Why Does God Rename People?

QUESTION: I find it very confusing that the names of people seem to change with each chapter in Genesis. Why is this? I ask cause I have a hard time with the whole identity thing at times cause i was given up at 12. I woke up one day and was known as a totally different person. Do you think the people of the bible found it hard to have God change their names? Why would God one day wake up and decide to change someone's identity?

ANSWER: I can understand why having your name changed due to abandonment could make you feel like your identity was being stripped.  And you are right that your name does make a person feel connected to who they are. But if you look at the times that God renames people, it’s very good that God changes names, because he’s trying to replace a deficient identity with a much better one.

So for example, Abram means exalted father.  But after God blesses Abram in Gen 17, he is called Abraham – "father of many". Because he has been called by God to a much, much bigger calling than merely having a great household with many riches and servants. He is told that through him ALL the nations will be blessed.  So in renaming him, God raises his purpose, and calls him into a life that’s so much bigger than he could have ever imagined.

He wasn’t destroying his identity, so much as moving him into his TRUE identity.  But that identity was not something he could have known outside of relationship with God. He couldn’t just pick a new name for himself.  It has to be given by God.  For God knows all our secrets and hidden potentials and he knows what only HE can do with us. 

So he’s an expert in taking what is small and limited in us, and expanding it wildly. Then he gives us that new identity, and amazing things happen.

It's true, Abraham resists his new name from God.  But that just indicates how attached we can be to an old person, disappointing and disappointed, yet familiar. We're limited by our past and can't imagine the power of God and what he can do in us, through us. Just think, for the man who has no kids, his given name is a bitter irony: Exalted father, childless!! God steps in and says, not just you’ll have a son, but you’ll be the father of MANY NATIONS!! More than he could ask or imagine. That’s the power of God’s grace in renaming us in Christ.

Jacob’s name change is also like this, only more drastic. Jacob means, “one who grasps the heel” – metaphorically this meant, deceiver, or usurper.  The guy who trips other people up.  And that’s who he had been up to the name change.  He makes his way in life by being sneaky.  By telling lies.  By being smarter than the next guy and cunningly outwitting his opponents. Trying to stay one step ahead of his manipulations, with his Father, his older brother, Esau, and his father in law, Laban.

When God calls him back to his homeland, he has to face all his lies and trickery. He probably doesn’t want to go, but he’s burned his bridges with Laban - and learned what it is to be on the receiving end of deception.  So he goes back humbled.  But he’s terrified.  He gave Esau good reason to want him dead, and Esau had the means to do it, and had made the threat. 

On the way home, he separates his family and belongings into two camps to protect them, he sends gifts on ahead to placate his brother.  But he has no peace.
That night, he meets God.  The Angel of Yahweh (some think this was a pre-incarnation of Jesus himself) wrestles with him.  This is so profound!  Jacob has tried to get what God was willing to give him all along – by his own means.  Deceiving and struggling with others to get the blessing that God would give him freely.

So now he literally wrestles with the Angelic figure, and in the process God wounds him.  But Jacob, desperate and insecure still, asks for a blessing – knowing somehow he is having a divine encounter.  And the Angel first asks him his name.  Why?  The name Jacob is not just a name – it’s a confession!  To name his old name is to confess who he WAS – a deceiver, “the one who grasps the heel”.  That’s not who you will be, God is trying to tell him, but  I can’t bless you until you can say it and see it – Jacob. 

And then, God gives him his new name, his God-identity:  Israel - "the one who wrestles with God".  For Jacob wasn’t to be the man who gets what he wants by back-channels.  He is to be the man who gets the blessing by being in the face of God, fighting there, pouring out his strength before God, and not being satisfied with anything less than God’s touch, God’s way, even if it wounds him. 

He had been "Jacob", trying to get God’s blessing avoiding pain, now he is Israel not avoiding the pain by cleverness or deception, but struggling with God in the open, and blessing follows.  The Bible says, he leaves that encounter limping, but the "sun shone down on him".  The clouds have lifted, he knows who he is.

I hope you can see just how beautiful this name changing business is. Peter was Simon… and Simon was particularly loud and impetuous, rash and impulsive.  And despite that natural wiring for flakiness, which got him into a lot of trouble, Jesus sees the gifting for leadership, for faith and courage – and so nicknames him “Rock”. Peter.

