What is "Christ?" A last name? A title? And why is it important
Christian Living
Wisdom
Faith
0
Hello and welcome to Thinking About the Bible. We're continuing our survey of important names and terms in the scripture and we looked at the name Jesus. Now we want to look at the title Christ. It's often confused as a second name or something. People think of his name as Jesus Christ but the better way to understand this is Jesus the Christ because Christ is a translation of the Hebrew term Messiah or anointed one is what it means actually and throughout the Old Testament there were several times the word is used quite a bit. There can be an anointing of a stone for instance. There can be an anointing of a king. There is anointing of Cyrus although Cyrus was not specifically anointed or literally I should say anointed but the term is used to set something apart something's anointed and a set apart for God's use so it's used as I say David, Daniel, Isaiah and after the after the closure of the Old Testament canon I guess after that point in time that we have what we call the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books and it's used throughout for instance in address which is just a term for Ezra but in those apocryphal books it's used as well and so by the time that Jesus came the term Christ or Messiah or anointed one was commonly understood to be referring to the one who would bring about all the things that God had said he would do for his people and he would bring that to pass through this one who is the great deliverer the one that was promised by God to be the one who would bring the people to into their blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. So Jesus the Christ Jesus the anointed Jesus the Messiah is to say that all of God's promises are yes in Jesus and that's exactly what Paul says by the way and in 2 Corinthians 1 20 I think it is and when we think of the term Christ let's not think about this as some kind of a second name or the last name of Jesus it is actually a title Christ means Messiah means anointed and when we think about that today think about the fact that Jesus is the anointed one that God had promised for centuries he is the one who is given the task given the ability he is God incarnate and therefore as Christ is able to bring to pass was given this privilege this task of bringing to pass all of God's promises and we who are in Jesus the Christ who are in relationship with him who are his new creation have access to all that the Messiah all of the anointed one all that the Christ has accomplished so think about that today the great blessings of being in relationship with the Christ will see you again tomorrow
Welcome to FaithbaseCreate a free account or log in to access all features & content.