Ch 2 Worshiping "in my name"

“In Jesus’ name I (we) pray, amen.” This simple phrase (and its many variations) composes the most familiar closing to prayer for Protestant Christians, ranging from little children to eloquent preachers. The biblical source of the phrase is Jesus’ own words (Jn 14:13-14; Lk 11:23-24). Certainly our reasons for praying “in Jesus’ name” have good intentions and are sincere. Yet, the phrase has become so familiar to us that we often say it out of habit, by default with disembodied lips whereby our hearts remain relationally uninvolved with God. Additionally, “in Jesus’ name we pray” seems to generally function merely as a bit of theological information, a referential affirmation that we attach to our prayers for added significance (I share from my personal experience below.) These usages are not in congruence with what Jesus meant when he said “ask in my name.” Thus, this raises an ironic concern about whether we actually cross over the critical line into misusing the Lord’s name in both our theology and practice.

What this beloved phrase points to are issues inherent in the commonness of its usage, issues that, importantly for this study, apply to all the words we use in worship. We need to honestly examine the dominance of referential language (centered on information in fragmentary terms) when we utter “in Jesus’ name we pray, amen,” the Lord’s Prayer, songs and hymns, sermons, and even reading Scripture. Because referential language is the language from human contextualization, it unavoidably determines our worship to be ‘in their way’ unless we individually and corporately are clearly distinguished from these common ways by redemptive change: that is, the inner-out change necessary for our person’s and church’s ontology and function (that is, the reality of who, what, and how we are) to be made whole and uncommon (holy) based on God’s relational terms.

Many persons come to worship services to learn about God and/or to experience God’s presence and involvement with them. In other words, they come for the development of their theology and growth in their practice (practice involving both ontology and function). These persons are fed by worship leaders and preachers who enact a particular theology and practice through their words and actions, thereby intentionally or inadvertently instilling in worshipers their views of God. The scope of this influence and the urgency of its responsibility cannot be overstated, nor can the urgency (as in urgent care for persons’ and the global church’s wholeness and well-being in shalôm) to confront human contextualization prevailing in our worship theology and practice.

These next two chapters continue to address our worship that is determined ‘in their way’ and therefore not congruent with God’s name and thus the likeness of God. While chapter 2 dealt largely with more observable aspects of worship that give primacy to secondary matters of what worship leaders do and have (e.g. performance, skill level, spiritual gifts), now our discussion moves to the subtler issue of language used by everyone in corporate worship. This issue is how referential language—that is, the language of fragmented ontology and reduced function with relational distance—distorts our view of God and falsely represents God’s relational language. Conversely, a view of God that is fragmented and reduced by human shaping determines our worship language in referential terms. These dynamics speak to the principle of lex orandi lex credendi, which means that ‘prayer shapes’ belief (and ‘liturgy shapes theology’). The reverse, lex credendi lex orandi (beliefs/theology shape prayer/liturgy), is also true so that the two directions of influence are reflexive in a subtle reciprocating process:

When occurring in reduced ontology and function, lex orandi and lex credendi become self-reinforcing to sustain the status quo, which the church as a whole has been stuck in for a long time. The status quo may seem to be upended by fresh and innovative changes (e.g. emerging churches, ancient-future features, alt worship, new monasticism), yet in the long view, these are recurring cycles in church history; they just have different names. This dynamic is important to understand for both traditional and contemporary worship.

Most consequential for the majority of our current worship theology and practice is that we end up worshiping not who, what, and how God is as God has revealed, but the ideal (i.e. idol) we have shaped by essentially our process of the idolization of God—the very practice that God eliminated in the Decalogue (Ex 20:4-5). In the global church, so much of our default worship language is referential language, language that keeps us at a relational distance from God (not to mention from each other) that we need to ask ourselves if the God we worship is the same God who has revealed himself. Christians worshiping a different God with the same so-called name of God is not out of the question here.

In contrast to our default referential language is God’s relational language, the purpose and function of which is the primacy of relationship to make relational connection between persons. All throughout Scripture, God spoke and continues to speak in only relational language; and only relational language makes the compatible relational response that is congruent with God’s name disclosed in relational terms. Our referential language needs to be redeemed in order for us to grow in worshiping in likeness of Uncommon (Holy) God, as his uncommon new creation family, no longer determined ‘in their way’ by human contextualization. Indeed, an essential aspect of our salvation (involving both what we’re save from and what we’re save to) is the transformation of our language.

Are God’s relational terms ever negotiable? We certainly function as if they are, in spite of theology to the contrary. Which language do you use when we pray “in Jesus’ name”, referential or relational language?

Equally important, how we pray and worship God communicate the theology and practice that get passed on to the next generations of believers. With the dwindling interest among millennials in what the church has to offer, notably in the Global North (especially in the U.S.), it is our urgent relational responsibility to vulnerably examine as never before the theology and practice we are passing on to them through our worship practices (i.e. through our doxology). The experiential reality of lex orandi lex credendi and its reverse need to be transformed in our worship so that God’s own voice (not our reshaping of God’s words) will be heard, received, and responded to by his new creation family.

Our doxology must be in God’s relational language if it is to have any relational significance to him. But for us to grow in listening and communicating in relational language, we need to recognize our default use of referential language competing with God’s relational language. Thus we turn our attention now to these competing languages. As we examine this with open minds and hearts, we will see how referential language subtly dominates in our worship gatherings as well as even in our private prayers.

In Scripture, God definitively differentiates between relational language, which is the only language that God communicates in, and referential language that exists universally in our human contexts, including in the human brain.^{^[1]} Which of these two languages we use in our prayers, songs, and speech in worship reflects our ontology (how we define our person) and function (how we engage in relationships), and provides the key to whether or not our worship of God has relational significance to God. In order for us to grow in worshiping God compatibly and congruently in his likeness, we need to take to heart what God says about these languages.

The only purpose of referential language is to transmit information about some subject matter. Its focus is outer in, and on this limited basis it reduces all its content to the secondary criteria of what persons do or have, thereby fragmenting and reducing a person (God or human) to quantitative parts. In worship, referential language expresses information about God’s parts (e.g. the cross, miracles, divine attributes), such that we praise and thank God primarily on the basis of God’s parts. It is like relating to our parents only on the basis of their job descriptions, or even just what they do for us in their parental roles.

In our worship songs and prayers, we referentialize God down to these narrow terms, which includes referentializing all of God’s relational communications and his terms for relationship together, reducing them to information to learn about what to do. Yet, as we process and express this information, we function apart from God’s relational context and relational messages to us. Whether we are aware of it or not, referential language ongoingly negatively affects our prayers and all our other words in worship by rendering them without relational significance. And because referential language turns our focus away from the qualitative and relational aspects of God and ourselves to outer aspects, it creates and maintains relational distance, even if unintentionally.

In unambiguous contrast, God’s relational language is only for his primary purpose of making relational connection together. Relational language is always qualitative in focus and relational in function, always speaking to and for the primacy of the whole person (not mere parts) and relationships together in wholeness (not merely gatherings or joint expressions). Here, then, are two languages in conflict with each other, and their difference must be accounted for because they are incompatible in spite of the similarity or even sameness of their words. Making this distinction is vital for the urgent care of our worship condition. Therefore, the inescapable question we are faced with—namely face to face with God—is whose language defines us and determines our worship.

The language of our worship is either God’s relational language—the language from God’s very heart that ‘sings’ (e.g. Zeph 3:17) only for intimate relational connection together (intimacy defined as hearts open and making deep connection together)—or referential language that keeps us at a relational distance, confined within limits we impose on ourselves and God. Relational language is not merely the use of certain words such as ‘love’ or ‘like’ because these words can be used referentially to convey information. Moreover, words such as love or like have been so reduced that they can now be shown with mere emojis on social media.^{^[2]} Although it is said that emojis help communicate feelings in emails and texts that are otherwise devoid of facial and other nonverbal expressions, yet they exist as substitutes for face-to-face involvement—substitutes that only simulate relationships and create illusions of relational involvement and connection.

Relational language isn’t the prevailing language of much of what takes place in our worship gatherings, although many words spoken or sung in worship sound like relational language. Keeping in mind our susceptibility to function as ‘lips without heart’ (from Jesus’ critique in Mt 15;8), we need to think of relational language as communicating relational messages—from God to us, and from us congruently back to God in our worship relationship. We need to think relationally, for example, that “every communication has a content aspect and a relationship aspect such that the latter [qualifies and/or determines the meaning of] the former.”^{^[3]} The relational content of any communication is conveyed as relational messages, summarized as follows:

These are relational messages from the speaker to the hearer and demonstrate language’s function to make relational connection. In God’s communicative acts (by his words and relational actions) to us throughout Scripture, God ongoingly conveys relational messages to us: (1) what he says about himself (e.g. Ex 34:6-7), (2) how he feels about us (e.g. Dt 7:7-8,12-13; Jn 3:16), (3) and what he says about our relationship together (e.g. Jn 17). These are relational-specific words from God’s heart to us, so to treat God’s Word as a topic of study (notably in the academy) for more information, knowledge, and even wisdom is to de-relationalize God by separating him from his relational messages to us. De-relationalizing God’s self-disclosures keeps us at a relational distance (e.g. ‘in front of the text’ paralleling ‘in front of the curtain’). In the academy this is the predominant approach to biblical studies, theology, and spirituality. Many seminarians are aware of and dissatisfied with the incongruence of academic (i.e. referential) study of God’s Word as merely a historical or literary text. Similarly, for persons who want to experience more in relationship with God, in order for our own worship language to become relational language, then what critically becomes primary is neither acquiring nor proclaiming referential information, for example, of Scripture and theology. But primacy must first be given to relationally understanding and receiving God’s relational messages to us—which likely will require a new hermeneutic of making ourselves vulnerable in the depth of our hearts. This lens will require the help of the Spirit (as in 1 Cor 2:9-11).

