“In the Name of Jesus” Is Not What You Think! | Logos Tutorial

Tonight, we're gonna take a closer look at a commonly used phrase that I believe a lot of us Christians are completely missing. We don't really know what it means, biblically speaking. We're missing what it's really referring to, and so therefore, we don't know how to live by it or apply it to our everyday circumstances.

It's the phrase, in the name of Jesus, or in the name of God. How many of you have used that phrase before, or you've heard somebody use it before? How many of you think that it's basically the magic phrase that ends every prayer, right?

That's what I thought in the past. That's how I use the phrase often. I still very often end my prayers that way. And I'm here to tell you, friends, it's not what you think it is. We're missing the deeper meaning behind the concept, and I believe it's robbing us of the deeper, more rich experience of what it means to be a Christian in today's culture.

The Meaning of “In the Name of Jesus”

So in this episode, we're going to explore the phrase, because guess what? The name of God is defined in the Scripture. Before we go any further, welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that Jesus wants you to be.

Make sure to like, sub, and share this one around if it blesses you, and I pray that it does, all right? So we're going to get into this particular concept, but I think I need some help. So without further ado, I'm going to bring on my two friends, Jorge Gil of Worldview Media and Cross-Examined, and also Scott Lindsey of Logos Bible Software.

Jorge and Scott, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you, brother.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, happy New Year, friends. Let's just jump right in here. Now, I have a way of using Logos in my own studies, and I realize, Scott, I was talking about this with you, I know a fraction of what you know with regards to Logos.

So let's do a thought experiment, gentlemen. Let's think about a congregant who just wants to know what the phrase, in the name of Jesus, is really referring to, all right? So they've got Logos open, but they're brand new to it, they don't know how to use it.

Where do they begin? Let's begin here. The congregant just wants to know what in the name of Jesus or in the name of God means. So we have the menu bar here on the left side. Here's what I would do, correct me if this is not the best thing to do.

I'm going to go to search, and I notice here, guys, there is a menu bar at the very top, and I have some options here. So I've got Bible, Books, Factbook, Morph, Media, all this stuff. I think I need to just stick with All, because what All's going to do is it's going to search through everything I have in my library.

It's going to search through whether I've got books, whether I've got articles, whatever I have, and I'm going to type in here. Now, All's also going to bring up things I do not have. So it's going to show me the books that I don't have, and then also it's going to give me a selection from those books, like a little preview, and tell me what's in the books.

So is that, am I thinking about this in the correct way, gentlemen?

Yeah, I like to say that All is doing two things. One, it's your library. So, you know, Logos is only as good as the books that are inside it, and I think that's a distinctive of other AI options, is this isn't robots, this isn't some random opinion.

These are trusted theological resources and commentaries. You mentioned theological journals. So it's kind of AI locked down, if you will. So what we didn't do is just take the internet and plug it into Logos.

That would not be good. So All is not only your library, Nate, but what is also available to you. Because Logos, I think a week or two, hit the 250 ,000 mark. I mean, a quarter million books available in Logos, right?

So, you know, there'll be something this year that you'll deep dive into. You know, maybe it's the names of God. You'll do that for a month. There's always something that I'm like, I'm studying that for the next 30 days, right?

So I love to jump into the All search because I don't know what I don't know, meaning I don't know what other books might be available. So that is absolutely a great starting point. But books, the other search option that I use probably more frequently because that's what I have.

That is my library that I've been building for the last 27 years at Logos. But both are phenomenal and both of them are super valuable. So starting with All, good place to start.

Let's try All. Yeah, let's do All. And I'm going to type in a question and I'm going to be specific about this question because I don't want Logos to get confused about what I'm asking. So what is the definition of the phrase name of God?

And the reason why I asked that is because, yeah, go ahead, Jorge.

I was just going to say one of the things that I want to highlight, and I think I learned this from Scott not too long ago, is that now we're able to ask questions the same way that we speak to other people, right?

We have that humanized ability now that go and ask questions before. I remember now I've been using Logos since I think 2015, 2016. And back then you had to do keyword searches and you had to use brackets and you had to use, you know, close to and you had to use a bunch of different characters to be able to trigger certain functions.

