know the innermost being of that person. A very slight remnant of this today is what one feels when one empowers another person to call him by his first name. In my name and with my name, I give something of myself to the person, I let them come closer to my heart, to my life. The relationship is no longer so tense and formal, but more intimate, more familiar.
It is even more so when God gives His people His name! Call me by my name! When God reveals His name to us, in this He communicates Himself to us, He not only gives us something of Himself, but He gives Himself completely! God revealed His invisible, intangible being in Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus He gave Himself to us completely. In Jesus He sacrificed Himself for us and in Jesus He divided Himself among us! So we can say straight out that God's name for us is this holy name: JESUS CHRIST! For us this is the name of God in which His being, His essence, His person is revealed. Jesus Christ: this is the NAME in which God is realised for us, in which we can address God in the most confident communion. That God has thus communicated, made known to us His name - that is, that He has given Himself to us in Jesus Christ - is the greatest grace, it means that He lets us and draws us into a very intimate, intimate, personal, intimate relationship with Himself.
This is also expressed by the fact that we are baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. That is, we are immersed, initiated into the most intimate communion with God. That is why God's people have been called from biblical times onwards by the same name by which God revealed his very being, Jesus Christ, Christians. It always makes me shudder to know that I too have taken and bear the most holy name. The same name in which the holy being of Almighty God is revealed: the name of Christ. For this word, Christian, we know very well, means Christian, Jesus, of Jesus. The Christian thought: the thought of the thought of Jesus. Christian love: love from the love of Jesus. Christian life: life from the life of Jesus. Christian man: man of Jesus! A person who has something of Jesus in him!
And now, the Third Commandment does not say that we must not use or take this holy name, in which God has revealed Himself to us! No! That is not the case. It is that if we call ourselves by the holy name of God, it should not be a vain, a lie, a sham, a contradiction between the most holy name and the life of the bearer. Do not make this holy name a vanity, a lie! Do you understand? It is not a question of not blaspheming, of not swearing falsely, it is much more: it is a question of being a true Christian, not only in name, but in reality!
I know very well that this Word touches the weakest point of all our lives. For in the end, all our sins bear witness in some form or other to the contrast between our beautiful beautiful faith and our very unlovely lives, between our Christian principles and our unchristian practices, between our right words and our wrong behaviour. All our sins consist in some form or other in the fact that anyone who confesses Jesus as Lord should not think and act in such unloving, impatient, impure, compromising, cowardly ways... He should bear the burdens of life in a different way, he should relate to people in a different way, he should stand his ground in the face of temptations in a different way - in a different way, not as we do. The name of Jesus that we bear, the One in whom God has made Himself known to us, commits us to something: to a Jesus way of life, a Jesus way of life.
If Christianity ever took the Third Commandment radically seriously, you know what would happen? It would mean an end to the lukewarm, tired lifelessness in the church that we have become so used to that we don't even notice it. Then that dull life of faith would disappear, with no strength, no enthusiasm. Then, for once in this world, something of the life of Jesus would really be visible! For this, the third commandment positively means: let Christ truly reign over you and in you, do everything possible to make Christ truly Christ, that is, victorious, restoring and redeeming Lord! Oh, not the blasphemers, then, who sin against this commandment, but those Christians, those churchmen, those worshippers, who, oh, how often they devoutly mention the name of the Lord, but do not do his will!
That a Christian man is not a true believer in Christ, is not made a new man by Christ, is not a living witness of Christ: this is a far greater blasphemy against the holy name of God than a cackling blasphemy. If Christian men can only speak fine words, but can only do very little that is really fine: that is a greater blasphemy against the holy name of God than what malicious scoffers do to the name of God. If thy Christian faith bringeth not forth good and beautiful fruit; if thou, being a Christian man, art not a man cleansed by the blood of Christ; if thou, professing Christ as Lord, canst not love him that hath offended thee; if thou failest again and again in temptations: then art thou a blasphemer, who blasphemest the holy name of God more foully than an unbeliever here at the Lord's table blasphemes himself!
Commandment III is not, therefore, addressed to those who attack God's name in the world, but to those who represent God's name in the world! God is fastidious about His name! For how important even to us is our own name. We are sensitive to the purity of our name. The court of earth will punish anyone who misuses another's honest name. Well, God also protects his name, which is why he says, "The Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain." (Exodus 20:7b) Here we see how serious this commandment is, how abominable it is to live as a heathen with a Christian name before God! To veil an unbelieving heart with the appearance of faithfulness, to lord it over, and not to do the will of the heavenly Father - this is what is meant, "The Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain."
Here we are willing to think of God's punishment at the last judgment. Well, there is, then, besides that, a judgment of God which is already coming upon those who misuse the name of God. And now, let me ask you, why do you think so many people nowadays do not want to hear about faith, about God, about the Church, reject religion itself? Try to have a conversation with such people! Almost every time it turns out that they are tired of and hate the Christianity that only said, "Lord, Lord!" but did not do the will of the heavenly Father. They have had their faith killed by a Christianity of appearances. Do you know that the so-called Christian Europe, which was once a missionary to the world, to the coloured peoples, to the other continents, has today become a missionary territory itself, a territory where Christianity must now be spread as a new, unknown way of life?! The people who today deny the existence of God with conviction, perhaps 70-80% of them themselves, came from Christian families, studied Christian theology, and most of them were educated in denominational schools. How much resentment, hatred and hatred of the Church is caused solely by the terrible fact that Christians have broken the Third Commandment! They have dishonoured the name of Christ by their lives! Do you see how true it is that "the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain"?
I once read of Alexander the Great, the famous Macedonian conqueror, that he had in his army a man with the same name as himself. Only that soldier was the most cowardly man in the whole army. Alexander the Great once summoned this cowardly Druze and said to him. Well, either change your name or get out of here! So sensitive was he to his name.
Well, Jesus, at whose name every knee in heaven, on earth, under the earth will bow once, what will he say to those who bring shame on his name? He says none! Neither does he tell you to leave the army, nor does he tell you to change your name, but he does say one thing, and that is through this very commandment: repent! But truly! Not just in word, but as He says in His Word.
You know what is wonderful? That Jesus, in Whom God revealed His name, in Whom God revealed Himself, this Jesus was crucified precisely for breaking the Third Commandment. It was under that title that he was condemned to death, for having blasphemed by daring to call himself the Son of God! And this is the very gospel of this commandment, that Jesus, whose name we always misuse, whose name we always disgrace: for this very sin he was crucified! And this means that we can be cleansed even from this sin by His blood from all the futility of the past, and can begin again with Him, in His name.
Believe me, Brothers and Sisters, the only Reformation celebration that pleases God is when we are cleansed, renewed in the very essence of Christianity, in the life of Jesus. This was and is the essence of the Reformation!
Amen
Date: 31 October 1957 (Reformation)
Lesson
Mt 7,21-29