Vis-à-vis the above relational messages, we can only conclude that referential language is a substitute language whose ultimate goal is to keep us relationally distant from God. As discussed in chapter 1, many of the Israelites reduced God’s relational terms for the covenant relationship (a love story) to referential terms, thereby reshaping the relational significance of the Torah (that God shared in only relational language) into a template for conformity that they needed to follow as an end in itself (i.e. giving primacy to ‘what to do’). By referentializing God’s words, these persons also reduced God’s whole ontology and function, and redefined God on the basis of what he did or should do for them. Referentialization of God is how we practice idolization of God, shaping God according to our own terms. Referentialization also reduces our own self on the basis of the secondary criteria of what we do and have, which is contrary to God’s relational message (2) of how God sees our person. Accordingly, this is how we engage subtly in eclipsing God’s relational grace by our works, even in worship practice, in order to establish our identity and worth.

In this way—that is, reducing God and ourselves by giving primacy to the quantitative criteria of what to do (over the primacy of qualitative involvement of the whole person in relationship together)—referential language is the language of reductionism. With referential language we are involved with God in worship with only the outer criteria of saying the right words to convey information. In worship, when we recite the Apostles Creed or the Lord’s Prayer together, are we using referential language or relational language? Are we involved with God and each other with or without our whole person signified by honesty of our hearts? Consider carefully Jesus’ words about where our hearts are in worship (Mt 15:8).

When our prayers and other words in worship are referential language and not relational language involving our whole person, we are presenting disembodied lips to God. But God, as the one who knows our minds and hearts (Acts 1:24; 15:8; Rev 2:23), knows when we worship him with disembodied lips thus rendering our whole person unavailable to our Father for face-to-face connection as his beloved daughters and sons. God rejects such worship from his people (again, Mt 15:8; Isa 29:13) because our referential worship language has no relational significance to him. God seeks the heart of our person compatible in reciprocal relational response to the heart of God vulnerably responding to us in only relational terms (Jn 4:21-26).

Both referential language and relational language are present in any and all human tongues. The distinction between the two languages is made by Jesus in a critical interaction with some Jews who had believed in him (Jn 8:31-47). During this interaction, these persons misinterpreted Jesus’ relational words, and Jesus confronted them for their inability to hear him: “Why is my language not clear to you? It is because you are unable to hear what I say” (v.43; cf. Lk 10:21). Although these persons were believers, they didn’t “hear” God’s relational language; and even Jesus’ closest disciples had difficulty understanding Jesus’ language (e.g. Mk 8:14-21; Jn 14:9).

Relational language is what Jesus identified as “my language” (lalian tēn emēn, Jn 8:43, NIV). “My language” signifies the relational truth of Jesus’ relational communications, whether through his speech or his relational-specific involvement with persons in the primacy of relationship. The reason those believers in this interaction couldn’t “hear God’s words” in relational language is because they were of their “father” whose “native language” was the referential language of reductionism (“lies,” distortions; cf. Gen 3:1,4), according to Jesus (vv. 44,47).

Recall (from chap. 1) that liars (distorters) are persons who speak falsely, or in vain, signifying so-called communication that has no relational significance to God. God doesn’t “hear” distorted speech, that is, referential language, because persons who speak, pray, sing, preach, and teach only referentially to and about God are misleading since they are not involved with God on God’s nonnegotiable terms for relationship together. Such misleading practice also misrepresents God. Referential language creates ontological simulation as the substitute for God’s uncommon relational language by creating illusions that something significant is taking place. The above interaction is key to our understanding that relational language and referential language are in conflict and competition with each other—competing for our ontology and function to be either whole on God’s relational terms, or reduced to the referential terms from reductionism.

Referential language is the default-native language of our human context, and none of us develops without it. Obviously referential language is necessary when we just need plain information about something in daily life. However, it is when we use referential language while praying and worshiping God, in church life, and notably in theological education, that referential language is problematic. Referential language also tends to make generalizations about persons, which moves us away from being person-specific in our involvement with each other, including with God. We don’t experience deeper relational connection without getting specific with others.

We need to be able to discern the difference between “my relational language” (Jn 8:43, NIV) and referential language (“[Satan’s] native language,” 8:44, NIV), but we will be able to do so only by addressing ourselves to the inner-out change we must undergo in reciprocal relational work with the Spirit. This change is the redemptive change of the old dying (specifically dying to defining our person by secondary criteria from reductionism, i.e. of what we do or have) so that the newness of our person can emerge in whole ontology and function (specifically involving our heart in qualitative function), and accordingly giving primacy to relationships together in wholeness, that is, the relationships made intimate and equalized by God’s response of relational grace for all of us.

I heard of a worship service put on by an emerging church—also known as alt or alternative worship, which is characterized by new and creative worship expressions—during which time images of candles were projected onto the walls. Virtual candles to create a virtual ambience. This practice with virtual candles may seem odd or contrived to Christians who use real candles in worship services. Yet, virtual reality in worship isn’t limited to emergent churches, because traditional liturgical worship, along with “traditional” contemporary worship, can be just as or even more virtual in their worship. I suggest that virtual worship takes place in the global church much more than we imagine. It unfolds in our practice whenever we present ourselves to God in worship on our own terms with something less or some substitute in place of our vulnerable presence and involvement with God.

Any time we give the primacy of our focus and attention to outer expressions—for example, to rock concert-like performances in contemporary worship, on formal prayers in referential language in liturgical worship, on unconventional settings to create moods in alt worship—then our worship can only be virtual worship engaged by our persons reduced to virtual worshipers (or avatars). Virtual worship, like virtual reality on the Internet, is only ontological simulation. But unlike the obvious unreality of online virtual reality, virtual worship is easily mistaken for the real thing, for the worship God seeks from us. This is because ontological simulations have become so common to us that by default we assume they are real and significant. Moreover, such simulations aren’t easy to detect because referential language can use the same words as relational language—with the essential difference being that in the latter our whole person is involved with God in the primacy of relationship on God’s nonnegotiable relational terms.

In contrast to virtual worship, when we worship God engaged on God’s nonnegotiable relational terms, then our worship experience will be face to face and heart to heart with God, and will both please God and satisfy our innermost (Ps 17:15). Because God’s relational terms are not negotiable to our terms, the worship relationship in likeness of God cannot be engaged at the relational distance intrinsic to the ontological simulation of virtual worship, which gives primary focus to secondary matters, for example, of affective experiences, doctrinal correctness, and theological information as ends in themselves.

Many of us Christians devote much time and effort to studying Scripture, taking notes of sermons, believing that the more informational knowledge we accumulate, the better we can know God (I know this from experience). But informational knowledge about God is merely referential knowledge (as in referential theology for doctrinal knowledge) that only tells us information about God as if God were mere Object to study, rather than Subject-Person who is present and involved for relationship together with us—we who are also subjects and not impersonal objects. Here, even to profess in worship that God is a personal and relational God can become merely referential information that we espouse in referential language without our compatible relational response to God. We do this all the time in prayer and song in corporate worship, and even in our witnessing to others. These words become the code for virtual worship.

The commonest evidence of virtual worship is when we referentialize God (and God’s name) in worship by singing about God—for example, (information) about his divine attributes, about what he has done, about his superiority over anything else—but not singing relational-specific to God as persons compatibly responding to God’s presence and involvement with us in reciprocal relationship. Using the third person for God is one indicator that we are only referring to God; and even using the terminology “to God” and “to You” doesn’t guarantee our relational involvement beyond merely singing about God because this relational-specific involvement requires our compatible relational response “in spirit and truth” (the honesty of our hearts in Jn 4:23-24).

What exactly are we doing when we sing about God, even with a lot of emotion? Unless we’re just singing as an end in itself, essentially we’re singing to each other, perhaps under the premise of edification of the church family. Of course certain songs and hymns sung to each other can be very touching and edifying for persons, songs such as “Oh How He Loves You and Me” and “I Need You to Survive.” But have you ever noticed in worship services that during these kinds of songs, persons don’t readily make eye contact—even if they might be holding hands or hugging each other? Notably, Paul certainly worked wholeheartedly for the building up of the church family (e.g. Eph 4:15-16), yet his instructions given in relational terms for worship unmistakably involved “singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God…” (Eph 5:19-20), and “with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms…to God” (Col 3:16).

Sometimes we don’t even know where our heart is, but God always does, though not for information because God always seeks our heart involvement and relational response in worship. The earliest disciples, none more than Peter, learned this about God the hard way; yet they finally knew from experience that God is “the knower of hearts” (kardiognostēs, Acts 1:24). Peter repeated this relational knowledge of God as the early church struggled with their theology and practice (Acts 15:8; cf. Rev 2:23; 1 Sam 16:7; 1 Kgs 8:39). Peter’s earlier worship practice had involved virtual worship (Mt 17:1-7, to be discussed in chap. 3), so it was deeply impressed upon him that God knows when hearts are kept distant and always pursues us for nothing less and no substitutes (cf. Jn 13:6-8).