Now, all you have to do is ask a question like you talking to a scholar. And that right there for me, a person with ADHD, I'm 42 years old and I'm super, you know, and I'm big on the on the on the, you know, hyper side of things and everything is a squirrel to me.

This right here allows me to be able to have, quote unquote, a conversation with Logos and know that I'm going to get. Solid answers that is going to allow me to then dig deeper into the scriptures that I think that it's worth the highlight that alone.

Yeah, I agree, I like that feature, that's how I think, and, you know, I write the questions the way that I think as well. And again, I'm trying to avoid an answer that gives me the names of God because I'm not asking about that.

I'm asking about how the phrase is defined, how it's used in the Bible. And that's why I asked that specifically. So I'm just going to pull that up and click enter. And then it's going to it's going to sound like Star Trek in my mind.

That's how, you know, when they asked the female computer a question, that's what the noise was. So immediately I have what looks to me like is basically a synopsis of several different sources, some within my library, some that are not, of what the answer is.

Now, this is incredibly helpful. And I'm just going to go ahead and take a look at it really quick. So it says the phrase the name of God.

Can you do it? Can you do us a favor? Can you make this a little bigger? Can you hit over there the little dots so we can all see it? You know, because I not only have ADHD, but my vision is not the best.

You know, when you hit 40 all the check engine lights come on. So I'm right about there. I think is Scott, can you help us? You see you. You need to teach us how to use this, man.

Yeah. Three little dots in the top right corner. Yeah. And then just there you go. Make your. There you go. Boom. And then anybody watching over 50 like Mr. Scott here, that's a key feature of Logos being able to have a man additions of everything in Logos.

Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen, brother.

Amen. So let's take a look at this real quick. So the phrase name of God in the biblical context refers to more than just a title. Now, this is what I suspected. And that is the case. It represents now.

Here it is. It represents God's entire being, nature and character, according to one of the articles in the Bible mentions God's name. It signifies his full revelation encompassing his attributes and actions.

So so here we have not just a synopsis of the answer. We also have you see one here, one, two, two, three. I see there are references below with hyperlinks to go to these particular sources.

So each one of those each one of those blue numbers will actually activate the resource. And I believe I don't know if you have like like a Word document open, because if you click the copy feature, it will pull out all the resources that used to create this quick summary, too.

So I think that's one of the major things that has helped me trace back the resources that he used to give me or to produce that quick summary. And that right there is a game changer because I can grab a summary, understand the concept, and they later on go deep, dig deeper into it.

Right now, Jorge and Scott, notice it's not magic words, right, so in the name of God, there's no magic words that we need to repeat in order to make our prayers more valid. No, instead the phrase. And we'll go deep into this a little bit further, but it's actually a catch all term for a ton of biblical concepts.

It refers to, like you said, God's being, his very nature, his character, his attributes, his glory.

The second point says it's synonymous with the glory of God.

Glory of God. That's right. Now, if I want to go deeper, I can click on one of these references here. So I'm going to just click on number two and look at that. I have that. So I have this one and I'll just to help us out, I'll make it bigger.

But yeah, so now I see. Yeah, it's God's revelation in nature. But not only that, and down here, the glory of God. So this is the source here. Not only that, but notice, guys, I also have scripture references.

So I have Psalm eight, verse one here. If I want to go deeper, I can click that and open that up and take a look at how it's used, the name of God. Also down here, Psalm 72, verse 19. So and this is from the I have this in my library, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

So what? Wait a second, Jorge. Like at this point, am I on the right track? Like, is there something I'm missing? What else should I be doing or this congregant should be doing if we're looking into these things, you think?

Well, if you scroll synopsis is a brand new feature. And again, I need to distinguish AI and logos versus maybe something like chat GPT. The big difference is cited sources. That's the trouble or problem with a lot of AI out there.

They spit out an answer and you don't know where did this come from, right? So the fact that logos is literally giving you the references to the scholarly resources, but if you scroll down a little bit, Nate, you'll actually hit some of your top articles.

And one of which is the one that you mentioned from the international. It's the second one where it says the phrase is named now.

Yeah.

Notice when you float on the first paragraph there, the summarize button. So this is brand new to logo, the new version of logos because of AI. That article, Nate is a couple pages long. And if you have time, great.

