Do not use the LORD your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the LORD won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.
—Exodus 20:7
Has anyone ever tried to steal your identity? It happens to me on a near weekly basis on Facebook. Some years ago, I created what Facebook calls an “organizational page” on which I post short reflections, news, and updates for my congregation and people who read my books. I also maintain a private page for my immediate family. Several times a month, however, someone will create a fake Adam Hamilton profile on Facebook, copy photos from my personal and organizational pages, and send friend requests to the people who follow my organizational account.1
If someone accepts a friend request from the person claiming to be me, the fake Adam Hamilton will begin sending them messages asking how “I” might pray for them. Eventually, the scammer starts asking the person for money for “mission projects” in Africa. Most people figure out the scam, as the fake Adam Hamilton usually writes in stilted English. I report these fraudulent accounts to Facebook as soon as I hear about them, and Facebook removes them within a few days of their creation.
These scammers frustrate me. They seek to defraud people in my name. I’ve reported them to the authorities, but law enforcement can’t do anything until a crime has been committed. Even then, they show little ability to address fake social media accounts. Because of these accounts, I never ask persons to be my friends on Facebook, and I tell my congregation that if they receive a friend request from someone claiming to be me, it is a fraudulent account. The thought of someone being taken advantage of or hurt in my name on social media really angers me.
In the third commandment, God says to the Israelites, “Do not use the LORD your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the LORD won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.” In the New Revised Standard Version it reads, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” The King James Version is what most are familiar with: “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
Each of these translations captures a slightly different interpretation of this important commandment. We often think of this commandment as forbidding “cussing,” but as we take a closer look at the historical context, we’ll find that the commandment likely addressed using God’s name in ways similar to how the scammers on Facebook use mine. As he does with the other commands, we’ll see that Jesus calls us not merely to avoid doing what is prohibited by the commandment but to positively “hallow” God’s name—not only in our words but also in our actions.
As I noted in chapter 1, I take God’s name, “Yahweh,” to mean something like “I am BEING itself.” Or “Everything that exists derives its existence from me.” Or, perhaps best, “I am the Source and Sustainer of everything.” God’s name speaks to God’s identity and nature and the relationship of God to everything that exists. His name is a sweeping claim about who God is and how we are meant to relate to him.
Saint Paul seemed to capture this same sense of God’s name when he spoke to the philosophers of ancient Athens, saying of God (while quoting a Greek poet), “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, NRSV). The twentieth-century existentialist theologian Paul Tillich described God as the “Ground of Being.” By this name, God makes clear that everything derives its existence from and is sustained by Yahweh.
God’s name, “Yahweh” (and its abbreviated form, “Yah”), appears more than six thousand times in the Hebrew Bible, more than all other names for God combined. Yet in many English translations, “Yahweh” never once appears in the text except in a footnote or in the translation notes. Sadly, translators have replaced “Yahweh” with “the LORD,” which misses the power of the name and its frequent use by the biblical authors.
Consider for a moment all of the familiar passages that contain “the LORD.” I’ll quote a few, citing them as they are actually written. Psalm 23 (King James Version) begins, “Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want.” It ends, “And I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.” The most important creed of Judaism, the Shema Israel in Deuteronomy, says, “Israel, listen! Our God is Yahweh! Only Yahweh! Love Yahweh your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5, KJV). Those famous words from Micah 6:8 (NRSV) actually read, “What does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” There are more than six thousand other verses like this.
So why do translators substitute “the LORD” (with “LORD” in all caps) for “Yahweh”? The practice began among the Jewish people in response to the very commandment we’re considering. Sometime before or near the time of Jesus, there developed a great concern that a person might inadvertently violate the third commandment by misusing God’s name. It was deemed better not to say the name at all. Written Hebrew has no vowels. Scribes use dots or points between the consonants to signify what vowel sound should be made. Long after the time of Moses, when scribes copying the Hebrew Bible came to the divine name, “Yahweh,” they would insert the vowel points for the Hebrew word adonai, which means “lord” (authority, ruler, owner, master, leader). They did this to remind readers not to speak God’s name but to substitute the word adonai for “Yahweh.” Thus began the practice of substituting the word “LORD” for “Yahweh.”
Because the Jewish people stopped speaking the name, no one is quite sure how it should be pronounced. When the vowel pointing for adonai is pronounced with the consonants for “YHWH,” one comes up with “Jehovah” or “Yehovah.” It’s unlikely that this is how God’s name was actually pronounced, though some argue that it was. Most scholars believe the original pronunciation of the name was “Yaw-way.”
