Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord in Vain

What comes to our minds when we hear the 3rd commandment “Take not the name of God in vain”? If you are like most believers you think of the use of the name of God as a profanity, an exclamation in passing speech, or a careless or irreverent speech of God’s sacred name as taking the name of God in vain. This is not untrue, it is one important way we break this commandment, but there is another much more harmful way we sin against this commandment and it has to do with what we do with the name of the Lord after we take it upon ourselves. How do we take his name upon ourselves? Well, do you call yourself Christian? If you do, then you have taken his name upon yourself. When we do this we must be very careful not to take this name in vain.

Vain: producing no result; useless. Having no meaning or likelihood of fulfillment.

The meaning of vain in the context of this commandment is to take his name with no meaning, as a useless gesture, with no result or likelihood of fulfillment of the purposes of God in our lives. The first commandment is concerned with our thoughts and desires to put God above all else, to have faith in him only. The second commandment is a prohibition against the worship of things over or in the place of the one true and living God. This third commandment is to put us under obligation to God to act upon our love, worship, and praise of him, to “be examples of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12) and to press forward with steadfastness in Christ until his name is engraved upon our hearts and we become saints through his sanctifying power.

Related to the third commandment is the commandment to be baptized and born again through water and his Spirit that we become a new creature, a son or daughter of Christ, a Christian. It is in obedience to this commandment and the receiving of this ordinance of the gospel of Christ that we enter into his church, his path, and begin our discipleship as Christians.

In order to keep this third commandment we must:

• Be Born Again: Take upon the name of Christ
• Repenting Daily for Our Sins
• Always remember God that we might have His Spirit to be with us
• Pray always that we might come off conqueror over our natural man and the fiery darts of the advisory
• Reverence God: Doing all we do in the name of Christ and with an eye single to his glory
• Be diligent in your efforts to keep his commandments and valiant in your testimony of Christ
• Working no hypocrisy in our words and actions

As you can see the third commandment is expansive and contains all the commandments related to our personal relationship with God and the bringing forth of the fruits of repentance and obedience. The order in which God gives us these first three commandments is very meaningful because it represents a pattern of conversion and transformation as we come into God.