Read it all. Click the summarize button though, Nate and AI and logos will summarize that massive article and give you a paragraph or two. Now, the other thing I want to point out is all of this is now on your mobile device.

Okay.

So I love to have deep study sitting in front of my computer, but this little setup does not go with me in my car or when I'm walking with my wife and I have theological questions all the time. So I can't overstress how awesome it is to have what you just did in my back pocket, Android, iPhone, iPad, because that's usually where a question like this will pop into my head, or it might be in a discussion I'm having with somebody.

Maybe it's a believer, a nonbeliever. What does the Bible say about this? And I'm confused about this theological idea. So Synopsys, incredible. I mean, my son Nate just started seminary and we've been hanging out at a coffee shop, going over this new logos.

And Synopsys, I kind of said, Chase, I love you, but I kind of don't really right now because you get this for seminary. I'm like, are you kidding me? I mean, when I was in seminary, I had to do this manually, right?

I had to go find the sources, stitch them together, because if they're not cited, you're going to get an F on the paper, plagiarism, right? So to have everything cited, have everything in a Synopsys, but then that summarize feature allows me now, Nate, to read multiple articles.

I can read four, five, six lengthy articles and just get the best of it. Just give me the couple paragraphs for now. I'll go back and read more later. But summarize is a massive new feature in logos.

Love it. Love it.

So let me, let me do this, right? So we just barely scratched the surface. Now I'm flipping through the Rolodex of things that I do remember because AI is not doing everything for me just yet. And I realized, well, wait a second.

If I want to be thorough, right? I remember that in Deuteronomy 18, God's name is referred to very specifically, and it's attached to this prophecy of a coming prophet, one like Moses, right? So let me see how that's used.

So again, I'm going to try to be very specific about the question that I'm asking. So I'm going to go ahead and type it in here. But this time I'm going to try to square it with a biblical passage. So Deuteronomy, yeah, something like that.

How is the name of God used in that passage? And so again, we can pull this up, find the synopsis. And it turns out, according to Deuteronomy 18, God's name is used by true prophets when speaking on his behalf.

The passage indicates that God's authentic spokesman would speak in Yahweh's name. So what we're dealing with also, so if we're trying to catch, you know, again, what this phrase means in the name of God, it refers to God's being, it refers to his character and attributes, but also as it turns out, it refers to his authority, the authority to speak, right?

So this is not, again, so if you're thinking about this, that's a magic phrase that you end a prayer with. It refers to much more than that. Now, Jorge, I know that Jesus, I know we're saying it's not an ending to a prayer, but Jesus did a pray in my name, right?

Yeah.

So what do we make, what do we make of that?

Prayer in Jesus’ Name and the Authority of God

Okay.

So pray in my name and this is, and this is my understanding. Like I said, I, I, I tried to go deep into these topics quite often. And one of the things that me and you were discussing when you asked me this question, I think it was a yesterday, I think me and you were having a lot of fun working on, on the thumbnail.

And we were talking about how, yeah, we have, we had a terrific time doing that. And actually, you know, when I mentioned the whole stuff about my ADHD, the chat section went on, on a, on a back and forth in a banter about, about ADHD.

And I said, I think ADHD, I hold my ADHD as a superpower. And you saw it in action yesterday, how the ideas were flying. And we ended up with that, with that cool thumbnail and why not. But one of the things that we discussed was, you know, the whole idea that when we hear the whole line of, you know, we are saved that, you know, that Jesus was given the name above all names, you know, we were discussing this idea that the name that Jesus received is Yahweh saves, right?

Because that's what the name Jesus means, right? And in the old Testament, we know, especially in the Deuteronomy and that Deuteronomistic literature, we know that there is this thing called the theology of the name.

And when we hear that we need to pray in Jesus' name and we need to call on Jesus' name for salvation, what I understand, and we can, you know, look it up in Logos soon, is this whole idea that it is the, the being that holds the name, that has the power for whatever it is that we're asking for.

And when we pray, it's the will of that being, which in this case is God, you know, that allow us to be able to tap into that power. It's not that somehow just because a being has, or somebody has such and such a name, you know, it automatically is endowed with power.