Ultimately both Jews and Christians, when translating the Hebrew Bible from Hebrew to English, follow the same principle: Instead of transliterating God’s name into English as “Yahweh,” they substitute for this name “the LORD.” For the rest of this book, when the English translation has substituted “the LORD” for “Yahweh,” I will usually offer the word “Yahweh,” as the Hebrew actually has it. (For example, Do not use Yahweh your God’s name as if it were of no significance; Yahweh won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.)
Why should we care about what seems an esoteric concern about a cryptic Hebrew word for God? Because in this name, God was seeking to help us know that our lives, and all that exists, are utterly and completely dependent upon him; he is Yahweh. And we should care because this is the name God has said his people would know him by.
I would argue that any name we might use for Yahweh should be treated with reverence and respect—be it “the LORD,” “God,” or, as Christians, “Jesus Christ” or “the Holy Spirit.” This commandment reminds us that God takes personally how we use, or misuse, his name. Do you revere God? Then don’t use God’s name as though it were of no significance.
In the rest of this chapter I’d like to mention several applications of this command to our lives today, then to turn to how Jesus gave us a new way of understanding and living it.
My family wasn’t active in church when I was little, but somehow they managed to instill the third commandment into my mind in this form: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. To take God’s name in vain, it was implied, meant using profanity, whether that profanity mentioned God or not. I seem to recall my mother threatening to “wash out your mouth with soap” if I used profanity, though thankfully I don’t remember her ever carrying through on this threat.
The word “profanity,” along with the word “profane,” comes from the Latin pro (outside) and fanum (temple). It meant, literally, taking something holy from within a temple and throwing it out of the temple. In other words, debasing or desecrating something holy; stripping something of its sacred character.
What does it look like to profane and desecrate God’s name, “Yahweh” (or any other name representing God)? At the very least, it would mean to use it without reverence, to use it casually, as if it didn’t matter. The Hebrew word translated as “in vain” in the King James Version or “of no significance” in the Common English Bible is the word lassaw, which means “to consider lightly.” While the command specifically speaks of the name “Yahweh,” again I would argue that it applies to the other words we use for Yahweh or his Son—words like “God” or “Lord” or “Jesus.” Do you ever use any of these words in a way that is irreverent, rendering them of no significance?
On a recent trip to the grocery store, I ran into a five-year-old boy who is a part of the church I serve. His mother was there too. As I was speaking to them, the little boy saw something that caught his attention and exclaimed, “Oh my God!” His mother looked a bit embarrassed that her son had just used the word “God” in this way in front of the pastor, aware that this might be seen as a reflection of how she used the word “God” in her own home. But the five-year-old was in good company. I’ve known many adults, including a few preachers and even a bishop or two, who used this same figure of speech. Others use Jesus’s name as an expletive. “Jesus Christ!” they say in anger or frustration. I’ve also heard people exclaim, “Jesus H. Christ!” when they stub their toe, hit their finger while hammering a nail, or drive a golf ball into the rough. (What does that H stand for, anyway?)
If you use “God,” “Jesus,” “Lord,” or any other word for God in a way that does not reflect reverence for God, I’d encourage you to stop. This commandment, at the very least, makes clear that this is something that displeases God.
But while profanity is the most obvious application of the commandment today, it is actually the least serious of the violations of this command, and it is unlikely that “cussing” is what Moses or God was really thinking about when the commandment was given. I suspect most ancient people would not have considered using the names of their gods in such careless ways. So let’s take a deeper look at the ways in which we use God’s name.
Many scholars have suggested that the primary intent of this commandment had to do with the practice of swearing oaths in the name of God. It called the ancient Israelites (and us) to keep their promises and tell the truth.
In the ancient world, when people made promises or were seeking to emphasize that they were telling the truth, they would swear by the name of their god. We still do the same thing. In a courtroom, it used to be common for people to “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” Even now you’ll hear people accompanying statements that might be hard to believe with the exclamation “I swear to God!” The invoking of God’s name is a way of offering a guarantee that we are telling the truth.
We also invoke God’s name when making important promises. One example from politics is the presidential oath of office. The oath, administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is usually sworn on a Bible as the incoming president recites these words: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Most recent presidents have actually placed their hands on two Bibles. Over the years, many presidents have added the words “I will, so help me God” to the end of the oath, though it is not technically part of it.
