Luke 10:20 vs. “New Name Written Down in Glory”

Charity Gayle · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

PassageLuke 10:20 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumEndless Praise · 2021

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceexperience (the singer’s story)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting at any point: no reference in the song, none printed on the official chart, none in the publisher's song metadata
The writers name their texts in public, John 1:12 and Revelation 2:17, which is more than most songs offer and lets the claim be checked
The pre-chorus follows 2 Corinthians 5:17 and 5:7 and keeps both the reversal and the order the passage puts them in
The bridge grounds identity outside the singer. What settles the question is what God says, not what the singer feels
Every change described in the verses has God or Jesus as the one who acts

⚠ Cautions

The title line is a hymn phrase, not a Bible phrase. No translation renders Luke 10:20, or Revelation 2:17, in those words
Luke 10:20 speaks of names already written. A new name is a separate promise from Revelation 2:17 and 3:12, and the song joins the two into one line
Luke's sentence is a correction in two halves, and only the half about the name survives here. The joy it was ranked above is not in view
Luke puts this joy in the plural, said to a group. The song holds it as one person's possession, which Revelation supports but Luke's wording does not
Calling God the author of the singer's story is the song's own image. Hebrews 12:2 calls Jesus the author of faith, which is a wider claim than one life's narrative

Verse Proof

Luke 10:20

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Jesus had sent out seventy-two workers ahead of him, and they come back delighted that even demons submitted to them in his name. He answers them in three moves. He says he watched Satan fall like lightning, he confirms the authority he gave them, and then he turns their joy around: not that, but this. The sentence is spoken to people who have just succeeded at the job they were given, and it is a correction of where their gladness should rest. The names in view are theirs already, on record in heaven. Nothing in the verse says a name is newly issued.

What the song says, described not quoted

The first verse describes being lost in shame, unable to get past guilt, held down by darkness, until God calls the singer by name and Jesus pulls them out. A short line about being glad to have been changed closes each verse. The pre-chorus works in new-creation language taken from 2 Corinthians 5: the old life gone, new life begun, walking by faith rather than sight. The chorus says a name has been written down in glory and that it belongs to the singer, calls God the author of the singer's story, and says he belongs to the singer too. The second verse follows the same shape: blindness from sin, eyes opened by Jesus, freedom and victory after. The bridge, repeated at length, says the singer's identity is settled because the I Am is the one who tells them who they are. No chapter and verse appears anywhere in the song, and God is spoken about in the third person throughout rather than addressed.

Three things sit between Luke 10:20 and this song, and none of them is a misquotation, because nothing here is offered as a quotation. The first is the title. The phrase is not from Luke and not from any Bible. It is the opening of the refrain of "A New Name in Glory," a gospel hymn C. Austin Miles wrote in 1910, long out of copyright and printed in dozens of hymnals. The 2021 song keeps that opening line and the possessive wording that follows it, puts a new tune under it, and writes its own verses around it. Hymnary lists Luke 10:20 among the texts hymnals attach to the Miles hymn. Blue Letter Bible prints Revelation 2:17 over it instead. So the verse most people reach for when they hear this line arrived through a hymnal cross-reference, not through the song. The second is the word new. Luke 10:20 says the workers' names are written in heaven. It does not say a new name is given. A new name is a different promise, made in Revelation 2:17 and 3:12 and behind them Isaiah 62:2. The song joins the two ideas, and the writers say plainly which one they were working from: their stated texts are John 1:12 and Revelation 2:17. The third is the shape of Luke's sentence. It is a comparison with two halves. The song has the half about a name on record and nothing of the half it was measured against.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse and presents nothing as scripture. Its title line reproduces the refrain of a 1910 hymn rather than any translation. The writers name John 1:12 and Revelation 2:17 as their texts rather than Luke 10:20.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Jesus did not say a name in heaven is a good joy. He said it is the better one.

Why it matters

Luke 10:20 is the verse people assume is underneath this song, and it is not the verse the writers used. That is worth saying because the two say different things about the same joy. Revelation 2:17 promises a name you do not have yet. Luke 10:20 reports a name already on file and then ranks the joy of it above something else.

The ranking is the part that goes missing. Jesus was not comforting people who felt small. He was answering people who had just watched demons obey them, and he told them to move their joy off that and onto the register in heaven. Sung on its own, a recorded name is reassurance. In Luke it is a redirection, and what it redirects you away from is your own effectiveness.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

The chorus comes around eight times in the published arrangement and the bridge line more often than that, so what this song plants is the bridge: a settled answer to the question of who you are, with the answer located in God rather than in yourself. That is a good thing to have drilled in, and it is the reason the dwelling tag is mixed rather than self. Nearly every line has the singer as its grammatical subject, and nearly every line has God as the one doing the work. Sung on a loop it will rehearse both at once: a story about you, told with God as the actor. If you want Luke 10:20 in the mix, the thing to bring with you is the half the song does not carry. Your name is on the list, and that is worth more than anything you managed this week.

Helpful comparison

Set the two promises next to each other and the difference is easy to see. Revelation 2:17 gives a white stone with a name on it that only the one who receives it knows. It is private, it is given at the end, and it is for the one who overcomes. Luke 10:20 gives no stone and no new name. It says the names the seventy-two already have are on a heavenly list, and it says so in the plural, to a group that had just come back from the road together.

The song sits closer to Revelation, and its writers say so. Where Luke still matters is the framing. This is a song of personal identity, and the recorded name is held as a personal possession throughout. That is fair and Revelation supports it. But a listener who reaches for Luke 10:20 as the proof text should notice that Luke's version of this joy is corporate and comparative, and that neither of those features made it into a four-minute song about one person being changed.

Sources

[Charity Gayle, New Name Written Down In Glory (feat. David Gentiles) [Live]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GP7aUg3Nk) (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns author_name "Charity Gayle", the artist's own channel)
People & Songs, "New Name Written Down In Glory" · (the publisher's own page: writers David Gentiles, Charity Gayle and Denita Gibbs; the song's origin at an Emerging Sound writing session; the texts cited are John 1:12 and Revelation 2:17)
Lead Worship Well, Behind The Song · (the writers' own account of the session, and the same two texts, John 1:12 and Revelation 2:17)
MultiTracks.com, New Name Written Down In Glory · (album Endless Praise, 2021, publisher New Nation Music, writers Charity Gayle / David Gentiles / Denita Gibbs / The Emerging Sound; no scripture reference listed)
Official chord chart, key of D (MultiTracks, via Clover Sites) · (the writer line and 2021 copyright; the section order used for the repetition counts; no Bible reference printed anywhere on the chart)
Hymnary.org, "A New Name in Glory" (C. Austin Miles, 1910) · (the hymn whose refrain opens with the title phrase, in 77 hymnals; Hymnary attaches Matthew 10:20, Luke 10:20, Ephesians 2:5-8 and Revelation 13:8 to it)
Blue Letter Bible, "A New Name In Glory" · (the same Miles hymn, with Revelation 2:17 printed as its scripture reference rather than Luke 10:20)
The Berean Test, "Is 'New Name Written Down in Glory' Biblical?" · (an independent section-by-section scripture mapping of the song; it reaches Revelation 2:17, 2 Corinthians 5, and Exodus 3:14, and never Luke 10:20; also gives the 2021 Endless Praise release)

Corrections

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