Recovery of the Lord's Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Recorded Aug 1954

"The Name of the Lord Jesus came before Christianity. Christianity took its character, in the first place, from the Name. It was the Name that gave to Christianity its nature. I fear that it may have been reversed since. It seems, although perhaps not deliberately and intentionally or consciously, but it does seem that Christianity has come before the Name, and gets in the way of the Name, and very largely is a contradiction of the Name. So that what we have to understand, and what has to be recovered if there is going to be anything like the power and effectiveness and fruitfulness that there was at the beginning, is what the Name signified and implied because it is not just a title, a designation, some phrase, some tag put on: "in the Name of Jesus". It has become so commonplace to do that, so [much a] matter of practice and course to use the phrase "in the Name of Jesus," but nothing seems to happen, with all that - so little results, so little is present even when that kind of speaking and terminology is used as the commonplace thing. No, it is not just a title, it is not just a designation, just not the name of someone, although that Someone may be the Lord Jesus Himself. It is something very much more than that." T. Austin-Sparks