Eve's final testimony to the world is expressed in the birth of Seth. She is not to be associated with a temptress but in the belief of human salvation by the spirit of the Lord. Abraham is Seth's descendent.
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Eve’s Legacy—Hope Amid Despair
by Dr. Georgia Purdom on April 1, 2011; last featured May 11, 2014
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The first woman carried a lot on her shoulders—by encouraging her husband to rebel against God, she helped bring suffering and ruin upon her children and all their descendants. Yet she found hope in the same promised Seed that we all look to.
https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/adam-and-eve/eves-legacy-hope-amid-despair/
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I’ve always been intrigued by Eve. She was the original “bad girl” of the Bible, and most people think of her legacy as one of sin and despair for all mankind. She has another legacy, however, one of hope in her Seed, the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ. Understanding Eve and how God worked in and through her gives us hope and teaches us the importance of looking to Christ.
When All Seemed Lost
Eve was created in God’s image just like Adam (Genesis 1:27). She was his equal, yet she had a different role than her husband. God made Eve to be a “helper comparable to him” (Genesis 2:18).
Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden in perfect harmony. It may be hard for us to imagine today but their marriage was perfect—no disagreements, no harsh words, no forgetting to put the dirty socks in the hamper (oh, wait a minute; they didn’t wear any clothes, so that wouldn’t have been an issue!).
When we deserved eternal death, God promised life through the promised Seed, His Son.
But then two bad decisions changed all that. Eve was deceived by the serpent (1 Timothy 2:14) and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then urged Adam to do the same (Genesis 3:6). Adam’s choice, as the federal head of creation and mankind’s representative, plunged the world into sin, death, and despair (Genesis 3; 1 Corinthians 15:22). Thankfully, at this bleakest moment of human history, a Redeemer is promised!
Genesis 3:15 states, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” God showed His gracious, loving, compassionate character to Adam and Eve and all of mankind. When we deserved eternal death, He promised life through the promised Seed, His Son.
I’m sure Eve’s feelings of guilt and remorse were immense. After God described the dreadful consequences of their sin, she must have realized that their sin would negatively impact every human being, along with the rest of creation.
In Genesis 3:16 she was told that she would be cursed in the two relationships that she was designed to draw the most pleasure from—her husband and her children. And yet Eve was given hope. Notice that even though she disobeyed first, it was through her that the Seed, Jesus Christ, would come. Her childbearing would be essential to eventually produce Mary, who would give birth to the Seed who would save repentant sinners.
Looking to Christ
In Genesis 4 we see evidence of a very different Eve. Instead of waffling on the truth of God’s words as she did in Genesis 3, we see a woman who has hope in God’s promise of a Savior who would crush the serpent. Instead of focusing on her past failures, she clung to God’s promise for the future.
Luther and some other commentators believe that her statement following Cain’s birth, “I have acquired a man from the Lord” (Genesis 4:1), indicates her hope that Cain was the promised Seed that would crush Satan’s head.1 I’m sure she was devastated when Cain killed Abel, but she didn’t give up hope.
Eve had another son and named him Seth (Genesis 4:25). According to the Theological Word Book of the Old Testament, the name Seth means “given” or “appointed,” in this case another seed. Again, her naming of Seth may indicate a hope that he would be the promised Seed.
Seth was not the Promised One, but with Seth’s line “men began to call on the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26), and the promised Seed, Jesus Christ, would come from Seth’s line (Luke 3). I believe Eve, through the naming of her sons, showed that she believed God’s word and was looking forward to the promised Seed.
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The Promise Kept
The Curse had devastating effects on the whole world, ultimately resulting in a global, catastrophic flood. Yet God’s promise to Eve was not broken, as He saved righteous Noah and his family on the Ark to continue the lineage leading to the Seed. Even after Noah’s descendants later rebelled at the Tower of Babel and God scattered them over the face of the earth (Genesis 11:9), He was still at work to fulfill His promise.
More than 4,000 years after God made the promise in Genesis 3:15, the Son of God became a man. Imagine how Eve will be rejoicing for all eternity in the realization of the expected Seed, Jesus Christ. Her hope was fulfilled! He died to pay the price for her sin and the sin of all mankind. Then the Seed was resurrected and promised to return someday to end the legacy of sin and despair by destroying Satan and the Curse forever (Revelation 20).
Eve’s Legacy of Hope—Will It Be Ours?