Consider, too, the wedding vows that most people swear. In my tradition, the vows are (I’ll use my name and my wife’s name) “In the name of God, I, Adam, take you, LaVon, to be my wife. To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish as long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow.”
When I officiate weddings, I remind the couple that these promises are not only to each other but also to God. Truth telling and promise keeping are essential to a healthy marriage. And two things that are sure to kill a marriage are infidelity and dishonesty. We need both promise keeping and truth telling to make our most intimate of relationships work.
The Torah itself makes clear this connection between truth telling and promise keeping and the third commandment. We see this in The Jewish Study Bible’s translation of the third commandment: “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God; for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by his name.”2 Leviticus 19:12 echoes the same: “You must not swear falsely by my name, desecrating your God’s name in doing so; I am Yahweh.” And Numbers 30:2 draws out the point more practically: “When a man makes a solemn promise to Yahweh or swears a solemn pledge of binding obligation for himself, he cannot break his word. He must do everything he said.” These texts make clear that misusing Yahweh’s name is about not living up to the commitments we’ve made in our relationships with other people.
I’ve officiated many funeral services where friends of the deceased say of their loved one, “Their word was their bond.” This is usually said of older adults—the phrase doesn’t get used as often today—but perhaps we should reintroduce it to upcoming generations. The idea of always keeping our promises regardless of the cost often seems to have been lost. But to be a person of character includes promise keeping and truth telling.
Having considered a couple applications of the third commandment, let’s turn now to how Jesus interpreted and applied it. Once again, Jesus’s teaching moves from the “thou shalt not” of the commandment to a positive ethic for how we’re meant to live our lives, an ethic that is ultimately life-giving.
Thus far, we’ve learned that this commandment has to do with not using God’s name in a way that profanes it, with not representing God in a way that defames his name, and with staying true to the promises we’ve made. Jesus’s teaching is consistent with these same concerns, but in the Sermon on the Mount, he takes up the issue of promise keeping and carries it even further:
You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to Yahweh.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one. (Matthew 5:33–37, NRSV)
In Jesus’s day, people developed carefully crafted oaths sworn by heaven, or by the temple, or the gold in the temple, with the intent of reassuring the other person that they would fulfill the oath (think statements like “I swear on my mother’s grave!”) or perhaps leaving wiggle room to get out of the promise. But Jesus challenged them, “Enough with the crafty promises! Just be a person of your word.” Sometimes keeping your word is costly, but keep it anyway. Concerning this, Psalm 15 notes, “Who can live in your tent, Yahweh?…Someone who keeps their promise even when it hurts” (Psalm 15:1 and 4c).
We live in a time when truth seems hard to come by and promises are often not kept. We’ve seen national leaders of both political parties tell bald-faced lies with no repercussions. We no longer find it surprising when someone goes back on their word after their promise becomes costly. But people of integrity continue to tell the truth. They do the right thing even when it is costly. They do not say one thing and do another.
Years ago, I visited a large church in Houston, seeking to learn from its staff. I spoke with the executive pastor and asked him to tell me about his senior pastor. I’ll never forget how he described his senior pastor. He said, “The people who know him the best respect him the most.” By this he meant that those who watched his senior pastor’s behavior most closely knew that he “practiced what he preached.” No doubt you can think of people from your own life who fit that description.
Years ago, I needed to rebuild the deck on my house. A neighbor suggested I call Marty, a master carpenter and craftsman. I did, and I have been using him ever since. Marty is unassuming, kind, smart, honest, and one of the hardest-working guys you’ll ever meet. He’ll tell you he won’t be the fastest guy to do the job—he often works by himself—but no one will do the job better. He never cuts corners. He knows the right way to fix things. He gives me a price up front and never charges me more. The quality of his workmanship is outstanding. From years of working with him, I’ve come to know that I can trust Marty. And I know when he suggests that something be repaired, it’s not because he’s trying to make a buck but because he genuinely cares for me and wants what is best for me and my family. His contracts and work are not explicitly done in the name of God, but I believe his faith shapes the man he is, and that, in turn, shapes the way he does his work.
This is the true test of character. Telling the truth and keeping your promises is not hard when it costs you nothing. But real character is seen when telling the truth or keeping our promises comes at a price. Are you willing to tell the truth, and willing to keep your promise, even when it costs you something?
