I love the music and lyrics of Christian artist Matthew West. This week I listened to a song titled “You Changed My Name” that resonated deeply in my heart.
You changed my name, You changed my name
From Too Far Gone to Saved By Grace
And now I am forever changed
All because You changed my name
I still have a tendency to forget that amazing gift of grace from God. He changed my name when I put my faith in Jesus as my Savior. My new name, mentioned several times in the New Testament, is “child of God.”
To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
John 1:12-13
You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26
Because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”
Galatians 4:6
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too.
1 John 5:1
So who am I? Retired television sports director? Author of some modestly successful books? Husband of Joni? Father of three outstanding young men? Ridiculously proud grandfather? Executive Member of Costco? All those things define me to some degree. But the one thing that is true about me that I find almost impossible to comprehend is that I am a child of God. Sometimes I answer to my new name and sometimes I just wander off thinking, you must not be talking about me.
There is power in believing in a name. Many years ago, for reasons I still don’t understand, I was cast as the lead in our high school senior musical. I had never acted and was not a trained singer. And yet that stellar résumé somehow landed me the role as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. Go figure. The play is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth-century novel Don Quixote. The drama unfolds as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes on the character of “mad knight” Don Quixote.
It was fun and challenging to learn page after page of dialogue as well as doing my best not to mess up “The Impossible Dream.”
As I became immersed in the character of Quixote, I began to understand that the gentle and naive protagonist saw the world through eyes of grace. He perceived what people can become and not who they are at that moment. When he meets a prostitute named Aldonza, Quixote sees her as a lady, treats her with respect, and gives her a new name—Dulcinea.
Aldonza’s reaction? She lashes out with fury and hatred as all her past junk pours out. Aldonza agonizes that her mother doesn’t know which of her many lovers might be Aldonza’s father. She rages about men who have used, abused, and abandoned her. And now this man calls her a “lady” and gives her a new name and identity. Aldonza hates what she has become, but even more she hates the fear of believing she could change and possibly face another crushing disappointment. At least her identity in a questionable vocation is familiar. And yet Don Quixote sees her as a soul created with value who can be redeemed.
Gradually, Aldonza understands that Quixote is genuine, and she begins to believe what the old man says is true about her, that she does have value. When the “Quixotic” world of the man of La Mancha is destroyed and he draws his final breath, Sancho Panza, the faithful squire, addresses the grieving woman as Aldonza.
She gently corrects him. “My name is Dulcinea.”
Her identity had been changed by an agent of grace. She had a new name and new hope.
That’s what happens to those who place their trust in Christ. God gives us a new identity and He calls us by a new name.
His child.
We also tend to fight back and remind God of what we used to be and all that is wrong about us now. But Jesus patiently reminds us of our new identity. He tells us that we have been changed. That our spiritual DNA has been rewritten. That we are a new creation in Him. That we are holy. Saints. When we believe what Jesus says is true about us, it will change how we live our lives.
A righteous and beloved child of God. That is not an “impossible dream,” but a theological truth.
I am a flawless child of God. Not because of anything I have done, am doing, or will ever do. It is because of what Jesus did for me on the Cross. Whenever I start wavering, I need to pause and remember my name.
I am so grateful today for my new name. Child of God. Doesn’t that have a wonderful ring to it?
