What is Your Name?

And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” Mark 5:9

“What’s your name?” the kind man in the appliance department asked my eighteen-month-old daughter. Blonde curls framed her dimpled face and her blue eyes sparkled as she answered.

“Fweetie.” 

Fweetie was her version of the affectionate name we always called her: Sweetie.

Unashamed of her name, she knew who she was: dear to her father and me, no matter how she pronounced it.

Not everyone knows how precious they are. Too many call themselves by dishonorable names, names like Hopeless Case, Ugly, Unlovable. Shame has forced them into isolation and stolen the affectionate names they were given by the One who made them: Talented, Beautiful, Loved.

Shame’s goal is to steal our name.

Shame itself has many names in the Bible. One common name is unclean. Unclean is another word for dirty, and dirty is a synonym for shame. 

Clean, on the other hand, is another word for honor. Honor is the opposite of shame. God created each of us for honor. Honor was God’s original intention for you and me. He made us with immeasurable value from the start.

God’s work of transforming people from a state of dirty to clean, from shame to honor is a persistent theme throughout the Old and New Testaments.

In Mark 5, one of the New Testament’s great honor-shame chapters, Jesus meets a man described in verse 2 as having an “unclean spirit.” The man pitifully illustrates the extent of shame’s destruction in a human life, the robbery of one’s intended identity. He did not know his value, his true name.

When Jesus found him, he was living in tombs carved into the mountainside. He had lost his family and his home. Shame robs relationships and wrecks homes. The tombs were a fitting place for one who probably felt dead inside.

No one could come near him. Strong and violent, he resisted everyone who tried to subdue him. People in the area were afraid of him. 

Shame isolates, causing its bearer to push others away. Help is often rejected and eventually, even friends may shrink away, afraid and unsure what to do.

As the man wandered alone among the tombs and surrounding mountains day and night, he cried aloud and cut himself with stones. 

Cutting has been one of shame’s punishments for millennia. According to the Cornell University Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery, an estimated 17/2% of adolescents, 13.4% of young adults, and 5.5% of adults self-injure. These stats are disturbing evidence that shame is still on the rampage in our society today.

The man in the tombs did not even know who he truly was when asked his name. The dark forces of shame and evil that controlled his life had taken over and stolen his identity. When asked his name, the only name he knew was the name shame had given him.

And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion. For we are many” (Mark 5:9).

Spiritually unclean, emotionally devastated, physically filthy, mentally fragmented, and socially exiled, the man with an unclean spirit lived a life eclipsed by shame. His true identity as one loved and valued by God was hidden from his own view.

There is hope for the hidden. Nothing is secret from the Savior. He seeks us in our tombs with the intention to free us from #shame. #insteadofshamehonor Click To Tweet

He knows every cut and scar on our bodies and souls. He has the power to heal every part of us touched by shame.

Jesus knows who I really am, my true, beautiful name.

Jesus came to forgive us our sins and abolish shame forever. His marvelous work was foretold in the promise of Isaiah 61:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners… Instead of their shame, my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, they will rejoice in their inheritance… (verses 1,7).

In Mark’s account, we see the promise fulfilled. Here is Jesus, sitting with a captive whom He has indeed set free.

And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind (Mark 5:15). 

The man who once wandered naked and deranged in desolate places encountered Jesus and was completely transformed. The Gospels do not tell us his real name, but I believe that in those quiet hours sitting with Jesus he learned who he was meant to be all along.

His story holds two profound promises for every person suffering from shame.

You do not have to be controlled by shame. 

Jesus has come to set you free from shame forever. Dirty can be exchanged for clean. Shame can be exchanged for honor. Canceled can be exchanged for Accepted. When you yield to Jesus as the Lord of your life, you become clean in every way: spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Like a man sitting calmly in new, clean clothes, you can be completely renewed.

Your mind and emotions can be restored.

There is no damage so complete it cannot be healed by the Savior. When you encounter Jesus, the lies that have twisted your mind for so long will be replaced with truth. The truest things about you are what God says about you, and when you know this truth, you will be set free from shame and given a “right mind”.

What is your name, dear reader? 

Has shame whispered its lies to you for so long you now believe a lie about who you are? 

Even now, the Lord is making his way to your tombs to find you. His foot is upon the shore, and His heart is set on your freedom. Jesus knows you by name, the affectionate name given to you by the God who loves you and created you with immeasurable worth. Jesus will restore to you what shame has stolen if you will trust Him today. 

Jesus, set me free from the shame that has robbed me of so much in my life. Restore me and make me whole. Amen.

@audreycfrank