03 - INTRODUCTION

The Epistle to the Philippians expresses the overwhelming desire of the Apostle Paul: “That I may know him” (Php 3:10). Thousands of Christians everywhere have since shared the same sentiment. But Paul and Christians were not the first to long; for such an intimate knowledge of God. Many years earlier, Moses had prayed, “Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee” (Exo 33:13). God answered that prayer of Moses in an interesting manner: “And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD” (Exo 34:5). To really know God, you must get to know Him by name. The names of God in Scripture are really a self-revelation of God in His nature and attributes. The sheer number of such names and titles in Scripture suggests something of the immensity of God. A devout Moslem exhausts his knowledge of his god when he knows the ninety-nine names and attributes of Allah in the Koran. But the Bible identifies more than 700 descriptive names and titles of Jesus Christ. And as Charles Haddon Spurgeon once put it, “God the Father never gave his son a name which he did not deserve.” How many of these names do you know and understand? This book is written to help you get to know Jesus Christ more fully by studying several of His key names and titles. Of course, a volume of this size on the names of Jesus Christ cannot be exhaustive. The author is not even prepared to conclude that the listing of names in the appendix to this volume is exhaustive. But it is an introduction to an important subject, important to those who, like Moses and Paul, desire a more intimate, knowledge of the One the angels years ago named “Jesus.”