By Jonathan Keller
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
OMG! For heaven’s sake!
We use expressions like these to show exasperation or fear. A kind friend may remind us of the Third Commandment to keep us from uttering flippant phrases like these. Behind this command is a much larger concern: our speech and our reputation as the Lord’s representatives.
Taking the Name of the Lord with Our Words
A plain reading of this commandment shows us that we should watch our words. Our tongues can set a forest of relationships ablaze if we are careless with them. God’s name is the communication He used to show to His people who He is, and we ought not to treat it as devoid of meaning. As the Lord is our highest prize, and as His name is a holy utterance, so, too, should we look at all words coming out of our mouths that they might share some mark of that care we extend to God’s name.
How do we do this? Besides omitting God’s names from our curses (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we also ought to omit curses from our regular speech. It is the Lord who judges sin, yet our curses take that role from God by placing us in the judgment seat to render punishment for supposed sins from others. Rather than defaming others out of frustration, we can salt our speech with care for our neighbors or redirect the conversation toward more praiseworthy things. In times of lament or frustration, we can also direct our speech to our trouble with the situation instead of curses toward our accusers.
Taking the Name of the Lord with Our Reputation
The other sense of “taking the Lord’s name” is that of putting on His name like a garment. God from the beginning made people in His image, and from early in Israel’s history He put His name on His people. Israel was not just some ordinary nation; they were God’s people. Today, Christians are ingrafted into that same people. We are put onto the same tree that is Israel and rightly called God’s people. Even the name “Christian” has this idea because we are called “little Christs” in imitation of our God, Jesus Christ.
Therefore, our actions ought to be becoming of those called after the name of our God. When people see us, they ought to see some semblance of Jesus Christ. Rather than merely say “stop sinning,” I would encourage us to look back at what Jesus did when He was on the earth. He was a sinless man, but His virtues did not stop at mere moral excellence as if He only checked off boxes from a to-do list. His excellence shone in His gentleness toward the weak and downtrodden, in His love toward those in need of mercy, in His stalwartness against those who would intrude upon His kingdom. May we imitate His small acts of righteousness that the world may see our God in us, by the power of His Spirit.
Seeing that we ought to take care to keep the Lord’s name holy in both our speech and our reputation, lest we incur judgment by failing to do so, how might you represent the Lord better in your speech and actions? What sorts of words tend to come out of your mouth, and how could you better wield them toward a holy use of your tongue? What kind of person do you represent in your actions currently, and how might you better represent Christ?