To mark a person on his person, has fallen out of use with us.
Formerly this was done much, in the way in which now animals are still marked. When three shepherds have each one hundred sheep in a common pasture, there would be endless wrangling about sheep and sheep, if every sheep were not marked by a mark of the owner. So horses are branded in the croup; and in lands without ditches and with great herds of cattle, horned cattle in the horn.
Of itself slavery applied this also to people. When one man kept sometimes one hundred and more slaves, every time again the question rose whose a slave was, and then for all practical purposes it seemed safest, to burn the name or the mark of his master on the body, sometimes even on the forehead of the poor slave. Less painfully the sailor does this still, by tattooing an anchor with a proper mark on breast or arm. And when Justice still had lesser means at its disposal to identify a criminal, it adopted branding as an aid, by which surely and unmistakably to know one who had escaped from prison, or one who later on fell into its hands as an old offender. Now Bertillon has introduced in place of this anthropometry, i.e., the precise measurement and record of every prisoner. But the purpose in all this remains one, which is to have a mark, not on one’s garment, nor in his papers, but on his person itself, by which, in time of need, the person is unmistakably identified. A garment can be changed, papers falsified, but a mark on the person himself remains.
Of similar marks Scripture also makes mention. The Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him (Gen. 4, 15). A liberated slave, who chose to remain in his master’s house, had his ear pierced. And also, what is of more significance, the seed of Abraham was circumcised in the foreskin, and so circumcision became a mark on the person himself of his solidarity to the people of God.
Symbolically this mark was put upon our forehead in Holy Baptism, whereby the name of God Triune, spiritualized, was written upon us. And of this symbol the reality will be ushered in on the illustrious day of the Lord, when on the forehead of the victor Christ shall write the name of His God, the name of the city of His God, and his own new name. So Aaron bore about his forehead “the golden plate, the crown of holiness” (Ex. 39, 30) on which was graven: Holiness to the LORD.
If now the victor “shall be a pillar in the temple of his God,” of itself his priestly honor joins itself to this, now no longer by a gravure on a golden plate, but expressed in his own being itself: This one belongs to Jehovah, fellow citizen of the New Jerusalem, the property of Christ.
YET, every one feels, there is here no external writing intended. Every symbol is for this earthly dispensation. Here, where there is no holiness, the symbol comes to lift us up to it, to remind us of it. But then also where the holiness will be full reality, the symbol of itself falls away.
Be, however, on your guard, that with the falling away of the symbol, you do not lose the thing itself.
One may say: “Truly, by manner of speech, he who compares the angel-face of a devout believer with the face of a villain, finds the expression of the holiness of God in these pious features,” but then you remove the reality itself.
The fact here is, that not now, but on the day of His glory, Christ shall write the Threefold Name upon the forehead of him who overcame. This mark also belongs to the tokens of honor, which shall be the heavenly part of the child of God, who shone with victory in the struggle with Satan, sin and world. He obtains this; no one else; but he obtains it then in such a way, as he did not have it before, and then receives it, and therefore now possesses it, never more to lose it.
Thus there is mention of something glorious, which now even the holiest still lacks, and it only comes, not immediately after death, but on the day when Jesus’ glory is ushered in.
Then, but also only then, comes the Tree of Life, and the Manna which is hidden, and the white stone, and the fine white linen raiment, and the sign of the Morning Star, and so likewise the bearing of Jehovah’s holy Name, without engravure, in one’s being itself.
It is the wage, it is the crown, it is the lustre that will shine out from the victor; and to that lustre will also belong the realization of the symbol of Holy Baptism, so that all the angels of God and all the blessed read on us the Name of the Lord.
THE “Name of the Lord” is the revelation of His Divine Being. From the creature comes up the name of the Lord, even as the splendor of colors comes up from the objects on which the sun casts his beams. The sun beams forth white light, and only when the lightbeam breaks through the cloud, the colors and tints of the rainbow exhibit themselves. So is God a light. But only when this light from God beams in His creation, the creature spells His Holy Name. With a name there is a namer, and he who here names the Name of the Lord, is the creature. Not every creature, but the being created after the image of God. It is man who must make the name of his God “ever greater.” And he names that Name, that Name he praises, that Name he makes to resound in its glory, not from himself, but when and for so much as God reveals Himself in, reveals Himself to him.
God sends out the light of His Being in and for us, And when in us that lightbeam breaks, come the tints, glow the colors, and when we spell and lovingly express this, resounds the Name of the Lord in His creation. From Him, but in and through us having come to a name.
So by His revelation God writes His reflection in His creation; but only in the expression of our creaturely being this reflection becomes a name.
Therefore David jubilates in Psalm 8: “O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is Thy Name in all the earth.” Thus also in an uninhabited island. But only when a man who knows God, puts his foot ashore of that island, does the Name of the Lord come to expression there.
So is God’s Name already now in His saints. In their heart, in their consciousness, in their prayer, in their self-sacrifice, in their homesickness after the Fatherland above; but in all still imperfectly, of sound impure and incomplete. From the sinful atmosphere of our heart there always draws a film before it. And also, even though spiritually we sink away full of blessedness in that Name, our being itself hides that Name rather than that it should express that Holy Name.
A sapphire, in the light of the sun, gloriously reflects the blue of heaven back to heaven, when it is cut.
But before and otherwise not.
The still uncut sapphire does not glisten, but hides the blue of heaven in its uncertain dullness.
BUT once for us, too, comes the state of glory, when the fullness of outshining grace, which was imprinted in us, also in perfect purity will be expressed by us.
This waits our second incarnation, our new incorporation, when the separated and bodyless soul obtains her body back again.
Not the caterpillar which went into the grave, but the butterfly with its wealth of colors and lines. As our dead, and we, shall once look, as Jesus looks already now, and as John saw Him on Patmos.
And then with all of us, what is in us, shall come to expression. To expression in our eye, to expression in our facial features, to expression in all our pure and heavenly-chaste, beautiful appearance.
Then we shall not be, as now, sometimes wooden, and then once again full of expression, but undisturbably full of expression. And that expression shall not be at one time pious, and then again ordinary, but always holy. Nothing shining in our heart, save light from God, and nothing expressed in all the tints and lines of our appearance, save the Name of the Lord.
Then at last shall be reached and consummated what God aimed at when He created us; and every one of the redeemed will also externally reveal nothing save His glory, but each in his own way. Each saint an enrichment of the revelation of God’s Holy Name.
And this shall not take place of itself. It will be a work of art on the part of Jesus. It is He Who will make our body like unto His own glorious body.
He the Divine sculptor Who shapes us, ever more delicately forms us, until ever more of God is expressed upon and in our being. And when finally that expression becomes perfect and heavenly pure, the promise shall have been fulfilled, that upon us He wrote the Name of our God.
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