What Does it Mean to Take The Lord's Name in Vain?

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

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Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come, in that final day, their house will stand.

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Alright Conley, the question for today's episode is, what does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain?

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Well I think the right place to start with this is with the third commandment, because that's what people are referring to when they talk about taking the

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Lord's name in vain. And the third commandment says, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the

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Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And it's interesting there that in addition to the command itself, you also have this added reason, as some of the commands do, that the

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Lord doesn't hold anyone guiltless who takes his name in vain. This is not something that will be overlooked, even though people consider this such a small and tiny sin.

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So he adds there that this is not small, it's not tiny, it will not be overlooked. Got it.

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So yeah, in part it is about God's name itself. I don't think there's any reason we need to avoid saying

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God's name, even Yahweh or Jehovah, something like that, but that it should be honored. You know, obviously using it as an explicative, right, as some sort of curse word would not be using it seriously, but it applies in other ways too.

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Even when we use it in a sentence where it sounds meaningful, but we ourselves don't mean it.

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You know, a common one for me that I reflect on often is, how many times do

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I sing to God or my mind is wandering entirely elsewhere, and I'm just singing the words because I'm used to singing the song.

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You know, am I not in that moment taking God's name in vain? And so this is a sin we commit very often that we probably don't realize.

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It's probably just like in Matthew 5 where Jesus says, you have heard it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, etc.,

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right? And then he goes and he reveals that adultery can be committed in the heart, murder can be committed in the heart, these things can be committed in the heart.

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So this is not just about saying OMG, this is about a lot more than that. I was reading

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Matthew Henry, and he was basically describing vapid, empty prayers.

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And, you know, that was one of the things that I— you can immediately think about when people are praying in general where they add all the unnecessary lords in there that functionally have no purpose.

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So would you think that that would fall under this category of taking the Lord's name in vain? You know, the worship leader guy who says the word

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Lord 100 times in his prayer. I do. I do think it would be—yeah, at that point we're using it as a filler word, like um, because we can't think of anything else to say, and so we use

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God's name. And there was a resource I was recently listening to that went through— and maybe

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I'll be able to find it before the end of the episode— that went through all sorts of different things that we should avoid in prayer. You know, it was some old

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Puritan work. And the very first one was excessive use of God's name.

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And so I always thought of this as like a problem with modern speech. You know, this is just something that's developed along with people who say

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Daddy God and stuff like that. But no, apparently they were dealing with it— That's definitely taking God's name in vain.

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It is. Well see, so what I was wondering about is, I was thinking about actually modeling one of those prayers in order to ask you that question, but then

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I didn't because I didn't know if that would violate it. So would me modeling the prayer for the purpose of asking you whether or not that would violate it, would that be an example?

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No, I don't think so. Because, yeah, I think there's—it's reasonable to—

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That would at least have some intention, right? Right, right. Yeah, so obviously there are profane things that you wouldn't want to repeat.

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At the same time, you need to be able to communicate in some way.

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Sure. Just record it and play the recording over and over again. I think your concern is reasonable.

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At the same time, I can't—yeah, it's kind of hard for me to give a fixed judgment on that one. So what are some other areas?

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I mean, I've heard people talk about taking oaths in the name of the Lord that you do not intend to fulfill.

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What else do you have? Like, things like that. Yeah, well, that's a very serious one, right? Forswearing or perjury.

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Those both mean the same thing, by the way. Forswearing and perjury are both violating your oaths and vows. And you have plenty of examples of that in court, where someone puts their hand in the

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Bible, swears to God, and then proceeds to tell a lie. You have all the cases of the

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TSA agents who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution that go immediately transgress the

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Fourth Amendment that guarantees free travel. So there's a lot of people who take

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God's name lightly. But yeah, there are plenty of other examples, too.

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You know, you could speak blasphemously. You could speak of God in an irreverent way in general.

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You know, there's a lot of jokes that are common around church that I just don't think are very funny because they're too blasphemous.

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And you see different people online make maybe four -panel comics or something like that that joke about God or something that God might say in response to someone.

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That's another thing, is emulating God. I don't know if this would be more of a

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Second Commandment violation versus a Third Commandment violation. But basically, coming up with some fictitious dialogue that includes the words of God, I find that very distasteful.

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Now, you might paraphrase the words of God or summarize how

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He's communicated to man, but that's but to just come up with this fictitious dialogue.

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Is that a way of taking His name in vain or just adding to His words, taking away His words? I would say that it is both.

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And really, all these commandments are very connected. You know, James 2 .10 even says that if you've broken one of the commandments, you've broken all of them.

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So a lot of times where we try to parse out these commandments too much, it can be misguided because they're so interrelated.

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There could be violations of many of them at the same time, obviously. Exactly, exactly. And I think if you understand the commandments well enough, that any violation of any commandment is actually a violation of all of them.

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They can be tied that way. Now, it would be hard to do in some cases, but I do believe that God's law is tight enough and broad enough that it does cover all these things, that as it relates to the heart and the heart dishonors

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God and dishonors man in the process and so on. Do you think that part of what encapsulates this command is,

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I've heard some people say that, you know, sort of similar to the oaths thing, but essentially saying, you know,

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Jesus Christ is Lord, my Lord and Savior, and then apostatizing yourself later on would be like you're taking the

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Lord's name in vain. You're essentially proclaiming that He is your Lord and then acting as if He is not your

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Lord later on at some point. So would that, in your mind, does that also fall into the taking the

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Lord's name in vain? Yes, I believe so. You've claimed something to be true about God that is not.

