A reproduction of the Watchtower Society's article
Why is the sanctification of God’s name of primary importance?
The entire Bible account revolves around this issue and its settlement, and makes manifest Jehovah God’s primary purpose: the sanctification of his own name. Such sanctification would require a cleansing of God’s name of all reproach and false charges, that is, a vindicating of it. But, much more than that, it would require the honoring of that name as sacred by all intelligent creatures in heaven and earth. This, in turn, would mean their recognizing and respecting Jehovah’s sovereign position, doing so willingly, wanting to serve him, delighting to do his divine will, because of love for him. David’s prayer to Jehovah at Psalm 40:5-10 well expresses such attitude and true sanctification of Jehovah’s name. (Note the apostle’s application of portions of this psalm to Christ Jesus at Heb 10:5-10.)
Upon the sanctification of Jehovah’s name, therefore, depend the good order, peace, and well-being of all the universe and its inhabitants. God’s Son showed this, at the same time pointing out Jehovah’s means for accomplishing his purpose, when he taught his disciples to pray to God: “Let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.” (Mt 6:9, 10) This primary purpose of Jehovah provides the key for understanding the reason behind God’s actions and his dealings with his creatures as set forth in the entire Bible.
Thus, we find that the nation of Israel, whose history forms a large part of the Bible record, was selected to be a ‘name people’ for Jehovah. (De 28:9, 10; 2Ch 7:14; Isa 43:1, 3, 6, 7) Jehovah’s Law covenant with them laid prime importance on their giving exclusive devotion to Jehovah as God and not taking up his name in a worthless way, “for Jehovah will not leave the one unpunished who takes up his name in a worthless way.” (Ex 20:1-7; compare Le 19:12; 24:10-23.) By his display of his power to save and power to destroy when liberating Israel from Egypt, Jehovah’s name was “declared in all the earth,” its fame preceding Israel in their march to the Promised Land. (Ex 9:15, 16; 15:1-3, 11-17; 2Sa 7:23; Jer 32:20, 21) As the prophet Isaiah expressed it: “Thus you led your people in order to make a beautiful name for your own self.” (Isa 63:11-14) When Israel showed a rebellious attitude in the wilderness, Jehovah dealt mercifully with them and did not abandon them. However, he revealed his primary reason in saying: “I went acting for the sake of my own name that it might not be profaned before the eyes of the nations.”—Eze 20:8-10.
Throughout the history of that nation, Jehovah kept the importance of his sacred name before them. The capital city, Jerusalem, with its Mount Zion was the place Jehovah chose “to place his name there, to have it reside.” (De 12:5, 11; 14:24, 25; Isa 18:7; Jer 3:17) The temple built in that city was the ‘house for Jehovah’s name.’ (1Ch 29:13-16; 1Ki 8:15-21, 41-43) What was done at that temple or in that city, for good or for bad, inevitably affected Jehovah’s name and would be given attention by him. (1Ki 8:29; 9:3; 2Ki 21:4-7) The profaning of Jehovah’s name there would bring certain destruction upon the city and lead to the casting away of the temple itself. (1Ki 9:6-8; Jer 25:29; 7:8-15; compare Jesus’ actions and words at Mt 21:12, 13; 23:38.) Because of these facts, the plaintive petitions of Jeremiah and Daniel on behalf of their people and city urged that Jehovah grant mercy and help ‘for his own name’s sake.’—Jer 14:9; Da 9:15-19.
In foretelling his restoration of his name people to Judah and their cleansing, Jehovah again made clear to them his main concern, saying: “And I shall have compassion on my holy name.” “‘Not for your sakes am I doing it, O house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have come in.’ ‘And I shall certainly sanctify my great name, which was being profaned . . . ; and the nations will have to know that I am Jehovah,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘when I am sanctified among you before their eyes.’”—Eze 36:20-27, 32.
These and other scriptures show that Jehovah does not exaggerate mankind’s importance. All men being sinners, they are justly worthy of death, and it is only by God’s undeserved kindness and mercy that any will gain life. (Ro 5:12, 21; 1Jo 4:9, 10) Jehovah owes nothing to mankind, and life everlasting for those who attain it will be a gift, not wages earned. (Ro 5:15; 6:23; Tit 3:4, 5) True, he has demonstrated unparalleled love toward mankind. (Joh 3:16; Ro 5:7, 8) But it is contrary to Scriptural fact and a putting of matters in wrong perspective to view human salvation as if it were the all-important issue or the criterion by which God’s justice, righteousness, and holiness can be measured. The psalmist expressed the true perspective of matters when he humbly and wonderingly exclaimed: “O Jehovah our Lord, how majestic your name is in all the earth, you whose dignity is recounted above the heavens! . . . When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have prepared, what is mortal man that you keep him in mind, and the son of earthling man that you take care of him?” (Ps 8:1, 3, 4; 144:3; compare Isa 45:9; 64:8.) The sanctification of Jehovah God’s name rightly means more than the life of all mankind. Thus, as God’s Son showed, man should love his human neighbor as he loves himself, but he must love God with his whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. (Mr 12:29-31) This means loving Jehovah God more than relatives, friends, or life itself.—De 13:6-10; Re 12:11; compare the attitude of the three Hebrews at Da 3:16-18; see JEALOUS, JEALOUSY.