But it is the power that the being that holds the name. Hold on, I'm getting confused. The being that bestowed a power on such and such a person because it is the being that holds the power and not just the name.

And it is on behalf of God that we ask these things and we submit to his authority and his will. So when we talk about praying in Jesus' name, what we're doing is tapping into the will of Jesus and the access that we have with Jesus.

And at the end of the day is Yahweh who saves us and is the son of God, Jesus Christ, who now has that authority. So when we look at this, and this is one of the things I just popped into my Logos, the whole idea of what is the name theology, we can look at that later.

But these are the things that Logos allow us to see. And I see you searching something. You want me to put the screen back on?

Yeah.

Well, you basically just said what I found. So while you were talking, I went ahead and put in the question, right? Because I know that Jesus says, if you pray in my name, in John 14. So again, I'm just trying to square, I'm using the search feature again and trying to square this concept with a particular passage.

So I asked the question, what does Jesus mean by the phrase in my name? It's basically what you said, Jorge, because, you know, congratulations, you know, you're, you know, your stuff. And that's what it is.

Right. And that's what we're trying to get at here, ladies and gentlemen. And if you can just remember this particular point here, it's pretty clear that what Jesus is doing when he talks about this concept is he's linking up with how that concept is taught in the Old Testament, God speaks of his name in a broad, robust way that incorporates a lot of concepts, including his being, his character, his, his will, his, his authority.

But Jesus does the same thing. Jesus speaks in this same way. And that's what he's, that's what he's moving everyone towards. Cause this is where I want to land. And then if, if we can, we can shift here a little bit and talk about how to communicate this to other Christians with using logos.

But, uh, look at where this is all headed. This is the last thing that Jesus says to his disciples and the great commission, Matthew 28, right? Notice what he says here. All authority. This is a verse 18.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in, here it is, the name of the father and the son and of the Holy spirit. So what's fascinating and what I, I just, this to me is so moving is that it's more than just saying in the name of Jesus at the end of a prayer.

What Jesus is doing is he's saying you must go and, and, and not just baptize people and say in the name of the father, son, and Holy spirit, but you must immerse people's lives into the power, presence, and authority of God.

And that's way more than saying words that's discipleship turned all the way up. And that's what in the name of Jesus and in the name of God is referring to. And so this is great guys. Cause what we did was we, and there's way more to do here with logos.

We just typed in a couple of key questions in the search feature and it took us to the scripture and it gave us a synopsis of what this means. And so again, let's go back to our hypothetical congregant, right?

So now he's typed into the search and he's figured some stuff out, but now he wants to communicate this Scott to his Bible study, he wants to communicate this to his brothers and sisters at church, or maybe he's a pastor and he wants to, I don't know, put some kind of resource together for his church.

This is where I don't know what to do with logos.

Building a Bible Study or Sermon from the Research

So Nate, I do want to interrupt real quick and say something before we give Scott, um, the opportunity to teach us that. Cause like I said, I use this for myself, for my kids at church, but I still have a very rudimentary way to go about building something that I can then take to church and share it with the congregation.

Now I did find something really interesting. So as I was listening to you explain this, I said, what if I just ask logos, you know, um, a question that is open-ended in a sense that it can just give me the context of how this works.

So I'm going to show, this is my screen. This is not Nate's anymore. And all I did was type in what doing in the name, what doing something in the name of means. And he just gave me the answer. He says the phrase, the phrase in the name of carries significant meaning across various contexts in a religious sense, which is exactly what we're talking about right now in a Christian sense, it offers refers to acting with the authority or power associated with a particular figure.

Now he said it 10 times better than I did. Cause I got all tongue twisted, right? Such as praying in Jesus name. This does not necessarily add power to the prayer, but rather aligns the person praying with Christ's authority.

Now that phrase right there is key because we want to do things in Jesus name. We want to pray in Jesus name. But the whole idea is for us to understand, you know, the character and the will and, uh, and, uh, you know, the moral framework of that being that we worship and understand that we do things not because he asked us to, but because we love him and in a way, and in a, in a direct way of, of, of eternal gratitude, you know, we, we follow him and we do what we're supposed to do because he knows better than us.