Eve displayed her hope in God’s promised Seed through the naming of her sons. She was looking forward to Christ and the destruction of sin and despair that Adam’s sin had brought upon the world.
Just as Eve did nearly 6,000 years ago, we too have a choice concerning our own legacies. Will we choose to be like Eve at the Fall and not obey God’s Word, which leads to a legacy of sin and despair? Or will we choose to be like Eve when she named her sons and evidenced hope in the Savior, Jesus Christ, who came to save us?
The importance of choosing the right legacy becomes especially relevant to women with respect to the teaching of our children. Whether those children are biological or spiritual, our legacy affects them.
No matter what our sins and shortcomings in the past, may we, like Eve, believe God’s Word and look to Christ, the author of our salvation (Hebrews 5:9). As men and women made in God’s image, may we make the authority of God’s Word central in our lives so that we may glorify Christ and instruct children who will do the same and change the world for Christ.
Dr. Georgia Purdom is a wife, mother, and scientist. She conducts conferences, called Answers for Women (www.answersforwomen.org), to educate, equip, and encourage women to trust and defend the authority of God’s Word and show how it provides answers for their everyday life.
https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/adam-and-eve/eves-legacy-hope-amid-despair/
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Eve
The Woman of Unique Distinction
Scripture References—Genesis 2 and 3; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:13
Name Meaning—There are three names applied to Adam’s wife. She is called “Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23). “Woman” is more of a generic designation than a name, and is associated with Eve’s relation to Adam, a relation she was created to fulfill. Literally “woman” means “man-ess.” Then both Eve and her husband are called “Adam.” “Male and female created he them ... and called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2). This inclusive name implies that the divine ideal for man and wife is not merely that of association but an indissoluble unity. God made them “one flesh” and gave them one name. Eve, the name given her after the transgression and its prophesied results, was the choice of Adam “who called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living” (3:16, 20). This was the name describing her function and destiny in spiritual history of which she was the beginning. Eve means “life” or “life-giving,” or “mother of all who have life,” and her life is in us all. In Bible days great significance was attached to a change of name. Why then did Adam change his wife’s name—which was his own, Adam, to Eve? Donald Davidson says that, “In view of the awful judgment pronounced upon them, the man might have been pardoned if he had reproached her as ‘death,’ for it was her sin that brought death into our world and all our woe. But Adam gives her a name which is expressive of the prophetic life bound up in her. For through the seed of the woman, sin would one day be vanquished, and death would be swallowed up in victory.”
We have given our cameo of Eve the caption “The Woman of Unique Distinction” because she is distinct, in so many ways, from all other women who have ever lived. There are a good many “Firsts” to her credit.
Eve Was the First Woman to Live Upon the Earth
The product of a divine creation, Eve appeared as a complete, perfect woman. She was never a child, or a daughter or a maiden. The first female born into the world was Eve’s first daughter (Genesis 5:4). How many daughters were born to Adam and Eve we are not told. If Eve lived as long as her husband—930 years (Genesis 5:5)—there would likely be many sons and daughters in earth’s first family. Eve, then, was not born. She was created out of Adam. Having existed in God’s thought, she appeared upon the earth.
Modernists, evolutionists, and secular writers may mock that “rib of Adam” out of which Eve was made. Adam was directly created by God out of the dust of the earth, but Eve was fashioned out of a bone taken from Adam’s side. George Herbert comments, “The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double refined.” Says Secker, “The rib was taken from under his arm. As the use of the arm is to keep off blows from the body, so the office of the husband is to ward off blows from his wife.”
There is a spiritual application of the bride God created for Adam. It speaks of the sacred mystery, the bride of the Lamb, who owes her existence to His wounded side (John 19:36), and who, even more than Eve, has a place near to the Bridegroom’s heart (Jeremiah 31:3), and who is destined to enjoy His companionship in a sinless paradise (Revelation 2:7; 21:9). The marriage of the Lamb, like that of Eve’s, is made in heaven.
Eve Was the First Woman to Be Called a Wife
Fashioned out of man, she became man’s counterpart and companion. God saw that although Adam was in a state of perfect innocency, it was not good for him to be alone. It would be good for him, spiritually, intellectually and socially to have a wife. He needed someone to love and bear his children since the command had gone forth “to multiply and replenish the earth.” And so with Adam—
The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man the hermit sighed till woman smiled.
