I tried to come up with some clever, artful way to talk about this, but feel I'm just supposed to be more focused on getting it out there than how it looks. Maybe later I can get to polish and cut these things...

I read many years ago that the Biblical cultures held a very different belief regarding the importance of names. For them, names captured and contained an articulation of the essence of a thing. Adam demonstrated such power in Genesis when he named the animals. Beyond this particular instance, the power of naming things, particularly people, carried on throughout Scripture. Yet, one key Biblical story highlighted something deeper about naming that was unclear until recently.

While reading Genesis once a footnote indicated, in a quiet, pay-attention-to-this manner, that Jacob's name held great significance, not just for learning context of Scriptural people, but in a more immediate, spiritual way. Jacob's name means "deceiver" or "one who supplants". (Who, after all, names their son "deceiver"? No one I know of.) At any rate, deception is noted throughout his life as a major issue. First, when he steals his brother's birthright, and later, when he deceives Issac into giving him Esau's blessing, Jacob shows characteristics of a man whose name truly captures the essence of his being.

What proves even more interesting than this testimony to Issac's insight with his son's name is what happens in Genesis 32. To recap, Jacob fled his brother, spent over a dozen years at a relative's house, gained two wives, a small tribe of children, servants and possessions and had begun the process of returning to his childhood home. More importantly, as Jacob returned home, he had been forced to reconcile with his father-in-law righteously to be allowed to continue on his journey.

Fast-forwarding to the key events I want to highlight, of chapter 32:22-32, Jacob has sent his family ahead. He stood, alone, on the edge of a new life. He had left a fleeing man and returned the father of a tribe. But, God had not completed his work. Jacob met God face to face that night and wrestled with a man "till daybreak". It was through this ordeal that Jacob finally demonstrated the fullness of his capacity to act in righteousness. By refusing to let the man go, Jacob did not forfeit his blessing or rely on trickery and deceit. It was only after the man injured Jacob's hip that he stopped wrestling with him.

Even though, however, Jacob demanded blessing. But, what I find most interesting than this odd midnight wrestling match is not that he blesses him, but rather, that he asks him his name first. Why would a stranger, with whom he has wrestled, or to put it more Biblically, contended, all night, ask the name of someone he has fought, hand-to-hand, for hours?

It was a powerful moment. The man then said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Israel actually means, "he struggles with God". So, this man, who had lied, extorted and stolen, had been faced, at the moment before he was about to cross into a new life, to confront and overcome, one last time, his very own nature by struggling with his maker.

By being renamed by God, Jacob's identity was no longer bound to his natural-given essence, that of a deceiver, but it was bound with his destiny, a contender with God. God had transformed Jacob in the most powerful way a person can be transformed, with the very way in which God calls people, through his name.

This single story of God's transforming power simply demonstrates a larger Biblical principle outlined by Christ himself in Revelation 2. When speaking through John the Revelator to the Church of Pergamum, Jesus says, "To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it." (Revelation 2:17)

Jesus' own promise simply reiterates what was already demonstrated through Israel's life and account of being renamed by the Lord, but it opens this promise to all of his followers. By pursuing righteousness and overcoming a new name will be given to all who accomplish Christ's call. Indeed, he is calling his brothers to inherit the transformation of their very essence by struggling, by "contending with God and with man". Just as Jacob's life was transformed by unceasing wrestling, so too can ours!

Broadening this specific point to Christian life in general, we can see from this perspective how the acts of a single man can stand symbolically for so much more. Israel's struggle to overcome his own nature transformed him from as natural a man as can be into one who was blessed by God and made into one in and through whom were fulfilled some of history's greatest promises. From this, we can draw our own inspiration and motivation to struggle for this stone, for this new name and identity.