The vital issue to assess for ourselves here is to give primacy to direct relational involvement with God—not in referential and indirect virtual terms that keep us relationally distant even though we may speak a lot about relationships—but in compatible relational response to God who is always vulnerably present and intimately involved with us only in relational terms. Inseparable from our relational involvement with God is our relational involvement with each other, since worship gatherings are the corporate dimension of our discipleship-worship relationship with God.

Relational distance is the other obvious evidence of virtual worship; and we cannot appeal to our culture or social context for this practice because that would only make evident our person and relationships shaped by human contextualization. Stop and assess how much eye contact—the very least relational connection we can make—you make with your fellow worshipers. Notably, there is a sad and strange lack of eye contact during Communion in most worship services I’ve attended throughout my years as a Christian. This de-relationalizing of Communion must grieve God.

These are the critical issues for our corporate worship—whether our gathered worship is liturgical, contemporary, or blended in form and style—that will determine just what we communicate and pass on to the next generations. I believe that currently in the global North, virtual worship is prevailing. What do you honestly and critically think—even if you are only perceiving it from the global South?

Intimate relational connection with God in worship needs to be clarified so that we don’t assume its presence or significance. Biblical intimacy is the relational connection between two persons (divine or human) vulnerably face to face, heart to heart with each other, without the relational barriers of hiding or masking one’s innermost being—the significance of going ‘behind the curtain’ and ‘without the veil’ (e.g. Ex 33:11; Num 12:8; 2 Cor 3:15-18; 4:6; Heb 10:19-22; 2 Sam 1:26). Intimate relationship with God is heart-level face-to-face connection with God only on the basis of God’s relational response of grace to us in our human need and condition, and thus without any relational barriers whatsoever.

When Jesus claimed that to see and know him is to see and know the Father (Jn 12:45; 14:6-9; cf. 2 Cor 4:4,6), he was disclosing to us that he and the Father are so intimately involved together that to know one is to know the other. When we worship God in likeness of God, the relational reality can be in likeness of the relationship between the Son and Father! And while we each need this individual experiential reality as a daughter or son with our Father, intimacy cannot remain an isolated relationship because God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement with us in the Spirit is only fully experienced in the corporate context of his new creation family together—the relational outcome of the trinitarian relational context of family and the trinitarian relational process of family love (Eph 2:14-22).

Therefore, if we are to become compatible in our relational response to God’s nonnegotiable relational terms for intimate relationship together, we must reject common notions about intimacy which have been shaped—that is, fragmented and reduced—by our sociocultural context. For example, the notion of intimacy has been fragmented and narrowed down—by referentialization—to romantic or sexual connotations. This notion likely has created tension for some worship planners, leaders, and worshipers alike with regard to even talking about intimate relational connection in worship. Certainly, boundaries need to be established to safeguard against abuse; but if boundaries define what’s primary for our church family relationships, then we no longer function by God’s relational terms for the primacy of relationships together.

This reduction of intimacy is further distorted by individualism of the Western worldview, so that many Christians think that relationship with God revolves around us individually, and intimacy in worship is between ‘Jesus and me’. Another serious consequence of individualism’s influence on our worship theology and practice is that contemporary worship often singles out Jesus over the whole of the Trinity. A great many contemporary worship songs focus singularly on Jesus and Jesus’ work on the cross, as a quick survey of contemporary worship songs shows.^{^[5]} The theology inherent in this focus is an incomplete Christology that (1) gives primacy to what Jesus did (went to the cross merely as a sacrifice for us), thereby diminishing or even overlooking the necessary relational work of embodying God’s vulnerable presence and intimate involvement into our human context to make us whole in relationship together, which is highlighted by his paradigmatic table fellowships; (2) minimalizes or completely ignores Jesus’ vulnerable disclosures of the whole of the Trinity and the equal and intimate relationships among the Father, Son, and Spirit; and therefore (3) misrepresents Jesus’ whole person and the full identity of his name, which results in discipleship that follows, serves, and worships an idealize stereotype of our shaping. An incomplete Christology results in overly Christocentric worship, which continues to dominate contemporary worship.

The issue of intimacy with God is also often reduced to merely an affective qualitative experience, and usually focused on Jesus. Many persons prefer contemporary worship because they seek the affective and deeper experience that they call intimacy, and contemporary worship provides these opportunities more than liturgical worship does. Yet, a qualitative experience cannot be equated with a relational one because you can be deeply moved, even to tears—with the heart’s qualitative affect—but still not make relational connection with God. Relational connection is certainly qualitative more than quantitative, but most importantly it requires relational-specific involvement. And the deeper the relational involvement specific to the persons in the relationship, the more intimate it becomes. Qualitative experiences feel good to us, but we must not be fooled into believing that in themselves they compose relational connection and have the relational involvement needed for essential significance to God or to us. We need to never settle for only qualitative experiences because they are only situational; I know this from my own experiences. And worship planners and leaders need to be mindful of qualitative experiences as ends in themselves—that is, they just become mere ontological simulations composing virtual worship.

Qualitative experiences are often brought about by music and song, but those experiences are only helpful for worshiping God insofar as they help us get in touch with our hearts, our hearts that are the nonnegotiable aspect of compatible and congruent worship of God. To make the relational connection with God, we still have to make the intentional choice to vulnerably receive God’s presence and involvement with us, and to compatibly respond to him congruently with our whole persons (cf. 1 Jn 4:19). This choice is not with the secondary matter of what we do (e.g. sing or pray referentially with disembodied lips) or have (e.g. offerings to give), but with who and what God seeks in the primacy of intimate relational connection together on God’s nonnegotiable terms. This is how relational-specific we need to be. We need the integral qualitative-relational involvement of our whole person for this connection with God. Without the qualitative (signified by our heart’s inner-out involvement), the depth level of relational connection cannot be compatible with the vulnerable heart of God. And without our reciprocal relational response to God, the qualitative alone cannot make the connection congruent with the relational reality of God, but can only create the virtual reality of worship.

Therefore, we need to go more vulnerably and deeply in our understanding of Jesus than ‘Jesus and me’ in order for intimate relational connection with the whole and uncommon God (the Trinity) to become our experiential relational reality as the new creation family in likeness. As for liturgical worship and intimacy, it is my observation that while liturgical worship provides needed relational clarity (i.e. that God is the focus of our attention) and sweeping theological correctness, there is a fine line between referential language and relational language. And since our default mode is to focus on outer criteria of what God and humans do and have, in liturgical worship we are highly susceptible to reduce God to fragmentary ‘parts’ of God’s ontology and function in past salvific actions. Liturgical worship’s good intentions for ‘right theology’ to maintain ‘right worship’—conforming to the Rule of Faith—is always susceptible, then, to preventing the intimate relational connection with God that God seeks. God’s vulnerable presence and involvement get lost in the formality of the liturgy, not least in set prayers.

Many persons who tend to avoid intimacy may prefer the worship in liturgical churches because there are more opportunities, I believe, to “hide” behind the rituals and structures of liturgy, including its prayers. This is when ‘face’ (prosōpon), used in Greek theater as a mask for playing a role different from one’s true identity in real life, becomes our ‘face’ presented to God, masking our true identity, our real persons. What is relationally required of worshipers in liturgical worship beyond learning the congregational responses, other aspects of liturgical language, and gestures (e.g. what to say and when to say it, when to stand, sit, or kneel) is a question deserving examination. I recall the words of a pastor who was about to lead the congregation in a Wesley Covenant Service, saying that the congregation was going to do a lot of extensive engagement in ‘the work of the people’, which is the meaning of liturgy (leitorgia). We followed along, taking turns with the pastor reading our portions of the liturgy, which was printed in full in a special bulletin. It was easy to fall into reading referentially, making it very difficult to make compatible relational connection with God. On the other hand, persons who want to remain anonymous in a worship gathering may likewise prefer megachurches where they can “hide,” that is, blend in or get lost in the crowd.

All these various issues related to intimate relational connection diminish our vulnerable involvement with God in worship and prayer primarily through virtual worship or the avoidance of going deeper—just as social media serves to shape persons and determine relationships. Whichever one is at play for each of us, Jesus words, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mt 15:8, NIV) must resound in our ears and convict us that our praying and singing while we worship God aren’t to be taken for granted, nor their relational significance to God merely assumed. Our involvement with God through our praying and singing (our practice) reflect how we see God (our theology), and vice versa—the compatibility of which and the congruence of whom we are accountable to have and therefore must take responsibility for in our inseparable theology and practice.

My reasons for praying “in Jesus’ name” underwent various changes. I first learned to pray with these words as a five year-old in Sunday school, but I didn’t understand what they meant. I knew that somehow Jesus was God and did miracles. Jesus said to pray in his name, so we obediently recited “in Jesus’ name we pray.” This demonstrated basically that I thought of God in the fragmented terms of his ‘parts’ of what he did in the past (e.g. healed and fed people, walked on water) and had (divine attributes). Unlike some children who intuitively pray to God with vulnerable hearts, the common thread of my journey was that I prayed detached (unknowingly so) from my whole person (cf. Mt 15:8). Moreover, Jesus’ “name” had no significance to me at all, other than I needed to follow this rule.

As I grew older, though I gained more referential information about God and Scripture, my view of God remained vague, not much different from my kindergarten theology. I absorbed the prominent message that as long as I said the right words, including “in Jesus’ name,” God would answer my prayers. Yet he never seemed to be ‘there’ listening or answering me, and by the time I went to college I was agnostic.