In a sense, the Gospel renames ALL of us. In older Christian traditions, now unfortunately lost, Christians would often get renamed at baptism, and you’d never hear their old name again. What a great way to think about coming out of darkness of sin, into the light of grace.  You get a new identity in Christ, no longer unloved, now loved. No longer alone, now adopted. No longer sinner, now “Christian” – literally “little Christ”. Rev 2:17 says it like this:

"Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. I will give the victor some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name is inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives it."

So maybe ask yourself, what was my old name (identity) and what is my new name in Jesus? God might surprise you with his answer.

How Old Were The Disciples?

QUESTION:  About the disciples, the question seems to come up often about how they could have written 30 or more years after the crucifixion of the Christ. However, since men started to work at an age that today would be considered inappropriate perhaps as young as 12 - perhaps approximating their ages would provide an answer. So how old were they? (Not exact ages of course.)

RESPONSE:  This question has a surprising answer, as you rightly deduce.  The disciples, likely, were very young.  The question you seem concerned with is how the disciples could be alive and writing about the events of Jesus as late as 95-100 A.D. (as in the case of John).  Even the other authors of the New Testament, like Matthew, Peter and Paul, seem to be (based on common assumptions) too old to be writing when they do, in the mid 60’s and beyond – especially given life spans at the time.

Why do we assume this?  Because we’ve been far more formed by Bible movies

Peter - Movie "Risen"

than by the Biblical data on hand.  Watch almost EVERY Jesus movie ever produced and see how they paint the disciples of Jesus as mostly older than Jesus.  Jesus, everyone agrees, was about 30 years old during his ministry, based on Luke’s explicit aging in 3:23.  But after that, the consistent picture of the

Peter: Movie "Passion"

disciples is of an older Peter and James with long beards, some gray hair, or balding heads, clearly middle aged, and clearly older than their strapping young Rabbi.

Thomas: Movie "Son of God"

Now, there is no indicator in Scripture of a specific age for any disciple, but the clues from the Gospels and from a little research into 1st century Jewish culture tell us that this idea, depicted over and over in movies and pictures, is almost certainly wrong.

Let’s go to the Mishnah, the oral interpretations of Torah (law) at the time of Jesus.  It shows a very regimented educational/life path for young boys in Judaism:

 “At five years old [one is fit] for the Scripture, at ten years the Mishnah (oral Torah, interpretations) at thirteen for the fulfilling of the commandments, at fifteen the Talmud (making Rabbinic interpretations), at eighteen the bride-chamber, at twenty pursuing a vocation, at thirty for authority (able to teach others)."

So, in the time of Jesus, almost all Jewish young men were married, and usually by age 18.  But in the Gospels, Peter is the only disciple known to have been married (Matthew 8:14-15).  No other disciples’ wives are ever mentioned.  So this tells us that the disciples may have all been under 20, with some as young as 15.

What bolsters this case is the educational pathway of that time.  Education for the Jewish child concluded at the age of 15.  But just as every parent today would be proud to have a son or daughter do much more education to become a high-status medical doctor or professor, Jewish parents would desire their boys to be selected for Rabbinic training. 

If you were 15 and done with your basic training in Torah, a boy who was bright enough, (or whose parents were rich enough) would find a rabbi to take them on as a student.  You’d have to show proficiency and it’s assumed many students had very large portions of the Law and Prophets committed to memory.  Paul’s case may have been like this, where an extremely bright Jewish student from Tarsus, is sent by his rich parents to Jerusalem to study under a great Rabbi (Gameliel).

If your son didn’t merit this honor, they would enter the workforce by their mid-teens, and in almost every case, apprentice under their fathers in the family trade. 

So this explains a few things we see in the Gospels. 

One, it means that if most of the disciples are apprenticing at their trades when called, as in the case of James and John working in the family fishing business, they must have been older than 15.  But, because they are also unmarried, likely not older than 20.  Peter is the exception to this, but because his brother Andrew is not married, and they’re working with James and John (Luke 5:10 - perhaps their two families have a joint business venture), it stands to reason they are roughly the same age.  It would be odd to have a brother twice as old as you, for example.