So when we say that in Jesus name, we align in, uh, uh, we're aligning. The person's praying, uh, will with Christ's authority in a broader context. Obviously one's name can represent their identity, reputation, and standard within the community, especially in collective societies.

The phrase can also be used to justify actions taken for a particular cause or purpose as seen in the, in the expression in the name of progress. Now, and this is one of the things that we do things in Jesus name.

We are wearing Jesus's t-shirt. So when the world sees us, you know, and we do something, we're not supposed to do them, call ourselves Christians, right? We are pretty much either bringing glory or shame to our master, right?

So we have to have that in mind all the time and ultimately doing something in the name of someone or some or something implies acting as their representative. We are Christ ambassadors. That's exactly what the Bible says or in accordance with their principles.

And we're supposed to be, you know, salt and light. And just by typing what doing something in the name of means gave me this synopsis and I can, again, we can go down the rabbit trail of all of these.

And actually I had another search about the name theology, but what we're going to do here now is let Scott teach us how we can grab this knowledge, this research that we just did, and then be able to then that congregant can take it to his Bible study, his church, his small group and the like.

So what we're going to do is while we do it is I will take it from here. And I think, Scott, you're ready to share, or are you still sharing?

Nate?

Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Yeah, I can't, obviously I can't see the, hopefully comments on any of the different ways people are viewing this, but this is incredible because we are asking very specific theological questions. You know, Logos 32 years just celebrated.

We could handle things like resurrection. I mean, big keywords, right? But the fact that you can now, and Nate, what I love what Nate was doing, he was asking a specific theological question tied to a specific Bible verse.

I mean, that is some pretty amazing coding props to the hundred developers at Logos. We call them geeks for God. But praise the Lord, they've decided to use their gifts of dreaming in ones and zeros to help us study deeper and to get answers to, again, very, very specific questions.

So I just want to make sure that, you know, people understand what's happening with this new version of Logos is very complex coding is happening. And again, mobile. I mean, honestly, it's probably my favorite thing is that all of this now is my back pocket on my phone.

But let me go ahead and share my screen and let me know if you can see. And yeah, I was following along with the both of you. Yeah. And I typed, why should we pray in the name of Jesus?

So give me just a second so I can get you. I can get you framed properly because, again, you know, your screen is a fancy one. So we got to make sure that we get it centered.

And I'm using dark mode on Logos and Scott is using light mode. And I'm thinking there's some kind of Star Wars Jedi joke in here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Somewhere he is. I was using dark mode, too. So he needs to, you know, join the dark side, man.

I got to represent the light, so I'm going to stay over here. I do like using dark mode when I'm reading something on my iPad and Logos, whatever. But yeah, I'm going to I'm going to stick with the default.

But yes, that's a relatively new feature in Logos dark mode. Yay. But yeah, while you guys were talking, I typed in, why should we pray in the name of Jesus? And, you know, love said it's not a magic formula that you're just kind of tagging on to something.

But, you know, praying in Jesus' name aligns our requests with God's will and brings glory to God. Right. So incredible now that, as Jorge pointed out, you type the way you talk. Right. You don't have to learn all of the special coding and Boleyn expression searching and, you know, all the geeky things that many figured out.

But most didn't. OK. But yeah, so that's searching. And again, Nate pointed out the all search books would be specific to your library. You know, maps would be, hey, I'm doing a little study on, let's say, Rome.

I need some pictures, maps, whatever. So, again, just pay attention to what kind of search you're in. Right. All Bible books. Now, here's a little secret that I'm going to go ahead and announce. And these viewers will be the first to hear that a new feature will be coming by the end of next month where we're going to bring AI to the biblical text itself.

So you'll be able to ask very specific questions of the biblical text. You know, I still occasionally, Nate, you know, don't let anybody at Logos know, I still will jump into Google to say, you know, where is that passage about running the race?

You know, I know it's somewhere, 1st Corinthians, so we're going to take care of...I mean, listen, we honestly don't want people going to Google anymore with any theological question because you don't know where this is coming from, right?

You don't know the...you know, Nate, I think one of the reasons why we're seeing such a rise in deconstruction, people falling away, is they had a great question about the Bible and theology, but then they went to the wrong source.