Later as a follower of Jesus, I believed that to sincerely ‘pray in Jesus’ name’ would authenticate my prayer in God’s eyes. My theology was reduced to ‘what to do’ from outer in because I thought that God’s response to my prayers depended on (referentially) invoking Jesus’ name (i.e. “Jesus”) because Jesus mediated for me before the Father. This view failed to understand that Jesus’ relational work on the cross tore open the “curtain” so that I/we now have direct access to face-to-face relational connection with God (Heb 10:19-22; Eph 2:18), which was only in compatible reciprocal relationship together (2 Cor 3:16-17; Eph 3:12). I also thought that saying “in Jesus’ name” witnessed to others that I identified with Jesus, especially to non-Christians; in this view, God would be served by my attesting words, again reducing God’s response to my prayers dependent on what I did.

These practices of praying “in Jesus’ name” and related views of God probably sound familiar to many Christians, since most of us learn these or similar views in corporate worship and by hearing them in other people’s prayers. Some of my understanding may have had some referential theological validity, but my theology and practice were not whole because my prayers were referential language addressing an idealized God (an idol). Therefore, I did not vulnerably engage my whole person to be congruently involved with God as God is vulnerably involved with me. Through all those years I didn’t make the necessary relational connection with my Father in either my individual devotions or in corporate worship, which my heart needed. At best I had emotional experiences that I mistook to be heart-to-heart connection with God, but these situations were few and far between and lacked ongoing face-to-face relational involvement. I know now that emotions and situations are fleeting, and cannot compose the experiential reality of intimate relationship with God. Instead, situational “connections” merely create ontological simulations, which are always substitutes for intimate relationship together with God on God’s relational terms. I had settled for so much less than what God wants for all us to experience with him.

No wonder my heart often felt lonely and was not deeply satisfied, since I didn’t experience wholeness and well-being of shalôm in the ongoing intimate relationship with God that we all need in our innermost—as Jesus clearly distinguished (Jn 14:27; 16:33) and Paul made imperative (Col 3:15). Moreover, the relational consequence affecting God was that God could not receive from my whole person (cf. Lk 13:34; 19:41-42). Praying “in Jesus’ name” didn’t bring the relational outcome of ‘in my name’ that Jesus pointed to for his disciples (discussed shortly). The gap that exists between what we need deeply in our innermost (and which God promises) and what we actually experience exposes our heart’s critical condition needing to more deeply understand what Jesus meant by ‘in my name’. But before we can meaningfully discuss what Jesus meant by “in my name,” we need to understand the significance of “my name,” along with some comments also about titles we apply to God.

Our common preconceptions about names in general must be discarded before we can imagine names in a qualitatively different way. We have certain ideas about human names, for instance, that family names identify us with our “tribe” and ancestry, whether that identity for the individual involves relational significance beyond the common belief that “blood is thicker than water.” Given names are chosen by parents for a wide variety of reasons, but given names don’t reveal anything about the person’s character, and certainly not their basic ontology and function. In the West, addressing persons by first names is a sign of familiarity but not intimacy (for that semblance we have special nicknames). We carry this mindset and level of expectation into our relationship with God as well.

Even less personal, titles are quantitative descriptors that are applied to persons on the basis of what they do and possess. In human contexts, certain professions use titles as the norm for identifying persons. In the secular fields of medicine, academia, government, to name a few, titles are coveted because they convey status, privilege, and power. Title-holding is a central aspect of the social hierarchies that humans construct in comparative and highly competitive processes, the inevitable counter-relational processes which always result in distance in relationships (discussed in the previous chapter). Being defined by titles fragments those persons’ ontology and function to what they do and possess, and these human parts are always distributed on a scale of “better” or “less.”

In the Christian contexts of church and the academy, persons in church and worship leadership are defined by titles and roles, and persons in the academy are defined by the titles and degrees they have achieved, not to mention books they’ve published. The presence and influence of title-holding in church and the academy unquestioningly comes from human contextualization, not from God’s relational terms. This is a misguided trajectory and counter-relational path for Christians to find themselves on, participating unquestioningly in church life ‘in their way’. Just as in human contexts, it is the norm in these Christian contexts that persons who have those roles and titles are the only ones who are deemed qualified for those positions, and accordingly esteemed. This practice carries over, sadly, into worship gatherings, where we essentially place other idols before (“beside”) God—that is, titled persons who perhaps serve as gods. To the extent that this exists, this subtle process makes God’s first commandment (of the Decalogue) as relevant for us today as it was for the Israelites during Moses’ day. Needless to say, our love of titles for humans engages us unashamedly in the counter-relational comparative-competitive process in likeness of our sociocultural contexts. There is no way we can worship God in God’s likeness as long as we’re embedded in such reductionism and practicing reductionism’s counter-relational work. How do you think God is affected by our engaging in the name of God’s worship in likeness of our human contexts?

Jesus addressed this issue of titles in a long rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees, while simultaneously pointing his disciples to their own ontology and function (Mt 23:1-32). Jesus exposed the scribes and Pharisees for defining their persons by what they did and had, doing “all their deeds to be seen by others” (v.5), which means their actions were self-centered and self-serving. Their reduced ontology and function was reflected by “they love to be treated with favoritism and be honored…and to have people call them rabbi.” When Jesus told his disciples not to take on such titles (“you are not to be called rabbi…. nor are you to be called instructors”), he wasn’t telling them not to have these important functions in the life of the church, but rather not to define their person and other persons by titles and what they do/have. Jesus was strongly warning them about the reductionism that the scribes and Pharisees demonstrated; and, important for the disciples’ whole ontology and function, Jesus also integrated for the disciples the relational truth that in God’s relational context (“one Father…in heaven,” v.13), all such human-made distinctions are eliminated (vv.11-12). In God’s relational context, persons are equalized before God and each other, thereby eliminating the comparative-competitive process that creates hierarchies ‘in their way’.

The current global relational condition is painfully divisive and hostile. It is urgent for God’s people to understand the connection between reductionism and the counter-relational consequences of making distinctions among persons in this global human condition at every level of human relations—from personal to institutional to national levels. As God’s people, we are complicit in reinforcing and sustaining this status quo because we have yet to acknowledge and die to our own sin of reductionism. For our further chastening, the remainder of Jesus’ long rebuke exposes the arrogance of the scribes and Pharisees (reflected by their love of titles) and their reductionism’s further counter-relational expressions in relation to both God and other persons. We must not let the unfamiliarity of Jesus’ bluntness and anger—that is, unfamiliar to our common ethos of niceness in our church and worship practices—distract us from the hurtful relational consequences of the how the scribes and Pharisees functioned. We need to address this log in our own eye.

Jesus likewise confronts and rebukes us today on this issue of titles and their underlying fragmentary ontology and function of persons and relationships pervading our worship practice. Worship practice has been unquestioningly shaped by our sociocultural contexts (‘in their way’) to be more “professional,” as we give primacy to the secondary aspects of what titles persons hold. Such practice has no relational significance to God and creates relational distance, noted earlier. Titles used to identify persons—such as Doctor, Reverend, Pastor (including senior, associate, worship, family life pastors), Deacon, and Elder—create stratified relationships in a comparative process. And the reality is that any comparative process evokes some level of competition (more likely implicit), both of which cultivate relational distance and thus counter the primacy of relationship together. Notwithstanding the legitimate respect we need to give persons in church leadership, this practice and its relational consequences have visibly diminished the ontology and function of God’s new creation family in worship gatherings.

In relation to titles for God, perhaps “Lord” is the most-used title that Christians use when either addressing God or referring to God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned his disciples against involvement with him that referentialized his person (Mt 7:21-23). While Jesus framed this scenario in the future, his relational meaning is vital for us to understand in the here and now. The persons in this scene would say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord” and also engaged in ministry “in your name,” as they would claim twice. These persons seem like earnest disciples, much like many of us today who pray in Jesus’ name and do ministry in Jesus’ name. Yet Jesus denies knowing them (Lk 13:25-27). How is it possible that persons who engage in Christian ministry ‘in Jesus’ name’ wouldn’t experience being known by Jesus?

The message here is that during their lives in service to God, those persons used his title “Lord” only referentially (cf. Hos 8:12; Mt 25:11-12) without their compatible involvement congruent with Jesus’ whole person; and on that basis they engaged in ministry by giving primacy to the outer criteria of what to do. Accordingly, they defined Jesus’ person by his title. Thus, they composed Jesus’ persons in the comparative process of ‘better-less’, thereby creating relational distance with him who was obviously better and they less. This is how idealized stereotypes of Jesus get constructed, the idolization of which create barriers for those less to make relational connection with him better. This dynamic is also seen in Peter’s refusal to let Jesus wash his feet (Jn 13:6-8, to be more fully discussed in chap. 3).

By implication of what transpired with Peter, these other persons’ feet remained unwashed by Jesus and thus experienced the relational consequence “you have no share with me, my person” (Jn 13:8). In other words, the level of involvement of their person was shallow (relationally distant), and thus their involvement’s significance (their ontology and function) was not relationally compatible with God. Therefore, the relational connection wasn’t made, prompting Jesus to claim, “I never relationally knew you” (Mt 7:23). The significance of “I never knew you” is that those persons were not involved with God according to God’s relational terms (“the will of my Father in heaven”), and accordingly could not “enter the kingdom of heaven” (i.e. participate in God’s life). The kingdom of heaven (also known as “kingdom of God” in the other Gospels) refers to God’s relational context and relational process that Jesus’ vulnerably embodied in the human context both ‘already’ (cf. Lk 17:20-21) and ‘not yet’—otherwise known already as God’s new creation family.