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And anyone who wants to study this further, the Westminster Larger Catechism has, I think, four different questions on what the

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Third Commandment is and what it means, and it includes among those things maintaining of heresies, basically maintaining something that is not true about God or His Word would violate the

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Third Commandment. In addition to that, it also lists curious or unprofitable questions.

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And by the way, the number of things it lists is more than we're going to touch on this episode. I mean, it's literally, you know, 50 to 100 things that it lists.

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But one of those things is curious or unprofitable questions. So in other words, trying to peer into God's Word beyond what

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He has said, not letting the secret things be the secret things of the Lord, not, yeah, that is not honoring to Him.

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And it is taking His name in vain in that it is not acknowledging what is properly

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His and what is properly ours. Part of this is related to just the

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Ten Commandments intending to be just a summary of God's moral law in that way. And so because they're a summary, they're the heading, you know, the heading of the document, so to speak.

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But then in a lot of sense, they are the summary, too. Right. Yes. Yeah. I believe that the Ten Commandments, the moral law is summarily comprehended in them, moral law being what

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God has written on our heart. And so anything that is a sin fits somewhere in the

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Ten Commandments, maybe more in one than in the other, but it fits into the Ten Commandments. So it's our job to figure out, you know, how, in a certain sense.

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And there's more to just, you know, honoring the Ten Commandments than what may appear on the surface in that way.

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Yes, I believe the Ten Commandments summarily comprehend God's moral law.

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And so what that means is that that moral law that's written on our heart, it all fits into the

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Ten Commandments. So any sin fits somewhere into the Ten Commandments. And this is how Jesus interprets it as well.

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You know, he says that anger is murder, lust is adultery. And so really any sin, any sin fits in.

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And as David says in Psalm 119, that God's law is exceedingly broad.

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It covers much. It's not just ten different possible ways that you could sin against God. There are manifold that fit in these ten different categories.

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Yeah, so being ashamed of God's name is taking it in vain because we're not acknowledging it as it ought to be acknowledged as holy and something to be engaged in with pride.

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You know, we are to boast in the Lord. Or being ashamed to his name. So being a so -called brother, right, bearing

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God's name while not honoring it, that would be taking his name in vain. And, you know, as Harrison mentioned before, backsliding from his name, all these things are taking the

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Lord in vain. So just, you know, at the threat of extending this episode even longer,

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I'm curious, what are some, you know, places in scripture that point us to those conclusions?

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You know, so it's one thing to say, like, hey, you know, this is taking his name in vain. This is taking his name in vain.

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This is taking his name in vain. But then how exactly do we use scripture to back that, you know, that idea, basically?

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Right. Well, part of it is what I just observed about the way Jesus and James in 210 speak of the law of God as being interconnected and all sins fitting into these categories.

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So really it is just working with that understanding and then doing our best to fit these things in.

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So it's not necessarily, you know, this exact science that I'm trying to offer here or anything. You know, perhaps these are other sins.

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But it's certainly worth thinking about that, oh, wow, God's name really does need to be honored in all these ways.

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Right. But if you're also wondering, are these things sins? Because that's another question.

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One question is, is this sin taking the Lord's name in vain? Another question is, is this thing even a sin?

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Everything that I've mentioned so far has been from the Westminster Larger Catechism has been mentioned in there, and they have proof texts for every single one of these.

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So please go check that out if there's anything that I've mentioned that's not been, that I haven't provided an example for.

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Yeah, an example of how maybe one of those things could be grounded would be just Jesus' admonition against swearing by heaven and things like that.

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So that could be a good example of, you know, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything else is from the evil one.

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But, you know, take those ideas of taking your oath seriously and, you know, what you're swearing by. You know, you have people who are swearing by heaven, like they're trivializing

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God, like who God is and who they're making reference to. So that could be just an example of a passage that seems to connect it a little tighter too.

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Right, yeah, and they don't recognize that the earth is his footstool or that heaven is his throne. So they're trying to avoid the name of God.

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And then the other end of the spectrum, you use the name of God as a charm where you're, you know, throwing it around as though it has some kind of power in and of itself.

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You know, that's what a lot of Oneness Pentecostals do with the name of Jesus. You know, they just throw out

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Jesus's name, like just saying Jesus over something. Over their car that's broken down and it's not starting, you know, speaking

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Jesus's name over the engine. Or like a, I rebuke this sickness in the name of Jesus or something.

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Sure, so there's like all kinds of false prayers that could be, you know, prayed that are abusing the name of God and throwing it around like that.

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But some people see the Bible, talk about the name of God and its power, and don't recognize that what it's talking about is something more than just the literal, you know, set of words or set of characters that make up a name.

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Right, and so some people think that that set of characters itself has power. And that's the kind of superstition

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I'm talking about is, you know, it's not the set of characters. And those people tend to be hyper obsessive about getting the name right.

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You know, it's Jehovah, it's Yahovah, or it's Yahweh, or it's Yahweh, or something. And because at that point, then the way the name is even uttered is important for making this effective.

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As though, you know, it's like a Leviosa versus Leviosa. Not that I'm a

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Harry Potter fan, I just happen to know that one. There's power in the name of Jesus to break every chain.

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That's where you're going with this thing. But the opposite, yeah, the opposite works, too, with the

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Charismatics, to where, you know, if you say like the wrong syllables, it's like, don't speak that evil over us, you know.

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So it goes both ways. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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