God spoke of the woman He was to provide for Adam as his “helpmeet”—a help meet or adapted to him—a term giving woman her true position in the world. It is only where the Bible exists and Christianity is practiced that she attains to such a position as the helper, or equal of man. In lands where darkness reigns, woman is the slave, the chattel of man. Thus Eve was given to Adam and their two hearts beat as one in love for each other and for God. Eve was formed while Adam slept. He knew no pain during the operation for as yet there was no sin in the world. How true it is that God is continually working while men sleep! He often imparts real blessings to His own as they sleep (Psalm 127:2).
When I wake from sleep,
Despair has fled, and hope is near;
The sky seems blue, and visions clear
Have banished all my dread and fear.
Eve Was the Most Beautiful Woman the World Has Known
Century after century women have appeared renowned for their beauty of face and form but Eve excelled them all. Created by a perfect God, Eve reflected the divine perfection. Hers was no artificial beauty. Face, features and form were the loveliest women have ever had. While the Bible has no description of Eve’s physical appearance, Adam’s first reaction as he saw the lovely figure before him was to give voice to earth’s first poem—
This, then, at last is bone of my bones,
and flesh of my own flesh:
This shall be called Wo-man
For from man was she taken.
While we have Biblical warrant for the beauty of Sarah, the Talmudist says—
All women in comparison with Sarah are like monkeys in respect to men. But Sarah can no more be compared to Eve than can monkey be compared with man.
John Milton expresses a similar commendation in one of his most daring idioms—
Adam the goodliest man since born
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
The blind poet goes on to say of the loveliness Adam saw &--;
So absolute she seems
And is herself complete.
The Venus of Milo, in marble, or the Venus of Titian in oil, only convey a faint idea of what Eve must have looked like as she came from the creative hand of God. No wonder she has been described as
Heaven’s best, last gift.
To quote from Milton’s Eve again—
O fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, Divine, Good, Amiable or Sweet.
Yet again Eve’s original beauty is expressed in these lines &--;
That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now
Mean, or in her contained or in her looks;
Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
Eve Was the First and Only Woman Born Without Sin
Being the first woman Eve had no inherited sin. Coming from the hand of God, Eve had an advantage no other woman has ever had &--;she was pure and holy, with the divine image unimpaired. Created sinless, she yet became the world’s first sinner, and introduced sin to her offspring, and thus, all since her were “born in sin and shapen in iniquity.” The best and holiest born into the race have natures that are prone to evil (Romans 7:21). Fashioned with “innocence and sinless perfection and endowed to all fullness with gifts of body and mind, and rich in external blessing without spot or alloy she yet transgressed in the sin with which she caused Adam to sin.” Fresh from the hand of God with unmatchable grace and beauty of body and mind, sin and ruin followed, and paradise was surrendered for a world of thorns, thistles and tears.
Eve Was the First on Earth to Be Assailed by Satan
Before her creation, Satan, who like Eve had been created a holy being, led a rebellion against the Creator and was cast from his high estate. Now he begins his rebellion on earth and beings with one who is fascinated by his approach. Thus we have the Fall and the source of original sin. There was no great daring to sin for the first time on Eve’s part. As sin was unknown to both Adam and Eve when created by God, Eve saw no wrong in the masterpiece of satanic subtle suggestion. Satan did not tell her to sin, but insinuated in the cleverest way that there was nothing to worry about in eating forbidden fruit. As George Matheson puts it, “The temptation was not in itself the wish to transgress, but the will to possess; the transgression is merely a means.... If the tempter had said, ‘Steal,’ he would not have been listened to for a moment. But he did not say, ‘Steal!’; he says, ‘Speculate!’ ... Temptation since the days of Eden has never ceased to clothe itself in a seemly garment.”
Satan succeeded in painting the downward way as leading to an upward path issuing in God-likeness or a fall upwards, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Eve succumbed to the wiles of Satan and the steps leading to her surrender are illuminating—she saw, she coveted, she took, etc. “The tree was good for food”—bodily appetite was tempted. It was “a delight to the eyes”—her sensuous nature was tempted. Then, “the tree was to be desired to make one wise”—the most powerful temptation of all, namely, “the spiritual temptation to transcend the normal experience of men and to taste of the wisdom that belongs only to God.”