This Scriptural view of matters should not repel persons but, rather, should cause them to appreciate the true God all the more. Since Jehovah could, in full justice, put an end to all sinful mankind, this exalts all the more the greatness of his mercy and undeserved kindness in saving some of mankind for life. (Joh 3:36) He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze 18:23, 32; 33:11), yet neither will he allow the wicked to escape the execution of his judgment. (Am 9:2-4; Ro 2:2-9) He is patient and long-suffering, with salvation in view for obedient ones (2Pe 3:8-10), yet he will not tolerate forever a situation that brings reproach upon his lofty name. (Ps 74:10, 22, 23; Isa 65:6, 7; 2Pe 2:3) He shows compassion and is understanding regarding human frailties, forgiving repentant ones “in a large way” (Ps 103:10-14; 130:3, 4; Isa 55:6, 7), yet he does not excuse persons from the responsibilities they rightly bear for their own actions and the effects these have on themselves and their families. They reap what they have sown. (De 30:19, 20; Ga 6:5, 7, 8) Thus, Jehovah shows a beautiful and perfect balance of justice and mercy. Those having the proper perspective of matters as revealed in his Word (Isa 55:8, 9; Eze 18:25, 29-31) will not commit the grave error of trifling with his undeserved kindness or ‘missing its purpose.’—2Co 6:1; Heb 10:26-31; 12:29.
Unchanging in Qualities and Standards. As Jehovah told the people of Israel: “I am Jehovah; I have not changed.” (Mal 3:6) This was some 3,500 years after God’s creation of mankind and some 1,500 years from the time of God’s making the Abrahamic covenant. While some claim that the God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures differs from the God revealed by Jesus Christ and by the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures, examination shows this claim to be without any foundation. Of God, the disciple James rightly said: “With him there is not a variation of the turning of the shadow.” (Jas 1:17) There was no ‘mellowing’ of Jehovah God’s personality during the centuries, for no mellowing was needed. His severity as revealed in the Christian Greek Scriptures is no less nor his love any greater than it was at the beginning of his dealings with mankind in Eden.
The seeming differences in personality are in reality merely different aspects of the same unchanging personality. These result from the differing circumstances and persons dealt with, calling for different attitudes or relationships. (Compare Isa 59:1-4.) It was not Jehovah, but Adam and Eve, who changed; they put themselves in a position where Jehovah’s unchangeable righteous standards allowed no further dealings with them as members of his beloved universal family. Being perfect, they were fully responsible for their deliberate wrongdoing (Ro 5:14) and hence beyond the limits of divine mercy, although Jehovah showed them undeserved kindness in starting them out with clothing and allowing them to live for centuries outside the sanctuary of Eden and bring forth offspring before they finally died from the effects of their own sinful course. (Ge 3:8-24) After their eviction from Eden all divine communication with Adam and his wife apparently ceased.
Why he can deal with imperfect humans. Jehovah’s just standards allowed for his dealing differently with Adam and Eve’s offspring than with their parents. Why? For the reason that Adam’s offspring inherited sin, hence involuntarily started life as imperfect creatures with a built-in inclination toward wrongdoing. (Ps 51:5; Ro 5:12) Thus, there was basis for mercy toward them. Jehovah’s first prophecy (Ge 3:15), spoken at the time of pronouncing judgment in Eden, showed that the rebellion of his first human children (as well as that of one of his spirit sons) had not embittered Jehovah nor dried up the flow of his love. That prophecy pointed in symbolic terms toward a righting of the situation produced by the rebellion and a restoration of conditions to their original perfection, the full significance being revealed millenniums later.—Compare the symbolisms of the “serpent,” the “woman,” and the “seed” at Re 12:9, 17; Ga 3:16, 29; 4:26, 27.
Adam’s descendants have been permitted to continue on earth for thousands of years, though imperfect and in a dying condition, never able to free themselves from sin’s deadly grip. The Christian apostle Paul explained Jehovah’s reason for allowing this, saying: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will but through him that subjected it [that is, Jehovah God], on the basis of hope that the creation itself also will be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now.” (Ro 8:20-22) As shown in the article FOREKNOWLEDGE, FOREORDINATION, there is nothing to indicate that Jehovah chose to use his powers of discernment to foresee the original pair’s deflection. However, once it took place, Jehovah foreordained the means for correcting the wrong situation. (Eph 1:9-11) This sacred secret, originally locked up in the symbolic prophecy in Eden, was finally fully revealed in Jehovah’s only-begotten Son, sent to earth that he might “bear witness to the truth” and “by God’s undeserved kindness might taste death for every man.”—Joh 18:37; Heb 2:9; see RANSOM.
God’s dealing with and blessing certain descendants of the sinner Adam, therefore, marked no change in Jehovah’s standards of perfect righteousness. He was not thereby approving their sinful state. Because his purposes are absolutely certain of fulfillment, Jehovah “calls the things that are not as though they were” (as in naming Abram “Abraham,” meaning “Father of a Crowd (Multitude)” while he was yet childless). (Ro 4:17) Knowing that in his due time (Ga 4:4) he would provide a ransom, the legal means for forgiving sin and removing imperfection (Isa 53:11, 12; Mt 20:28; 1Pe 2:24), Jehovah consistently could deal with and have in his service imperfect men, inheritors of sin. This was because he had the just basis for ‘counting,’ or reckoning, them as righteous persons because of their faith in Jehovah’s promises and, eventually, in the fulfillment of those promises in Christ Jesus as the perfect sacrifice for sins. (Jas 2:23; Ro 4:20-25) Thus, Jehovah’s provision of the ransom arrangement and its benefits gives striking testimony not only of Jehovah’s love and mercy but also of his fidelity to his exalted standards of justice, for by the ransom arrangement he exhibits “his own righteousness in this present season, that he might be righteous even when declaring righteous the man [though imperfect] that has faith in Jesus.”—Ro 3:21-26; compare Isa 42:21; see DECLARE RIGHTEOUS.
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