It is important also to understand why Jesus both sent them away from himself and also called them “you evildoers.” Jesus speaks only from the wholeness of his person in the wholeness of God’s intimate relationship context and process. When the person we present to God in worship is something less and some substitute for our whole person, we are functioning in conflict with who, what, and how God is. Those persons functioned in the sin of reductionism, and Jesus’ words “go away from me”—“me” constituting the whole and uncommon God—indicate their incompatibility with him who is uncommon and their incongruity with him who is whole, due to their common ontology and function. Accordingly, Jesus calls persons who function in the sin of reductionism “evildoers” (a combination of anomia, lawlessness, with ergon, to practice), meaning that they try to do relationship with God not on God’s relational terms but on their own self-determined terms.

These persons engaged in the ontological simulation as if serving Jesus for his sake. Because they functioned according to their own fragmentary terms, not God’s whole relational terms, they could not relationally and validly call Jesus “Lord” simply using a correct title. Any of us who call Jesus “Lord” while functioning basically in self-determination in relationship with God will also be told by Jesus, “I never knew you.” Therefore, ‘Lord’ is only a relational term that we cannot utter lightly as a mere referential title. Furthermore, ‘Lord’ is much more relationally significant than even a referential designation of God’s superior status and authority that we submit to.

Each of us needs to also vulnerably personally examine calling Jesus “Lord” in referential terms, and also calling God “Father” in referential terms. God’s relational involvement with us in the ontology and function of “Father” cannot be referentialized down to a title (albeit with a familial flavor), similar to calling priests “Father.” Our Father continues to seek worshipers who worship him with the honesty and vulnerableness of daughters and sons whose hearts are relationally involved with him in likeness of how he is involved with us (as in Jn 4:23-24). Any referentializing on our part in our songs and prayers render our singing and praying to have no relational significance to God, who as Father seeks only daughters and son who are vulnerably involved in compatible reciprocal relationship—as his true worshipers.

This discussion connects us back to last chapter’s exposure of human contextualization’s shaping of our persons and how we engage in relationships ‘in their way’. The primacy given to quantitative outer criteria to define persons and determine our relationships is what we bring to bear upon God and to define God’s name. By reducing and referentializing God and commonizing and de-relationalizing God’s name, we also bear the consequence that prevents us from worshiping God in God’s likeness. In other words by implication, we fragment the whole of who, what, and how God is, as expressed by God’s personal name, Yahweh (discussed below). Moreover, we rarely question why so much of our worship experiences are shallow and unsatisfying; but we will understand why once we are honest enough to recognize that we’ve been worshiping the idol of God we’ve created, however unknowingly and unintentionally.

Please don’t be put off by the words of this subtitle; they may sound too academic, but they are so important for us as worshipers and disciples to understand. Indeed these words are key to hearing God’s words that those would-be followers of Jesus couldn’t hear. This brief section will help us to understand better our own relational responsibility for receiving God’s relational communication, as we transition into understanding God’s name.

By our default mode that referentializes God’s words, we reduce God’s vulnerable self-disclosure to mere information about God and about his words (as in much of theological and biblical studies). Basically, we engage in this narrowing down of God, notably to find out both what we must do to please God, and to get the doctrinally correct information that we must have, in order to better establish our identity as God’s people. Some of this effort to get our theology ‘right’ is well-intentioned, but we need to fully understand that to referentialize God’s words is to de-relationalize God’s words, and to de-relationalize God’s words is to de-relationalize and commonize who, what, and how God is, thus re-shaping God into a mere idol, a stereotyped God. Idols do not speak and must be spoken for, and so our referentialization of God’s words effectively silences God, whom we then speak for. Therefore, we are no longer accountable to be compatibly and congruently involved with God, and God no longer has our vulnerable involvement to make the relational connection needed to receive his relational communication. Subtly, this dynamic involving our epistemology and hermeneutic is reversed so that our ears (and other organs of perception) become deaf to his self-disclosures, which are disclosed for the only purpose of making relational connection with us.

Whatever our engagement with God, referential language hereby reduces our ontology and function to serve as both the givers and receivers of such information. These are important issues of epistemology (what is our source of knowledge), relational involvement (what is required of us to understand), and hermeneutics (what interpretive lens we use to understand). These issues for how we listen to and communicate with God are either incongruent with God when our interpretive framework and lens function only in referential language, or congruent with God’s relational language, explained further here:

When we want to account for terms used for God that are defining, then we need to examine three vital signs for the condition of those terms to be significant of and integral to God:

1. The source of those terms, illuminated by the epistemic field of the source that constitutes the source’s epistemological integrity, thus that can be counted on to be definitive. This significance constitutes the epistemological condition.

2. The connection with this source in the source’s epistemic field, the connection of which can only be made according to the source’s terms, and therefore which can only be engaged by relational involvement in order to receive the defining terms disclosed by the source. This significance constitutes the relational condition.

3. Upon relational connection with the source and reception of the terms disclosed by the source, those terms must be interpreted by the nature of the source’s relational context that only uses relational language with whole relational terms. Conclusions about those terms for God disclosed by the source, therefore, cannot be narrowed down to referential language using fragmentary referential terms, or they will no longer be defining. This significance constitutes the hermeneutical condition.^{^[6]}

These are essential issues for us to vulnerably receive all of God’s relational communication and to compatibly respond as disciples and worshipers; and they underscore why Jesus consistently and forcefully addressed persons’ perception, interpretation, and depth level of relational involvement with him (e.g. Mk 4:23-24; 8:14-18; Lk 9:44-45; 10:21). We as God’s global church, as his new creation family, and as worshipers-disciples must, indeed must address ourselves to Jesus’ challenges to us. Otherwise, our idols will (continue to) prevail in our Christian contexts, and God’s voice will (continue to) be silenced.

If we are resolved about what cannot and thus who does not speak for God, even if they have titles and resources to appear to do so, then the pivotal question for us becomes: How carefully will we listen to God speak in whole relational terms to reveal the full identity of God’s name?

For us to grow in worshiping God in God’s relational likeness, we don’t need more referential knowledge about God, but we surely need to listen to, receive, and respond to God’s relational language. We need the relational truth of who, what, and how God is to become our relational reality in face-to-face involvement together with the whole and uncommon God. And understanding God’s name in its depth is necessary for this relational outcome. Unlike our common use of names in our human contexts, in Scripture the names of persons carry a much weightier significance of reflecting the person’s character, reputation, and experience with God, notably in the OT. For example, after Jacob wrestled with God, God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “the one who strives with God” (Gen 32:27-28), and Ezekiel means “God strengthens,” which Ezekiel certainly experienced in his relationship with God. Yet, how we think about God’s name must go even deeper than for human names, which may involve critical life-changing ways. To say we need to go deeper requires our own vulnerable involvement with God, and that will require most of us to ongoingly challenge what interpretive lens we are using, what language (relational or referential) we are using, which depends on where our hearts are in relation to God.

God’s name cannot be understood sufficiently only as a title (such as Almighty, Most High, Lord of Hosts, King, Most High God), or as a mere descriptor based on God’s specific functions (e.g. Creator, Deliverer, Redeemer of Israel, Rock, Refuge, Provider, Strength). These all appear in both hymns and contemporary worship songs that we sing with much adoration and awe. Certainly God deserves to be recognized in all these ways and praised for who, what and how God is. Yet, the following comments chasten both our view of God and our actual involvement in such worship, even as we address him in sermons, songs, and prayers, including when we pray “in Jesus’ name”:

Highlighting such titles of God…has had a tendency to reduce God and counter relationship together rather than deepen it—traditionally, and typically today, as used in worship practice to narrow the focus on only parts of God (notably what God does) instead of the whole of God, and thereby as a substitute for face-to-face relationship together. Therefore, these titles of God, valid or not, should never be mistaken for the name of God and the full significance vested in the name God gave, nor should we assume that any substitutes of God’s name have any significance to God and also in our theology and practice.^{^[7]}

The “full significance vested in the name God gave” is that his name is inseparable from his direct presence and relational involvement with persons. God’s presence and relational involvement always engaged the whole of God’s ontology and function with persons in relation-specific ways (not generalized), and was evident from very early in the OT. Long before Moses’ introduction to God, Jacob experienced God face to face in a nightlong struggle (Gen 32:30). After the struggle, Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name.” God didn’t respond with the “information” of his name, but with the question, “Why is it that you ask my name?” Just moments before, God had changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “he struggles with God” (NIV), thereby identifying to Jacob that nothing less than God’s own presence was involved with him.

God’s response seems curious at first, but in the context of the entire interaction God, demonstrated that his name is inseparable from his presence and relational involvement. We might speculate that God wanted the relational experience of the struggle together to sink in for Jacob rather than focus on what Jacob could misinterpret as a mere referential title or label. In any case, Jacob subsequently named that location Peniel, which means “The face of God,” because he “had seen God face to face.” This interaction signals to us the significance of “YHWH” that God will later reveal to Moses and the Israelites as much more than a title or identifying descriptor, but as the “relational-specific action” that distinguishes God’s presence, nature, and being.

In ancient times in the Mediterranean region, to reveal one’s name was a sign of intimate friendship; so when YHWH told Moses his personal name, this is the relational action from God for us to embrace about who, what, and how God desires to be experienced in relationship with any of us. Intimacy is the experience of hearts being open to each other vulnerably—that is, with honesty of who one really is, no hiding of one’s heart, and no masking one’s innermost from the other—and making relational connection. In relationship with God, it is this relational reality that makes persons whole. With this qualitative-relational depth, God thus vulnerably revealed his personal name YHWH (Yahweh) to Moses in the remarkable first relational interaction they experienced together (Ex 3:13-15). Moses responded reciprocally with nothing less and no substitutes for his whole person (cf. Ex 4:1,10,13,30; 33:12-15,18), and their relationship together unfolded in the intimacy of face-to-face experience (Ex 33:11; Num 12:7-8).