There is one final way I’d like us to think about this commandment and how it applies to us. We learned in the last chapter that while we’re not to make images of God to worship, God created humanity in his image, and we are meant to reflect his image to one another. As God’s people, we bear the name of God. And we can speak about God not only through our words but through the way we live our lives.
Have you ever noticed on the backs of certain commercial trucks a decal saying, “How’s my driving?” followed by a phone number? The decals are there to hold the drivers accountable and to help the company know if it has an unsafe driver behind the wheel of one of its trucks. I once heard the CEO of a company contact one of his employees who was speeding in the company van, weaving in and out of traffic and driving aggressively. He told the driver, “When you are driving the van with our company logo on the side, you are representing us. What you’ve told everyone you pass, every driver who feels you were unsafe or were rude in how you drive, is that we as an organization are unsafe, aggressive, and rude. You and your driving may be the only thing people know about us, and this kind of driving is not okay.”
The Israelites were God’s chosen people, called to be a “light for the nations.” They were meant to represent and reveal God’s character and will. Later Jesus said the same of his disciples, the church. “You are the light of the world,” he told them, “a city built on a hill that cannot be hid….Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:14–16, NRSV).
At the church I pastor, the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, we have a decal people can put on their car bumper or window identifying the car’s occupants as members of Resurrection—a circle with a portion of the United Methodist cross and flame within, and our web address: cor.org. This is a wonderful way to share your faith, except when we drive or act while driving in a way that doesn’t reflect well upon our faith. The same is true when we wear crosses around our necks or make clear to our coworkers that we are people of faith. As people who identify ourselves with God, our lives speak and we witness to our faith as much by our actions as by our words.
Pastors and teachers who regularly speak, preach, and teach in the name of God are regularly in danger of violating this commandment. Each week, the preacher stands in the pulpit declaring the “counsel of God” (see Acts 20:27). Yet they (and I include myself here) are mere mortals whose theological reflections are at times faulty. Sure, we have the scripture to guide us. But the scripture must be interpreted and applied, and that is where the challenge comes in. The implications of this are that as we preach, write, or teach, we have ample opportunity to violate the third commandment, misusing God’s name or misrepresenting God’s heart, character, and will. Are any of us, with our three pounds of gray matter inside our head, really up to comprehending the mind of God? It has been said that if you have fully understood God, your God is way, way too small.
With thousands of preachers, teachers, and theologians writing and speaking on behalf of God, it can sound like the aftermath of the Tower of Babel, with authorities professing very different understandings of who God is, how God works, and what constitutes God’s will. I know Christians whose God seems clearly to be a Tea Party Republican, and others whose God is clearly a left-wing Democrat. One hundred miles from where I live, congregants at the infamous Westboro Baptist Church carry their signs to funerals, churches, and public gatherings proclaiming who God hates. More recently, I think of the preachers and rabbis who blamed gay and lesbian people for provoking God to send the novel coronavirus.
I also think of the kind of half-truths well-meaning Christians sometimes say, hoping to be helpful or comforting to those who have experienced tragedy. When someone loses a job, is diagnosed with cancer, or loses a close friend or family member, inevitably a Christian friend will seek to console them with the words “It must have been the will of God.” I recall speaking with a parent who told me that she had stopped believing in God after the death of her son, several years earlier. It wasn’t his death that had turned her from God. It was the people who told her that her son’s death was God’s will. She asked, “Why would I ever love and serve a God who killed my five-year-old son?”
One wonders how God must feel hearing this cacophony of voices, some speaking in ways that grossly misrepresent him. This is not new, of course—the false prophets of Israel did the same. But the challenge is that the false prophets never believe they are false prophets. They believe they are rightly interpreting and proclaiming the will of God. Often they can point to chapter and verse in the Bible to support their claims. I find it interesting that even the devil quotes scripture when seeking to tempt Jesus. That alone should leave us a bit cautious about declaring, “Thus sayeth the Lord.”
Some years ago, a study was done of young adults who were not actively involved in any form of church. When asked why they were not involved, their top response was the hypocrisy they saw in self-identified Christians. It was Gandhi who famously said that he might have become a Christian, were it not for the Christians he had known. There is no shortage of examples of people who claimed to represent God yet lived in ways that desecrated and defamed the name of God. Priests abusing children, televangelists promising that God will enrich their viewers’ lives if only they send an offering. But this also looks like the myriad ways in which ordinary people of faith don’t practice what they preach.
