When Jesus assigns his three closest disciples the names Rocky (Simon now called Petros, the rock) and Thunderboys (James and John, the Boanerges), he’s naming them in faith according to their callings, not what they are already. (See Mark 3:16-17. Some take “sons of thunder” as a statement of their fiery temperament; I think more likely it’s a statement of their spiritual power, just like Jesus’s nickname for Simon Peter.)
When Simon the Rock denies his lord (Mark 14:66-72), he acts less like a sturdy rock and more like rocky soil (4:16-17): those who fall away when hardship comes. The sons of thunder just cut and run (14:50).
One might compare Judges 6:12, where the angel of the Lord greets Gideon with the title, “Valiant warrior!” Gideon is hardly acting like a warrior; he is beating out wheat in the wine press so the Midianites won’t see him and seize the wheat. When the angel announces, “The Lord is with you,” Gideon counters with the sort of skepticism we sometimes meet today. “If the Lord is with us, why are things so hard? We heard about all the stuff he used to do for us, but he doesn’t do that stuff anymore” (cf. 6:13). It was like Gideon didn’t even pay full attention to how the angel hailed him. In Hebrew, the angel said, “The Lord’s with you” (singular), but Gideon translates that as “with us” (plural).
Then the Lord looks at him and says, “Go in this power of yours and save Israel” (6:14). The Lord sees something in Gideon that Gideon can’t see in himself (thus his further protest in 6:15). That’s because the Lord can reiterate, “I have sent you” (6:14) and “I will be with you” (6:16). It’s not about who we are in our own strength; it’s about who we are because God is with us. It was the same with Moses, who protested, “Who am I to carry out this mission?” (Exod 3:11); and God replied, “I will be with you” (3:12), and “I am who I am” (3:14). So also with Jeremiah (Jer 1:7-8).
It was the same with Rocky and the Thunderboys. Jesus didn’t choose them because they were wise scribes or famous priests. When he called them, he said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people” (Mark 1:17). The Lord can take ordinary and even less than ordinary people and make us into what he calls us to be. Before Jesus sends his disciples on a mission, he calls them to be with him (3:14). Yes, Peter and the Boanerges fail, but before Jesus is done with them, they live up to their names and become true leaders of God’s people.
We may feel like nobodies, people that God can’t use. But God says we’re new in Christ (e.g., Rom 6:3-4; 2 Cor 5:17). He sees us not according to our past but according to our potential and destiny in him; he sees us in Christ. It doesn’t depend on what we have been in our own strength. It depends on who we are in Christ, as he is conforming us to his image. We can trust and embrace what God is making us to be.