We need to embrace for ourselves this self-disclosure by YHWH to correct our misconceptions and stereotypes about God as relationally distant in his transcendence—for example as in deism and classical theism. Furthermore, YHWH also interacted with Moses in personally-specific ways, for example, as YHWH responded to Moses’ various concerns and self-doubts about the task he was chosen for. In this reciprocal relationship, Moses received and responded to YHWH’s reassurances of his ongoing presence and involvement, which unfold throughout the rest of Moses’ life as he led the Israelites on their conflict-marked journey (e.g. 33:12-34:10). Moses’ reciprocal response to God demonstrates the compatibility and congruence of Moses’ ontology and function with God’s. Theirs is a heart-level and moving dynamic relationship together indeed.

All during those years together, YHWH faithfully demonstrated to Moses the significance of his personal name YHWH (the Lord) as “I am who I am,” by his ongoing presence and involvement with him and the Israelites. YHWH’s unmistakable self-disclosures in his relational involvement is attested to throughout in the OT, thereby revealing the significance of the name YHWH as a relational verb. YHWH’s name as relational verb cannot be reduced down to a merely static appellation like other static titles (which is how we commonly use them in our worship)—for example, Almighty, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I doubt that God is moved or impressed by our addressing him with such titles, no matter how lofty and eloquent they sound to us. The following summarizes this:

What is immediately distinguished in God’s terms is that the name of YHWH is not static. While YHWH (the Tetragrammaton) is the basic name of God identified in transcendence, YHWH does not remain apart but engages the theological trajectory that improbably intrudes on the human context, which is the original context created by YHWH. What emerged with the name of YHWH (“I AM WHO I AM”) has been associated with the verb ‘to be’ (hayah) to signify God’s being and existence. Yet, God’s ontology is an incomplete picture to distinguish YHWH, a view which philosophical theology has embrace to render God more conceptual and static. What YHWH distinguishes is the primacy of God’s function that is integral to and inseparable from God’s ontology. The being and nature of God don’t just exist but function in such a way that distinguishes who, what and how God is. Moreover, the function of God doesn’t just describe the ontology of God beyond any other gods, but it distinguishes the vulnerable presence and nature of God’s involvement in the human context. That is, the significance of the name YHWH as a verb constitutes God’s whole ontology and function disclosed to us, which otherwise as a nominal do not emerge in their wholeness. Further and deeper, as a verb YHWH’s name does not merely signify God’s activity in the human context—a common notion in OT theology—but constitutes God’s relational-specific action and involvement integral to the whole of God’s presence.

….What distinguishes the face-presence of YHWH is whole-ly constituted by relational-specific action for relational-specific involvement in the primacy of relational together; accordingly, God’s ontology and function cannot merely be observed by disengaged referential terms but can only be relationally experienced (not just spiritually or unilaterally) by the involving relational terms that vulnerably discloses God’s whole ontology and function in the name and with the face-presence of YHWH.^{^[8]}

YHWH vulnerably communicates only in relational-specific action by which YHWH’s presence, nature, and being are vulnerably disclosed in our human context. God’s presence constitutes his vulnerable relational-specific involvement with us in his relational context on his relational terms, which he enacts with us in our human context. Moreover—and this also is vital for us to understand for our worship language—YHWH as relational verb must not be transposed to a noun, the way we use names as mere identifiers, or to a referential title. YHWH as relational verb signifies nothing less than God’s vulnerable presence, relational nature, and qualitative being.^{^[9]} YHWH’s name (šēm yhwh) signifies ‘YHWH in person’ (as in Ps 54:6; 76:1; 135:1,3; Isa 30:27), not passively ‘in person’ but as Subject always relationally involved with us individually and corporately. In the continuity between the OT and the NT, YHWH was and is always actively enacting his relational purpose of gathering and reconciling us to himself to make us whole together to compose his new creation family.

Whenever we gather for worship, we supposedly gather ‘in his name’ (cf. Mt 18:20), and when we do gather ‘in his name’ to praise, thank, and enjoy being God’s new creation family together, Jesus stated, “there I am among you.” For Jesus to say “I am” must not be understood as static presence (as if only standing there, observing us), nor as just a partial “I AM,” but as the continuity of YHWH in relational-specific involvement with us. We need also to hear all of Jesus’ “I am’s” with this relational lens of YHWH as relational verb enacting God’s whole presence and involvement.

Yet, it is the common experience in corporate worship that what is missing is the primacy of relationship and the experiential reality of God’s presence and involvement with us. Our not being able to “hear” him is how the relational gap occurs in worship (issues of epistemology, relationship, and hermeneutics), as Jesus clarified to the would-be followers who didn’t understand his relational language on account of their referentialization of God’s words. Are the distinctions between the two languages, composing the way these languages determine how we see God and ourselves, and the relational and functional gap that we experience in worship all coming into focus? If we don’t have clarity of the name of God in our theology, then perhaps we are not worshiping the God we think we are in our practice. Don’t make the assumption of those who called Jesus “Lord.”

What do you think of while singing about God’s glory? “Glory” is yet another one of those words that we have referentialized in churchspeak to mean much less than its biblical meaning. In worship, we correctly give God glory by glorifying God (praising and honoring) for who God is. However, this sense of glorifying ascribes to God divine attributes merely as static descriptors for God (what God has), or as active descriptions (what God does). Yet, apart from the vulnerable presence and relational-specific involvement of YHWH, these ascriptions are fragmentary and form stereotypes of God. We then praise God with this generalized understanding of God, which may have accuracy referentially but lack the full significance of God’s name. Thus, in order to understand God’s glory so that we can compatibly “sing the glory of his name” (Ps 66:2) to give him the honor he deserves, we have to get past our notions about his glory that are derived from spectacular images that we equate with God’s glory, majesty and splendor—images of pillars of cloud and fire (Ex 13:21), “a devouring fire” (Ex 24:16), “brightness” (Ezek 10:4; Lk 2:9), Jesus’ radiance “like the sun” in the transfiguration (Mt 17:2), and thunder (Jn 12:29). These images may inflate God’s glory in our worship vocabulary, but the reality needing to be understood is that they deflate the glory of God’s name in our worship practice.

We sometimes try to create in worship an affective (i.e. sensory) experience of God’s glory through our eloquent words (e.g. piles of adjectives in superlative form), audiovisual technology, and instrumental arrangements at high volume. Yet these words, images, and sounds are insufficient to understand the glory of God’s name. They only narrow down (deflate) God’s glory to visible and audible manifestations of God’s divinity, which have no relational significance to God or to us, though we may have an affective, even qualitative experience as we ponder God in reference to his awesomeness.

Jesus unmistakably and vulnerably embodied God’s glory (cf. Jn 1:14), which John’s Gospel qualifies with “the glory as of a father’s only son” that “we have seen.” Yet when preachers claim (correctly) that Jesus is the real manifestation of God’s glory, they commonly describe Jesus’ glory in those same referential terms of light, majesty, splendor, and honor. The problem created by referentialization is that referential terms function in a comparative framework in which God comes out on top, in superlatives. This constructs an awesome profile of God without helping us understand the distinguished depth of the whole and uncommon God’s glory, who wonderfully is vulnerably present and relationally involved with us for relationship together as family (as John illuminated, Jn 1:10-12).

Thinking about God’s glory in these referential terms, we end up worshiping a narrow-down God fragmented from YHWH’s name as relational verb. The consequence in our worship is, again, something less and some substitute for whole understanding of God and, thus of ourselves. For our worshiping God in likeness of God to become our experiential reality, we need to understand that YHWH as relational verb is inseparable from God’s glory. This is where the significance of OT Hebrew illuminates “glory” for us beyond our referentialized notion, as the following states:

The word for glory in Hebrew (kābôd) comes from the word [kābēd] “to be heavy,” for example, with wealth or worthiness. A person’s glory…is shaped and seen on the basis of the perceptual-interpretive framework used for how a person is defined and what defines that person. The glory Jesus distinguished brings us further than an abstract attribute of the transcendent God and takes us deeper than a person defined by what he does and has. In the OT, kābôd is used poetically to refer to the whole person (Ps; 108:1).

The main idea of ‘the glory of God’ [kābôd yhwh] denotes the revelation of God’s being, nature and presence to us, that is, the whole of who, what and how God is. Our initial introduction to God’s glory is revealed in creation (natural or general revelation, Ps 19:1-4), which does not distinguish the whole of God but has heuristic purpose (Rom 1:20) that is complete upon encountering the deep profile of Jesus’ face from inner out. Paul made conclusive that this disclosure of God’s glory was not in referential terms but relational terms from inner out (“who has shone in our hearts”) distinguished “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). In the incarnation the vulnerable disclosures of Jesus’ whole person and presence engaged us with God’s glory—that is, God’s being, nature, and presence with us: the who (being), the what (nature) and the how (presence) of God. Who, what and how Jesus is vulnerably disclose who, what and how God is—that is to say, phaneroō [reveals in relational terms] God’s glory only for relationship, not for systematic theology or doctrinal certainty. Therefore, the who, what and how in the distinguished face of Jesus is the hermeneutical key to the ontology of the glory of God, through whom we can know and understand who, what and how God is. And when the glory seen is the distinguished face of God, the person Jesus presents in whole ontology and function discloses the functional involvement of God’s being, nature and presence with us as Subject in face-to-face relationship, not merely an Object to be observed.^{^[10]}

To summarize the above, God’s glory (kābôd yhwh) is the relational truth of the ontology of God’s being in the innermost as heart, his nature as intimately relational, and God’s function as vulnerably present and relationally involved, both within the Trinity and with us, for us to deeply experience in covenant relationship together.^{^[11]} The glory of God is the experiential truth that Jesus embodied into the human context, as John’s Gospel plainly claims in relational terms (without any embellishment in comparative referential terms), “we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son.” Therefore, when we worship God for his glory, we become relationally accountable for the whole of who, what, and how God ongoingly enacts his name YHWH as relational verb.