What about her husband? Well, Adam made no effort to restrain Eve from eating of the fruit although the divine prohibition was addressed to him as well as to Eve. If he was not the first to pluck the fruit, he must have been standing under the tree, and when he saw that it was safe to eat, then he took his share of the forbidden fruit. When God faced Adam with that first act of sin, he not only blamed Eve, but God Himself—“The woman Thou gavest me” &--;as if to say, “If You knew that Eve would have tempted me, why did You create her for me?” H. V. Morton says that “the words of the first Adam are like the words of a rather sneaky little boy caught out by the headmaster and blames another—She gave me of the tree and I did eat.” But thereafter, in Scripture, Adam, the federal head of the human race, is made responsible for adamic sin. (“In Adam we die”; “By one man’s sin”; Romans 5:12; Job 31:33.) What followed the disobedience of the world’s first sinners is only too well-known—pain in childbearing, the introduction of sin and servitude into the world, the earth cursed, expulsion from paradise, and the introduction of disease and death.
Eve Was the World’s First Dressmaker
If Adam was earth’s first gardener, Eve was the first to fashion garments out of leaves. “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons” (Genesis 3:7). Andrew Johnson, who became president of the U.S.A. after the murder of Abraham Lincoln, once was a tailor in Greenville, Tennessee, where he had a shop. In a speech made at Gallatin in 1874 he said—
Adam, our great father and head, the lord of the world, was a tailor by trade. Adam and Eve “sewed fig leaves together, and made them aprons.” That is the first we ever heard of tailors, and I do not see that—without intending to be personal &--;anyone need be ashamed to be called a tailor, nor any young lady need be ashamed to be a seamstress, for her mother Eve, it seems, handled a needle with some skill.
Clothing is a reminder of sin, for in their innocency our first parents had no sense of shame because they had no sense of sin. “They were both naked ... and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Says Matthew Henry, “They need have no shame in their faces, though they had no clothes to their backs.” But after they sinned their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. Although shame may have a fairer and a gentler face than sin, it is still its twin sister. Shame can be an expression of regret for sin, or the protest of consicence against it. When Ezra blushed and was ashamed to look up, the pardoning mercy of God came out to meet him (Ezra 9:6).
Conscious of their nakedness, why did Adam and Eve seek a covering? Not only because they knew they were without clothing but also because they were exposed to the gaze of Him against whom they had sinned. However the fig leaves they made into a garment were not sufficient to hide them from God’s piercing eyes, so they hid among the trees. Even there they were under His gaze and discovered, and they tried to cover themselves with vain excuses (Genesis 3:7, 8, 11, 13). Those who try to cover their sin never prosper (Proverbs 28:13, see Job 31:33). God rejected the covering the first sinners on the earth made because it represented their own effort. So God provided them with “coats of skins” (3:21), and placed them on the guilty ones. The wonderful invention of fastening animal pelts together was ascribed by the ancient Hebrews to God. Skins speak of sacrifice. Animals have to be slain ere man can be covered with clothes or shoes. Surely the divine provision of those sacrificial skins foreshadowed Calvary, where Jesus through the sacrifice of Himself provided a spotless robe of righteousness for all who repent and believe.
Naked, come to Thee for dress.
Eve Was the First Mother to Have a Son Who Was a Murderer
What a trail of sorrow and anguish followed her transgression! When Cain, her first born, came into her life and home how Eve must have loved him. She named him Cain, meaning “to get” or “to possess” or, “acquisition.” He became a tiller of the ground. Her second son was Abel, a name implying, “that which ascends” or “a vapor”—something doomed to fade. The latter was a spiritual man and sacrificed the firstlings of his flocks unto the Lord. The former son brought of the fruit of the ground, that is, that which he had produced, and presented it to the Lord who rejected it and accepted Abel’s offering because of its sacrificial content. Cain lost his temper over this act of divine acceptance and rejection, and slew his brother Abel. Thus Eve’s favorite first born was branded with shame, and spiritual Abel became a martyr. Behind Cain’s slaughter of his brother was the serpent who had made their mother the world’s first sinner. Jesus said that he was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). After the crime and banishment of her first son, and the burial of her second one, God gave her another whom she called Seth. “For God,” she said, “hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, for Cain slew him.” In naming her third son thus she voiced her faith in God’s love, mercy and provision. It was through Seth that the spiritual lineage was maintained and it was after his birth that Eve’s name disappears from the pages of the Old Testament, although it is mentioned twice in the New Testament. While Eve doubtless shared the length of Adam’s life—930 years—and bore an indefinite number of sons and daughters, we have no record of her maternity apart from the three named sons.
