“Oh, my Buddha!” The one and only time I heard that phrase used was in a cheesy movie. Yet we hear people taking the Lord’s name in vain every day. Our culture is so comfortable misusing God’s name that doing so is now a three-letter acronym in text lingo. The result is a cheapening in our collective understanding of who God is.
We get a picture of who God is in our own lives through the Old Testament. God chose the Israelites to be His, rescuing them from slavery in Egypt and bringing them into their own land. To use His name in vain would be to drag His character through the mud.
The God who rescued the ancient Israelites from slavery is the same God who rescues us from our own sin. John wrote his Gospel so that we “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). We are reconciled to God not by what we have done or by our own name, but by what Christ has done and by the power of His name. If you know the saving power of God in Christ, praise Him today.