If the glory of God revealed is not received as distinguished by the name of YHWH, there is no substantive basis to “ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name” (Ps 29:2; 96:8), to “bless his glorious name” (Ps 72:19), and to “sing the glory of his name” (Ps 66:2). And there is an insurmountable gap in our theology and practice between the experiential truth and experiential reality of God’s glory….^{^[12]}

When the glory of God’s name is distinguished unmistakably in our theology, then this completes one-half of the relational equation necessary for our worship practice. On the basis of this understanding of kāḇôḏ for God, God likewise holds us relationally accountable for the whole of who, what, and how we are ongoingly in the likeness of God’s glory. Kāḇôḏ for human beings signifies the whole of our being, nature and presence—that is our whole person (Ps 57:8; 108:1), created in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the triune God. God in his kāḇôḏ seeks nothing less than our kāḇôḏ, the full weightiness of our whole person from inner out (the relational terms of Jn 4:23-24). As with relational righteousness (i.e. the whole of who, what and how we are that God can relationally count on), only with our whole person vulnerably present and involved with God on his relational terms can we worship the Lord in compatible response and congruent connection with the glory of God’s name. This is our uncommon relational-specific involvement with God that can never be composed ‘in their way’ of relating to God notably with any relational distance. The glory of God’s name holds us accountable for nothing less and no substitutes for our own kābôd. Therefore, worshiping God in likeness of God—whose personal name YHWH is Subject as relational verb—must reflect our ontology and function compatibly and congruently also in our subject-person also as relational verb.

What did God intend when he gave the third Commandment, “You shall not misuse (šāw’) the name of the Lord your God” (NIV)? How we understand this commandment will influence our understanding of ‘in my name’ and vice versa. Some common interpretations are: we must not curse using God’s name or use it in vain, must not speak of God lightly, must not live in ethical and moral ways that dishonor God’s name. These are valid interpretations, but they are insufficient to deal with the conflict God’s people face between the two competing contexts of the uncommon covenant relationship with God and their common human context.

To briefly review, God issued his relational terms for the covenant relationship in the Decalogue as he was preparing the Israelites to enter the land of Canaan, where they would encounter peoples who worshiped the idols of their deities. God was warning his people against the strong lure of embracing how the Canaanites related to their idols. This would involve (1) using YHWH’s name for magical purposes, for hexing other persons, or to manipulate YHWH into doing something for them,^{^[13]} and (2) involve their person in a kind of performance. An example of how pagan peoples related to their idols is demonstrated when God’s prophet Elijah challenged the prophets of their deity Baal (1 Kgs 18:16-17-29). Those prophets were trying to get Baal to bring fire to their altar: “They…called on the name of Baal from morning until noon…they limped about…cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves until blood gushed out over them…raved on.” The key words in this interaction are, “But there was no voice, no answer, and no response” (v.29). Of course not, because whatever humans create is not the substantive God, no matter what they call it. And while this narrative account seems humorous, its message is important for us.

The above are examples of persons in reduced ontology and function, which they also projected onto their deities. This is the outer-in ontology and function of the sin of reductionism, relating to their deities based on what they did from outer in, and what they wanted the deities to do for them. YHWH eliminated this fragmentary ontology and function—both for the Israelites’ own persons but especially for the Israelites’ view and treatment of the one God that would render God’s name to mere referential title or descriptor. This points us to the primary misuse of God’s name that the relational terms of this commandment focuses on.

The Hebrew word for “misuse” (šāw’) signifies worthless, fraud, deceit, and is often translated as “in vain.” What šāw’ means in God’s relational terms goes even further than the common interpretations noted above. God also told the Israelites not to use his name ‘in their way’ because those ways have absolutely no relational significance to him. ‘In their way’ composes common ways in which their persons become incompatible with God’s ontology (God’s being and nature), and incongruent with how God functions (God’s vulnerable involvement) in relationship together. Only worshipers vulnerably involved with God, relational-specific to YHWH with their whole person from inner out, are compatible and congruent with God’s uncommon (holy) name and likeness.

The warning against using God’s name in vain (cf. Isa 29:13) is echoed by Jesus when he warned against worship that is in vain or worthless to God (Mt 15:9). Without the involvement of persons’ hearts from inner out, even if the worshipers preach, sing and shout God’s name and ‘in Jesus’ name’, such activity comprises worship having no relational significance to God because it is not composed by the kābôd of both God and those worshipers. This is virtual worship not distinguished as uncommon because it is incompatible with the holy (uncommon) God, having been shaped from the common human context. When our person is not whole-ly involved with God, we render God’s name to referential language by making God’s uncommon name merely common, which is another meaning of “profaning” God’s name (cf. Lev 19:12). Again, God’s name is inseparable from God’s Subject-person and relational involvement, so using God’s name in common ways renders God to a god of our shaping—again, an idol—thereby subtly conflicting with God’s relational terms of the Decalogue.

Given the above discussion, we need to embrace that misusing God’s name is not merely an outward behavior issue of ‘what not to do’. We misuse God’s name when we speak, sing, and proclaim God’s name with anything less or any substitute for our whole person from inner out. We misuse God’s name when we worship God incongruently with God’s nonnegotiable relational terms, thereby presenting God with mere ontological simulation in virtual worship. In other words, when we misuse God’s name, we misrepresent the whole and uncommon God in our theology and practice.

On the other hand, when our ontology and function are compatible and congruent in relational likeness to God, then our worshiping gives the glory (i.e. in and through our kāḇôḏ) due (i.e. congruent with) the glory (God’s kāḇôḏ) of his name (e.g. Ps 29:2). This is not a merely academic discussion; we are all relationally accountable to God for how we worship God, “for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” (cf. Ex 20:7). And God continues to challenge our theology and practice: “Where are you?” (as in Gen 3:4) and “What are you doing here?” (as in 1 Kgs 19:9,13). We can no longer assume the health of our worship condition, nor can we continue to make assumptions for our theology and practice that deny or avoid their need for urgent car. God deserves so much more from us than our sad substitutes in worship, the substitutes that we seem to be self-satisfied with, at least on the surface, given that we don’t directly address the status quo of our theology and practice.

Getting back to “in Jesus’ name we pray, amen,” I suggest that our most common use of these words is referential, as something we’re supposed to say, as a way of authenticating our prayers before the Father, and as a way of identifying ourselves as Christians by virtue of our words, like an outer-in identity marker. This latter purpose reason echoes the outer-in identity markers that many Jews clung to and practice—circumcision, purity, and dietary laws—which Paul definitively clarified as having no relational significance to God (e.g. Gal 5:6; 6:15; Rom 2:28-29; Col 2:21). But there is a further theological issue we need to understand.

As discussed earlier, God’s personal name YHWH signifies the face of God’s vulnerable presence and relational-specific involvement (as does God’s glory) in the OT. In continuity with the OT, in the NT God’s face embodied in the Word came into our human context, revealing for all humankind to experience the full significance of God’s glory as revealed in Christ’s face (2 Cor 4:4,6; Jn 1:14).

Although the Gospels focus on Jesus’ incarnation and ministry on earth, Jesus never acted apart from the triunity of God, but rather repeatedly pointed to his relationship with the Father (Jn 4:34; 5:19-24,37; 6:32,38-40,44). Accordingly, whenever Jesus said, for example, to pray “in my name,” he was never referring to himself only; but rather Jesus said “my name” speaking as the Son inseparably in relationship with the Father and the Spirit. Thus, “my name” communicates as the whole of the triune God. With the same qualitative relational significance, whenever Jesus said “in me” as in “believes in me” (Jn 6:35), this signifies believing in the triune God—which counters Christians being overly christocentric. Commonly, the whole of the triune God (the Trinity) isn’t who we have in mind when we say “in Jesus’ name we pray.”

Jesus as the face of the whole and uncommon God embodied is therefore our indispensable key to knowing God’s ontology and function, as well as for understanding our ontology and function necessary to compatibly compose God’s new creation family in the Trinity’s likeness. And, for our prayer and worship practices to be compatible and congruent with the whole and uncommon Trinity, Jesus is our key to the communication necessary to make the relational connection with God in these practices.

In two vital scenes Jesus taught his disciples about prayer to illuminate this indispensable relational communicative act for us to be involved in for reciprocal relationship together. The first scene is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus specifically addressed the difference between the common ways of praying by some Jews that took place in the religious contexts of his time (‘in their way’), and prayer that makes relational connection with the Father. First, Jesus critiqued those he called hypocrites because they prayed without relational significance but “so that they may be seen by others” (Mt 6:5). In their devoted practice, these Jews engaged in ontological simulation having no relational purpose and significance to God (cf. Mt 23:5), which encompasses all of our prayer-worship practices that don’t make relational connection with God. Therefore, this relational disconnect in prayer converges with the relational distance of ‘lips without heart’ that Jesus critiques on the same relational basis and for the same relational purpose.