Eve Was the First to Receive the Divine Prophecy of the Cross
Eve was the first sinner and saw the fruit of her sin as she stood at the world’s first grave and buried her dead. After confessing her sin she heard the Lord say to that old serpent, the devil, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). With this first promise of the Redeemer there began the scarlet highway ending at the cross where Christ, born of a woman, provided a glorious victory over sin and Satan. Through a woman, God’s fair universe was blighted and became “a world of sinners lost, and ruined by the fall.” Now, through a woman, a perfect salvation has been provided for a sinning race. Through Eve’s sin, death entered the world, but at the cross both sin and death were conquered, for by “dying, death He slew.” When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” He meant that the serpent’s head, representing power and authority, had been bruised. He laid hold of all satanic principalities and powers that Eve’s transgression brought into the world, and put them under His feet. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
As we leave our reflection upon the world’s first woman, first wife, first sinner, and first mourner, there are one or two lessons to be gleaned from her record. For instance, “many daughters of Eve have discovered that the serpent is never more dangerous than when he professes to be the earnest well-wisher interested in nothing but her advancement and welfare.” What a subtle, cruel deceiver Satan is. How ignorant so many are of his devices! Further, temptation is a universal experience, and each of us should learn from the first person on earth to be tempted, its manner of approach and successive steps, and safeguard ourselves from a fall through the appropriation of Christ’s own victory over the enemy. There is no sin in being tempted. We only sin when we yield to temptation. Refusing to yield to the enticement of sin, our Garden of Eden remains inviolate. At the heart of Eve’s pathetic story, however, is the moral lesson that a woman has the power for bane or blessing over a man’s life. If she falls, man falls with her. How expressive are the verses John White Chadwick quotes in his chapter on Eve in Women of the Bible—
Ah, wasteful woman, that she may
On her sweet self set her own price.
Knowing we cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapened Paradise;
How given for naught her priceless gift,
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine
Which, spent with due respective thrift,
Had made men brutes and men divine.
O Queen, awake to thy renown,
Require what 'tis our wealth to give,
And comprehend and wear the crown
Of thy despised prerogative.
It will be noticed that we have said nothing about whether the story of Creation, and of the appearance of Adam and Eve should be taken literally and historically, or treated as an allegory of sacred symbolism. We firmly reject the unproven, anti-Christian theory of evolution, just as we protest that the account of the creation of Adam and Eve, and the temptations of the serpent is ancient myth or folklore conveying withal a pertinent truth or message. It is becoming more common for modernistic preachers and writers to speak of the beautiful fables and myths of the Bible. We believe the first three chapters of Genesis contain historic realities. If Adam is a myth, so is Christ. Luke reminds us that Adam was a son of God (Luke 3:23-28), and the first man from whom Christ was descended. How could a mythical son become one of the ancestors of the actual Christ? The whole of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus is based upon the assumption that Adam was an actual person. Further, in discussing Adam and Christ as the two federal heads of the human race, Paul said, “in Adam we die—in Christ we are made alive.” You cannot die in a myth. By deduction, if Adam is a mythical figure, so is Christ.
Then Eve and her association with the serpent is likewise treated as a myth. Paul says that the serpent beguiled Eve (2 Corinthians 11:3). Paul regarded the tempter of Eve not as a myth, but as a stern and powerful reality. If there has never been a personal devil, then we would like to know who is doing the work that only a denizen of hell could do. In urging loyalty to Christ, Paul uses Eve to illustrate the ease with which one is corrupted, and to him she was a historical figure whose record should be taken literally (see 1 Timothy 2:12-14). The mythical treatment of Old Testament historical figures and events is an evidence of the appalling apostasy of our age.
© 1988 Zondervan. All Rights Reserved
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Please read the following. Names as given may indicate a theory but a person's chosen purpose determines a name of a person in and of itself. Settle on that purpose and your name is expressed as you embody that purpose. Read the following article as referenced with the link here:http://www.onenesspentecostal.com/yahorjesus.htm
Yahweh or Jesus: What is God's Name?
by
Jason Dulle
JasonDulle@yahoo.com
In the OT God declared that His name was YHWH (Exodus 6:3; 20:7; see also 3:14). Scholars believe that "YHWH," or "Yahweh" is the third person singular form of the ancient Hebrew verb, "haya," meaning "to be." The basic thrust of this verb describes the state of existence. As the third person form of haya, Yahweh literally means "He is," or "He exists." It is a description of who God is. He is the self-existing one.