But if it is true that we can profane God’s name by our words and actions, we can also honor God’s name by our words and actions. Most people become Christians because of a Christian who demonstrated kindness, selfless love, justness, and mercy—people who represented God well by their words and actions. I am a Christian in part because my Roman Catholic grandmother represented Jesus to me by her kindness and love in a way that drew me to God. And because of the love shown me by a youth pastor and pastor of a small church in my community when I was fourteen. I’m guessing that as you reflect on your own journey, more than one person comes to mind who helped you become a person of faith.
Let’s conclude this chapter by considering Jesus’s approach to keeping this commandment, not merely by avoiding profaning God’s name but by positively hallowing God’s name in our words and in our deeds.
Jesus’s entire ministry was an effort to hallow God’s name. His efforts to heal the sick, welcome sinners, and feed the hungry were all means of demonstrating God’s presence among human beings. He described his ministry as the “works I do in my Father’s name” (John 10:25) and said his purpose in life was to reveal God’s name to the world (John 17:6).
In Matthew, Jesus says, “Let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). To a similar end, it’s often been said that you are the only sermon some people will hear, the only Bible some will read, and the only image of God some will ever see.
We live in a time when fewer and fewer young adults, Gen Z and millennials, are engaged in church. As I noted above, many have been turned off by the hypocrisy they’ve seen from people in pews. For some, it feels like an older person’s activity. Others find it boring and irrelevant. Many have some kind of faith—often identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Most are repelled by any religion that feels like it is self-absorbed, narcissistic, judgmental, or mean-spirited.
As a pastor, I’ve had the joy of seeing many young adults return to church and become excited about their faith. They returned, in part, because they discovered a faith that spoke to both their intellect and their hearts. But from talking with many of them, I’ve come to see that they were most likely drawn by watching people of faith serve others selflessly through acts of compassion, justice, and mercy. And I see them doing the same in turn.
Recently I ate lunch at a restaurant near the church I serve. I was sitting alone, working on my weekend sermon. But midway through the meal, I overheard two young adults talking about the church. Not meaning to eavesdrop but unable to tune them out, I heard one tell his friend that he wasn’t sure what he thought about attending a really big church, “but I love what they do for our community.” The other spoke up, saying he’d heard about our work with low-income children through our partnerships with elementary schools across the city. He had also heard about our ministry to children, youth, and adults with special needs. He said, “If I was going to be a part of a church, it would be a church like that.” These were two young people who didn’t go to church, but they had been touched by our church’s role in representing God’s love to our community.
At one point in the Gospels, the disciples come to Jesus and say to him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” In response, he gives them what we know as “the Our Father” or “the Lord’s Prayer.” In it, as I’ve alluded to above, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Hallowed be thy name.” To hallow God’s name is revere it or treat it as holy. It is the opposite of desecrating or profaning God’s name. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, I ponder each line in my heart and often expand upon it in my own words. With regard to this line, I often say, “Lord, please use me to hallow your name. In my thoughts, in my words, and in my deeds, may I bring glory to your name.”
At the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, I heard a story from a congregant named Bryan that was a powerful example of hallowing God’s name with one’s actions. One day, Bryan went to pick up a pizza at a local restaurant. His office is located near one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Kansas City. He’d heard of a pizza place there and wanted to support its business, so he called in a carryout order. When he arrived, he saw there were a lot of children and youth waiting to pick up pizza. There were no parents to be seen.
Puzzled, he asked the owner, a man named Gary, what was up. He learned that for decades, word on the street had been that if a child’s parents didn’t feed them at night, Gary would provide them with a slice of pizza so they wouldn’t go to bed hungry. Bryan was in awe. He paid for his pizza, and as he got ready to leave, Gary looked around at all these kids waiting for their free pizza, and he said with a smile, “Isn’t God great?!”
Bryan told me, “I thought, here’s a guy running a pizza place in one of the most underprivileged streets in the city during a global pandemic, and the only thing I could see on his face was pure joy. It was just awesome to see.” No one expects a restaurant owner to give away food for free, but in doing so, this man became the vehicle by which God gave kids their daily bread.
This is what it looks like to hallow God’s name. When we honor God’s name in this way, we provide life to others, and we find life and joy in the process.
As my followers, you represent me. Just as I came to bring light to the world, and that light lives in you, I want you to let your light shine, that others might be drawn to, not repelled from, my Father because of you. You’ll find joy and meaning and life as you seek to live each day in such a way that you hallow my name in your thoughts, words, and deeds.