The word ‘hypocrite’ in English is understood insufficiently as anyone who doesn’t practice what they preach, and even contradicts what they believe. The Greek roots of our English terms ‘hypocrite’ (hypokritēs) and ‘hypocrisy’ (hypokrisis) are more fully illuminated here, which points back to the discussion earlier about prosōpon, our masks:

The metaphorical sense of hypokrisis [is] taken from the world of Greek theatre: the action of a person which is similar to a stage performance as an actor. Deceit is not necessarily the intention of a hypokrites, though that is certainly a common issue. The main issue reflected by hypokrisis…involves the ontology of the person and its consequence for relationships. This sense of hypokrisis addresses the individual person’s functional determination and the underlying human ontology, which Jesus confronted and clarified.

Hypokritai (pl) make a presentation of self (even unintentionally) which does not correspond to or represent their whole person (signified by the function of the heart). Jesus exposed the worship practice of Pharisees and scribes to make their hypocrisy evident (Mk 7:6, cf. Jer 12:2); later, in his list of woes, he confronted them on their duplicity (Lk 11:39, Mt 23:25). The person presented was the measured (scripted if you will) expression of the outer…quantitative and distinctly observable aspects of the person (Mt 23:5-7) purposely for a process of self-determination and justification (Mt 23:27-28).^{^[14]}

Paul identified this hypokrisis as “masquerade,” the presenting of a role or virtual identity to other persons in relationships. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul addressed this issue existing in the context of church: “false apostles masquerading as apostles of Christ….Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light….his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor 11:13-15, NIV). “Masquerade” (metaschematizō, which the NRSV translates as “disguise”) means to change one’s outward form. In contrast to metaschematizō is metamorphoō, the inner-out transformation of redemptive change (2 Cor 3:18; cf. Rom 12:2) that requires the transformation of one’s heart, how one defines oneself, and subsequently engages in intimate and equalized relationships together as the new creation family (2 Cor 5:17-18).

This dynamic concerning the presentation of self becomes a critical issue about reductionism in prayer and worship, because outwardly we cannot necessarily tell the difference between reduced worship offered to God by reduced persons, and whole worship from the whole worshipers God seeks for whole relationship. This difficulty reflects the genius of reductionism to give ontological simulation the illusion of significance to our practices even when they are dissonant to God. The key indicator of living in reductionism is found in the interrelated presence of (1) insensitivity to the qualitative in life from the inner out—most notably when we get preoccupied with secondary matters—and (2) a corresponding relational unawareness of relational connection (or disconnection), even as the heart and relationship are spoken about in worship gatherings. Worshipers who worship and pray “to be seen by or with others” function as hypokritēs in what is essentially performance or theater—even inadvertently and with good intentions. The subtle pursuit in this practice is that their reward is recognition from others, “their reward in full” (Mt 6:5, NIV; cf. 1 Cor 11:15). That is the only benefit, yet that may be all some persons want. It is unmistakable, however, that they did not make relational connection with the Father or the Son, not even to mention the Spirit.

Another related approach to prayer that Jesus exposed was praying and worshiping with the assumption that wordiness, repetitiveness, and rote prayers (and songs) will be heard by God (Mt 6:7; “their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote,” Isa 29:13; cf. 1 Kgs 18:26-29; Ecc 5:2). Those who pray and worship in this way are focused on the secondary and outer criteria of quantity of words. Although Jesus was definitive about this outer approach to praying, isn’t this practice common in worship services, even the norm? Consider how we sing contemporary song choruses over and over, the wordiness in prayers in both worship and smaller groups, and prayers that are repeatedly recited or read referentially. This reflection should include examining whether our reciting the Lord’s Prayer is seen as only theological guideline for how we should pray, and whether our saying this prayer has any relational significance to God, or even to you. Either way raises the question of why we routinely repeat this prayer structure, because its relational terms evoke the vulnerable involvement of our whole person in reciprocal relationship with God, not mere words and lips presented to God.

Jesus continued to point his followers to pray in the way that has relational-specific significance to the Father: “go into your innermost place and pray vulnerably to your Father, and your Father who sees your innermost will respond to you” (Mt 6:6). Certainly the disciples had witnessed the stark contrast between how the hypokrites prayed and how Jesus prayed, and they needed guidance from Jesus. Thus Jesus shared the Lord’s Prayer to illuminate the relational context and process necessary for relational connection with God. Matthew’s Gospel places the Lord’s Prayer directly following Jesus’ teaching about praying (Mt 6:9-13). Luke’s Gospel places the Lord’s Prayer after Jesus had spent time alone with the Father (Lk 11:2-4). The disciples no doubt sensed the qualitative and relational distinction with which Jesus went to be with the Father alone, and asked Jesus to teach them to pray. As Jesus shared this most well-known prayer, Jesus was not telling his followers to recite his words referentially, but to come before the Father in Jesus’ own likeness of intimate relational involvement integral to the whole of the trinitarian interrelations. This trinitarian relational context and process is the significance of praying “in my name” in contrast to our common words “in Jesus’ name we pray, amen,” which we need to seriously consider to be no longer of significance to God or to us.

The Lord’s Prayer demonstrates Jesus’ relational language in God’s relational context and relational process, which integrally compose the whole relationship in God’s new creation family. In nothing less than this new relationship together of wholeness do we experience the relational reality of who and whose we are as daughters and sons. This experiential truth and experiential reality signify also “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—the relational outcome of relationship with the whole and uncommon God to experience together in our human context with no substitutes.

‘In my name’ is God’s relational shorthand for saying “to be involved with your ontology and function that I can count on to be who, what, and how you are in my own likeness—in the only way that proves accountable for my self-disclosures to you.” Any other use of God’s name is misuse, which misrepresents God in our theology and practice whether in prayer or worship. I have no doubt that God is either angered or grieved, likely both, whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer ‘in their way’. And how God is affected intensifies immeasurably as we worship with anything less and any substitutes ‘in their way’.

Contrary to what commonly represents the most important activities of God’s people, worshiping and praying ‘in my name’ involves nothing less than participating in life together with the whole and uncommon God—relationally involved participation only on God’s nonnegotiable relational terms. This goes deeper than common notions of participating in God’s life. For us to participate in God’s life together as God’s new creation family is the purpose and relational outcome for why Jesus vulnerably embodied the intimate presence of the whole of God (i.e. the gospel). Jesus summarized this irreplaceable relational work in his intimate family prayer to the Father: “I made your name [the whole of us] known to them in my vulnerable presence and relational involvement with them, and I will continue to make it known, so that the family love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26). We need to receive the whole gospel and participate in the whole and uncommon Life, Truth and Way embodying it.

Even as I have been writing this chapter, the Spirit has deepened God’s relational messages into my heart: our Father longs for me/us to relationally know and understand him in the primacy of relationship together (cf. Jer 9:23-24). And that requires me/us to be redeemed from our reductionism and its counter-relational workings composed in referential language, in order to emerge whole in our ontology from inner out, and to live whole in function (composed in his relational language) “in his name.” In other words composed in relational terms, for us (individually and corporately) to be and live in God’s very own integral qualitative image and relational likeness, just as he created us to be (Gen 1:28) and newly creates us to live (Col 3:10; Eph 4:24; 2 Cor 3:18). This from-old-to-new transformation is the relational significance of God’s relational imperative “be holy because I am holy,” which we focus on in the next chapter.

[1] For further discussion about relational language and referential language, see T. Dave

Matsuo, Jesus into Paul: Embodying the Theology and Hermeneutic of the Whole Gospel (Integration

Study, 2012). See also Iain McGilchrist for an integrated discussion from neuroscience, psychiatry, and

philosophy on referential language and its association with left brain hemisphere functions in contrast to

qualitative functions of the right hemisphere; The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the

Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

[2] Emojis originated as little face icons expressing feelings but the categories of emoji have expanded to include animals, food, and other objects. Sentences can now be written using only emojis, thus becoming yet another dialect of referential language, one that is a further step removed from face-to-face communication.

[3] Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson. Pragmatics Of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes (NY: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc, 1967), 54.

[4] This rendering of principles from communication theory of Watzlawick et al (“This is how I see myself...this is how I see you...this is how I see you seeing me”; p. 52) is developed by T. Dave Matsuo in The Relational Progression: A Relational Theology of Discipleship (Discipleship Study, 2004). Online: http://4X12.org. Chap 1, section: “Understanding the Word.”

[5] For example, take a quick look at https://www.praisecharts.com/songs/ccli-top-100-songs, and https://www.praisecharts.com/themes.

[6] T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of The Trinity: The Trinitarian Essential for the Whole of God and Life (Trinity Study, coming in 2016). Online at http://4X12.org.

[7] For a thought-provoking discussion about God’s personal name YHWH, please see T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity.

[8] T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity, my italics.

[9] For further discussion of God’s vulnerable presence, relational nature, and qualitative being, see T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity.

[10] T. Dave Matsuo, The Gospel of Transformation: Distinguishing the Discipleship and Ecclesiology

Integral to Salvation (Transformation Study, 2015), 64.

[11] For an insightful examination of how Jesus’ incarnation embodied God’s being, nature, and presence, please see T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology: A Theological & Functional Study of the Whole of Jesus (Christology Study, 2008); online at http://4X12.org.

[12] T. Dave Matsuo, The Face of the Trinity.

[13] John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mak W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary to the Old Testament (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), 95.

[14] T. Dave Matsuo, Sanctified Christology, 106-107.