The concept of 'name' has to do with person, character, nature, essence, who someone is. Therefore, we are not to take God, in the fullness of who He is, and treat Him in a vain way, or an empty, irreverent, impious, insincere, phony, fraudulent manner. Not taking the Lord’s name in vain, then, is not limited to cursing or something like that, but it means to treat God with irreverence, superficiality, insincerity, or phoniness, or to bring to God empty worship, hypocritical worship or honor. Someone has said frankly that God’s name is taken in vain more often in the church than outside of it, where people come and offer empty worship with their needless repetition, empty praise-words, singing without thought of God, praying with indifference, hearing the Word and never applying it – all of this is empty worship, phony, hypocritical. Such worship is damnable, condemned in the Word of God.
