Part Two: Jackson
While Josiah was a name chosen largely through my initiative, Jackson came from Megan. Back in 2004, Megan had seen the Pixar film The Incredibles, in which a baby is named Jack-Jack (if you haven’t seen the movie, please do). She thought the name was adorable and decided that one day she’d like to name a baby boy Jackson. Despite considering it for a while, I didn’t know the meaning of the name until Meg was pregnant.
Jackson might not seem like much, “son of Jack” as it is. But Jack is a derivative of John (from Hebrew Yohanan), meaning “Yahweh is gracious” or “graced by Yahweh.” The partnership between this name and Josiah is undeniably beautiful in my mind. As I noted in part one of this blog, Josiah was the king who led God’s people in repentance back to the Law of God. Ironically, in Protestant circles, the Law seems to get a bad wrap. We don’t like the Law! We like grace! And so, we’ll read David’s words about the Law (“O how I love your law!”) and find ourselves befuddled.
The Law of God (whether the first five books of the Bible or the whole Old Testament) and the Gospel of grace are not opposed to one another. No, they are both necessary, good, and delightful for the people of God. In fact, neither could exist without the other. Think about it. The Law exposes the deep gap between God and humankind–our character, our nature, our roles in existence. But why would God even point out these differences and the inherent need for reconciliation? The very fact that God chose to communicate these things to us at all betrays a hidden warmth toward humankind in the heart of God. The mere existence of the Law points to the hope of a restoration between divinity and humanity. And that restoration would be accomplished by the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Jesus came preaching a message of grace–that God cared for people who were fundamentally different from Him. In fact, Jesus came to repair the brokenness of humanity, making us to be like Him. God’s sovereign love merges the divine and the human in the person of Christ, where we may meet God face-to-face not with fear, but with utter joy, dependence, and hope. You can’t have the Law without grace, because the grace shown through Jesus’ incarnation is the very motivation and end of the Law.
You may have seen my tweet the other day, but I finally understood a couple days back the meaning of the word “overjoyed.” Overjoyed actually means excessively joyed! It is joy that is absolutely over-the-top. It is joy that has outdone itself and exhausted its recipient. It’s that kind of joy that I felt on the day J.J. was born. And it’s that kind of love for you that motivated God to send Jesus to establish a familial relationship with you. That story began when our need was exposed by the Law (even in Josiah’s day), it found its climax when grace came to earth (in the work of Jesus), and it is moving toward its consummation even now.
In the end, Josiah and Jackson felt like a perfect pairing in my book (not to mention, it sound eminently Southern, which is a always a good thing). We need the Law every day. And every day we need grace. May that our pursuit of Jesus (preceded by His pursuit of us) delight in both halves of God’s story.
One final blog post coming, entitled “J.J.”
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