Summary
The New Name in Revelation 2:17
In the letter to the church at Pergamum, the risen Christ makes a remarkable promise: "To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it" Revelation 2:17. Each image in this verse is rich with gospel meaning, and together they form a portrait of what awaits the believer in heaven.
The "one who conquers" is not the spiritual athlete or the morally heroic. Scripture interprets Scripture: "Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" 1 John 5:5. The conqueror is simply the one who trusts in Christ as Savior and Lord. To this believer Jesus gives the hidden manna—the heavenly food, eternal life itself, for Christ is the Bread of Life John 6:35. He also gives the white stone, an image drawn from ancient Greek courts where a dark stone signified guilty and a white stone signified innocent. Christ hands His people the verdict of acquittal, paid in full by His blood at the cross.
The most striking promise, however, is the new name written on that stone—a name "no one knows except the one who receives it." To understand what this means, it helps to look at every place in Scripture where God Himself changes a name. There are four: Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, and Simon to Peter. (Saul to Paul does not belong to this list; "Saul" is simply his Hebrew name and "Paul" his Roman one.) In each of those four cases, the new name marks a new reality, a new existence. Abraham and Sarah become parents of a great nation. Jacob, the wrestler, becomes Israel. Simon becomes the rock who confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
This is the key to the promise in Revelation. The "new name" is not so much a different word by which we will be addressed in heaven as it is the announcement of an entirely new existence. And that new existence has already begun for the Christian. In Holy Baptism, we are baptized into the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; Acts 10:48). God claims the baptized as His own, washes them in the promises won at the cross and the empty tomb, and grasps them with a grip He will never release. Baptism is the Last Judgment in miniature—the white stone of "not guilty" pressed into our hand—and we are given a new name: baptized child of God.
Why, then, does no one know the new name except the one who receives it? Because the reality it names cannot be put into words. The grandeur, beauty, and joy of heaven itself simply outrun human language. Only those who experience paradise truly comprehend what it is. The name is "secret" not because God hides it from us, but because the new reality is so glorious that it must be lived to be known. As "New Name" (4-4-21) draws out, this is fitting Easter teaching: the empty tomb proves that the sacrifice for sin has been accepted, the gates of heaven stand open to all who believe, and the feet that once shuffled toward a tomb now run into the beauty of the resurrection life Christ has prepared for His own.
Video citations
- "New Name" (4-4-21) — Would you open your Bible, please, with me, to Revelation chapter 2 for our study on this great day, Revelation the second chapter. The sound of feet, were they moving rather slowly along the path,…