Another revelation of our Lord's relation to His disciples is given in
the fact that He changes Simon's name. Jehovah, in the Old Testament,
changes the names of Abraham and of Jacob. Babylonian kings in the Old
Testament change the names of their vassal princes. Masters impose
names on their slaves; and I suppose that even the marriage custom of
the wife's assuming the name of the husband rests originally upon the
same idea of absolute authority. That idea is conveyed in the fact
that our Lord changes Peter's name, and so takes absolute possession
of him, and asserts His mastery over him. We belong to Him altogether,
because He has given Himself altogether for us. His absolute authority
is the correlative of His utter self-surrender. He who can come to me
and say, 'I have spared not my life for thee,' and He only, has the
right to come to me and say, 'yield yourself wholly to Me.' So,
Christian friends, your Master wants all your service; do you give
yourselves up to Him out and out, not by half and half.

Lastly, that change of name implies Christ's power and promise to
bestow a new character and new functions and honours. Peter was by no
means a 'Peter' then. The name no doubt mainly implies official
function, but that official function was prepared for by personal
character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means
firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong,
self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the
granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to
cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence
had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling;
not until he had been beaten from all his presumption, and tamed down,
and sobered and steadied by years of difficulty and responsibilities,
did he become the rock that Christ meant him to be. All _that_ lay