And again, maybe they're new, been a Christian for six months, and first page they hit is some doctor with a seminary degree. And listen, that person hates the Lord, hates His Word, and you just don't know that, right?

So that's why Logos is kind of the safe place. Again, these are real theological books, commentaries, Bible...you brought up the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, incredible resource. So that's the new AI searching that is now in Logos.

You know, if the new Logos did nothing but that, I think it would be worth its weight in gold. Now, let me just say, because I gave the phrase, worth its weight in gold, that has been an issue as well, ease of use, that has been nailed with AI.

But the other issue has been cost. I've done a few of live streams with you, Nate, and we show Logos and people get all excited. Wow, this is incredible. And then we drop the price, $700, $800. So Logos now has gone to subscription.

So everything that we've shown to this point is $10. So that's a huge shift for us, because we want this tool to be available to every Christian globally. And, you know, imagine the Christian living in, let's say, Africa or the Philippines, they can't afford $1 ,000.

So you've got a subscription. I want to say, I want to just interject and say, my focal area of ministry is Latin America. And I always heard, because I couldn't push this as hard as I wanted to push it, to all my brothers and sisters across the border, because, you know, it was almost disrespectful to tell them that a whole month's paycheck needed to go towards a software that is going to help them study the word better.

Right. And to get deeper into the word of God in things that can help them in the long run, right, eternally. But now I feel completely at peace because now I know that for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the previous cost, they can get all these features.

And now I actually send it to a couple of my friends and they said, I'm signing up right away. Why? Because now it's not going to break the bank. So I think that that is by far, on top of the AI stuff, is the best thing that could have happened here.

So just wanted to make that clear.

So let me point out, this is new, right on the home page, what would you like to do? So maybe somebody's watching is like, man, I don't even know how to study Bible. If you click that little button, we're going to ask you, what do you want to study?

I want to study the names of God. I want to study Matthew 28. So you type in a passage and it will just literally launch on the screen. The books you need. So I like that because, again, old Logos, you opened it and stared at the screen going, I don't know where to go.

So, you know, do you want to do a language study? Type in the passage. We'll bring you to the Hebrew text, the Greek text. And then also we've consolidated all of our help. So customer service, training videos.

So you just type what you want to do in Logos and you can do that now right off the homepage. But let me just show you all a new feature if you just opened the Bible. So, you know, Nate mentioned Matthew 28 and I think you were at verse 18.

So I'll jump there. So I don't know if you've seen this yet, Nate, but this is new. This little panel here is called the Insights panel. Now, by default, when you open your Bible, that will be there. But what's great about this new little feature is you pick a study Bible.

Study Bibles are great resources. Kind of, you know, when I first got saved, I bought a concordance. And then the second thing I bought was a study Bible. And then you progress to commentaries and, you know, you want bigger and better.

But study Bibles are great resources. But here's my commentaries. And again, you get to pick the commentary that is the one that you want to look at. But here's the here's the great feature. Watch, Nate, as I scroll through the Bible.

The Insights panel changes right where I'm at. OK, so imagine we jump over to something like Revelation chapter, you know, any book of Revelation, like, oh, wow, what's all this stuff here?

Right. Right.

So what's great now is is Nate, I'm just scrolling through my Bible and Logos is literally I mean, not only, you know, bringing me an article straight to what is an archangel from a great dictionary commentary related passages.

So this is a huge new feature because sometimes I don't want to get I don't want a bunch of things open on the screen. I just want my Bible. And then when I get stuck, I want some help. And so that's what the new Insights panel does.

And again, that feature is now on mobile. I was in church last Sunday, Nate. I didn't know that was a new feature on my iPad. And I think I yelled amen a little too loud at my, you know, while pastor.

And it wasn't I wasn't even paying attention to the message. I was like, you got to be kidding me. Insights now is on my mobile device. Right. So this is a key new feature. Logos is called Insights. But drumroll, my favorite feature, and it has been for four or five, six years now, is called Factbook.

So Factbook, you know, I went in here, Nate, and typed in, you know, in I think I typed in Jesus, a Jesus name in Jesus name. And when I hit enter, it it it just automatically routed the right of the ship, if you will, to all divine names.