What is God's Name?

He is not merely “God,” he is not merely “Yahweh,” but he is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Studying Daniel for our church’s current teaching series has been a powerful experience. Although he is my biblical namesake and I’ve certainly read his book, I’ve never done an in-depth study of Daniel, either as a learner or a teacher. So I’m learning a ton as I teach. For example, in Daniel 9, Daniel prays a powerful intercessory prayer of corporate confession and repentance. While we hear Daniel tell us in other places about his life of prayer, in this passage Daniel gives us intimate display of how he actually prayed in moment of desperate urgency. Among many other poignant aspects of this prayer, we find Daniel here use the covenant name of God eight times, a name he uses nowhere else in the book. This rings powerfully because he concludes the prayer with this rousing appeal: “Lord, hear! Lord, forgive! Lord, listen and act! My God, for your own sake, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your name” (Daniel 9:19). And what is that name that Daniel longs for God to honor, for God’s own sake?

God’s Name is “Yahweh.”

The personal name of God in the Old Testament is not “God” (Hebrew: Elohim) but “Yahweh.” Older versions translate this name with the word “Jehovah,” but most modern English versions translate this name as “the LORD.” As the story of the Bible develops, God reveals his name. He isn’t just a generic “God,” but he is Yahweh, the God who created the world, the God who called Abram out of Ur and made him a great nation, the God who saved his people from slavery in the powerful ancient nation of Egypt. He is a God who reveals himself, compassionate, gracious, loyal and loving, forgiving and just.

“Yahweh came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, ‘Yahweh.’ Yahweh passed in front of him and proclaimed: Yahweh—Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:5–7).

The character and conduct of the one Lord is the heart of the message of the Old Testament: “Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one” (Deuternomy 6:4).

Yahweh’s Name is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

As the story of the Bible unfolds and we reach climax in the incarnation, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God gives an even fuller picture of who he is. He is not merely “God,” he is not merely “Yahweh,” but he is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The Great Commission teaches us that followers of Jesus should be baptized into one, singular name: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). But when Jesus says this, he actually lists what looks like three names: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This might confuse us initially, until we recognize that “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” is one name. God reveals his one name in the Old Testament: “Yahweh.” He reveals it even more specifically in the gospel and the New Testament. God has one name, but three persons can equally claim that name, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Such unfolding and increasingly specific knowledge of someone’s name happens in our lives all the time. For example, when people meet me at church or when I teach college classes, they meet me as “Pastor” or “Professor” or “Doctor.” I’m a person they don’t really know who has a specific title or role. But then they get to know me a little better, they will start to call me “Pastor Danny” or “Professor Slavich.” I’m not just an unknown guy with a title, but a person they know. As we grow closer in relationship, they get to know me simply as “Danny.” Similarly, God is God, but he is even more specifically known by his covenant name, Yahweh God. And Yahweh God is not merely God, or Yahweh God, but he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the Trinity.

Throughout the Bible, each person of the Trinity can claim the divine name.

The Father is Yahweh.

No one really has any debate with this, even the cults and the heretics. The Father is Yahweh: “For us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him” (1 Cor 8:6).

The Son is Yahweh.

Jesus claims that the name of Yahweh, “I Am” (Exodus 3:14) is also his name: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am’” (John 8:58). The Son is the eternally begotten Son of the Father. He was not created or made, but has eternally been the Father’s Son. He has the life of God in himself, yet from the Father “For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). We have difficulty understanding this, because in human experience a father always exists before giving life to his son. God is different. God the Father eternally begets God the Son, so that they have both always existed together forever as one Being.

In other words, at the heart of life is not a primordial ooze, but a personal God. At the heart of life is not an arbitrary algorithm, but a purposeful, happy, and loving Father and Son. Michael Reeves says in his book Delighting in the Trinity,

“Underneath everything there is not 'God,' but the Father eternally loving his Son. At bottom there is the Father, and that means a lively God of love, a God who is no envious, hoarding miser, but who delights to give out his life and being to his Son. Having such a God happily changes everything.”

We know God is a Trinity because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God the Father sent God the Son to become a human man Jesus Christ, to live a perfect, sinless life, to die a sinner’s death on the cross, be buried and raised from the dead. Then God the Father and God the Son sent God the Holy Spirit to fill the church with faith, hope, and love and to help the authors of the Bible write out God’s word for people.

The Spirit is Yahweh.

The divine nature of the Spirit shows up all over the Bible. For example, the Bible says that when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Spirit of God they in fact lied to God himself (Acts 5:3-4). The Spirit knows what only God himself can know: God’s own thoughts. “Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:10-11).

If you really want to know God, you need to know his name. He is God. And God is Yahweh. And Yahweh is Father, Son, and Spirit.