To understand the import of this we must understand the nature of Hebrew names. Hebrew names are not simply nominal devices used to identify one person from another as they are in the English language; they are actually sentences in themselves. It is similar to how the Indians named their children "rising sun" or "running bear." These were not quite complete sentences, but they were descriptions (partial sentences). God's name, YHWH, is a full sentence. It just so happens to be the shortest sentence in any language--"I am."1
Has YHWH always been God's name? While it is possible, it is unlikely. God existed long before the Hebrew language, so it would seem unlikely that God has always had a Hebrew name. It must be remembered that God did not reveal a name to the Hebrew people that they were unfamiliar with; God revealed Himself to the Hebrew people using existing Hebrew vocabulary (haya) to express to His chosen people who "He is" (pun intended). It was a word/sentence they were familiar with because it already existed in their language before God declared it to be His name.
I am persuaded that God said His name was YHWH only because He was speaking to Hebrew people. If God would have revealed Himself to English speaking people He would not have said His name was "YHWH," but rather "I am,"2 because the Hebrew "YHWH" and the English "I am" are the same verb. The difference is not in the meaning, but in the language through which the meaning ("I am") is conveyed. The name YHWH does not "tag" God for identity purposes (for God does not need a name), but rather describes to us who God is. God was not eternally called "YHWH." He was simply Himself, the self-existing one.
I am further persuaded that the name God revealed to the Hebrews was for the sake of revealing something about Himself and His nature to man. He is the "I am," the "existing one." It is for this reason that it is in vain when people make a big ordeal over the manner in which we should pronounce God's name. Some go so far as to say that if you do not pronounce God's name correctly you cannot be saved. While this is not to say that God's name is unimportant, it is to say that His name describes who He is, and discovering who God is takes precedent over the exact pronunciation of the words used to describe Him. When God communicated His name to the Hebrews it was not so they could know what to call Him, or how to pronounce His name properly, but to reveal something about Himself to them.
Jesus vs. Yahweh?
Many Oneness believers will contend that God's name is not YHWH, but Jesus. While I do not disagree that Jesus is God's name, the problem with such a statement is rooted in the fact that it sets up a false dichotomy between "YHWH" and "Jesus," forcing us to decide between the two. No choice needs to be made because in actuality they are both the same name, but with one of the names being an expanded form of the other, describing what God does. It could be said that God's name is Jesus only because His name is YHWH. While that may sound contradictory at first, let me explain.
In Hebrew Jesus' name is spelled as "Yeshua." The "Ye" in Yeshua is the abbreviated form of YHWH. "Shua" is from the Hebrew word for salvation, yasha. Jesus' name literally means "YHWH is salvation." The name "Jesus," then, actually contains the name "YHWH" in abbreviated form. While YHWH simply describes who God is, when it is combined with a verb it describes what God does. The name "Jesus" describes the fact that YHWH has become salvation. Who is Christ? He is YHWH, saving His people from their sins. If YHWH is not God's name, then Jesus' name becomes meaningless. To deny that God's name is YHWH is to ultimately deny the name of Jesus.
We should pick up on the fact that God is never referred to as "Yeshua" (Jesus) in the OT. He is always referred to as YHWH. If God's name has always been Jesus (as some claim) it would seem strange that He never referred to Himself as such, nor was He ever called that until the NT. It might be counter-argued that while God was called YHWH in the OT, He is never called by such in the NT. But is God called YHWH in the NT? Yes, in its expanded form as "Jesus," meaning "YHWH is salvation." The name "Jesus," found exclusively in the NT, is a continuation of the revealed name of God found throughout the OT. "Jesus" is not a new name. The name of Jesus encompasses the fullness of God's revelation of Himself to man--as Savior. The name "Jesus" is so important to us because it is an expanded form of the same divine name revealed in the OT. It is not a different name. It is only greater in that it more fully expresses who God is to us--Savior. Truly God's name is Jesus, because God's name is YHWH. We confess that God's name is YHWH every time we confess Him as Jesus.
See also:
God's Name Was Not Secret
Is the Name of the Messiah "Yeshua?"
Yahweh, Jehovah, or Jesus?
Footnotes
1. When God told Moses "I am that I am," that is the first person singular form of haya, "ehyeh." It may be said that from God's perspective He is "I am," but from our perspective "He is."
2. Technically it would be "He is" because that is the English equivalent to "YHWH," but as noted in the previous foot "I am" is the first person form of the same Hebrew word. Since I am specifically discussing what God would say His name is, I used the first person form "I am" rather than the third person form "He is."
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