Two, because we find them working in trades at the time Jesus calls them, none of the disciples likely were “star students”.  After their formal education was complete, they were not taken for mentorship by any local Rabbi.  And so, being passed over as teenagers, they are perhaps shocked to be considered worthy of apprenticeship with a traveling Rabbi who was beginning to gain a reputation at that time. 

The great honor of being chosen for Rabbinic training, especially after being passed over, would compel most Jewish boys to jump at the chance to leave blue collar work behind (Luke 5:11).  The fact of their being passed over for classic training explains why after the resurrection, the Chief priests note they're level of education.  They clearly hadn’t passed muster for special Rabbinic training, but having been with Jesus for 3 years, and seeing him alive again, gave them special qualifications:

Acts 4:13:  When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and knew that they had been with Jesus. HB

Three, it explains why Peter is painted as the spokesman for the disciples – he’s the only one married, so therefore probably the oldest.  But, as I said, we don’t have to infer that he was THAT much older, since his brother Andrew is still unmarried and he works with close friends James and John, also unmarried.  So positing an age for Peter of no more than 25 is very plausible, in stark contrast to the 45 - 55 year old Peter in most plays, movies and other depictions.

Four, the Mishnah explains why Jesus didn’t start his ministry until age 30 even though his mission of redemption by death could have been accomplished at any age.  Why not go through with it sooner?  Well, no Rabbi would take disciples until age 30, and no disciples would seek out a Rabbi younger than that.  Additionally Jesus had to take students to steward the Church when he was gone.  So really, Jesus begins at the very moment it was possible to begin - when it was culturally appropriate to assume authority and take on disciples.

Now, the only other disciple besides Peter who might have been outside his teens was Matthew, who likely needed to be an established adult to be an independent contractor with the Roman government as a tax collector.

But think of other indicators of the youthfulness of the disciples:

In Matthew 11:25, Mark 10:24, Luke 10:21, and John 13:33, Jesus calls his trainees “little children” or “little ones”.  As the Incarnate Word/Son of God, we think Jesus can make a paternal reference to any human and it would be fitting… and yes it would.  But let’s not void Jesus human nature and the nature of his patriarchal cultural.  Older men, were treated with respect as fathers.  Calling his disciples “children” may indicate they were mostly – gasp! – children! Or at least much younger than their Master.

Also, John and James' mother Salome wanted to arrange where her boys would sit with Jesus at the Kingdom table.  Imagine this scene if the brothers were grown men (Matthew 20:20-24)!  But if her boys were teenagers when chosen, it would explain her lack of resistance to them leaving the family biz ("finally we’ll have a doctor in the family!") and her maternal pushiness on their behalf.  Remember also that Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder” because they were probably either loud or bold, characteristics of youth.

Here’s something else.  In Exodus 30:14-15, we read that every male over the age of 20 was to pay a tax to maintain the “Sanctuary” or Temple.  In Matthew 17:24-27, we read that when questioned about this tax, Jesus instructs Peter to pay this tax – but only for “me and you”.  But all the disciples are present (“they came to Capernaum” vs 24). We might reasonably conclude that the others were under age 20 and did not need to pay.

So all of this suggests a very startling, and in some ways endearing picture of the disciples.  They're boys!  Mostly older teenagers, young Jewish bachelors, and not blue-chip Harvard stars either.  Nevertheless, they are honored to be taken for apprenticeship by a Rabbi perhaps more than 10 years older than they.  Don’t our hearts go out to them more as they struggle to grasp all that Jesus is saying to them?  Don’t we cheer for them more as these young 20 year old's buck a corrupt priestly system and boldly declare a New Kingdom on planet earth?  Don’t we have more patience with their blunders and pride?  As a father to 2 young men in this age bracket, I tear up with pride thinking about the stands they have made for this same Kingdom, and how Jesus is pleased to choose and use the likes of these (Matt 11:25).

And as to the plausibility of them being young enough to still be around to write about all this in the 60’s – 90’s, there is no problem at all.  Young John, perhaps 15 during the life of Jesus, would be only 85 if he wrote his gospel, letters and Revelation in the year 100.