We have become accustomed to calling our Lord “Jesus Christ,” which is not bad at all. However, in doing so, we have lost sight of the meaning behind what we are saying. It might seem strange, but Christ was not Jesus’ last name. When Peter says to Jesus, “You are the Christ…” (Matt. 16:16), he is trying to convey a concept deeply rooted in the minds of the Jews, derived directly from the teachings of the Old Testament, pointing to a specific person who would fulfill the good purposes and promises that God had made to His people.
When we talk about the word “Christ,” we need to understand that this word is not a translation but a transliteration. What is a transliteration? Simply put, in a translation, a concept moves from one language to another. When we talk about a transliteration, however, what moves from one language to another is not the concept, but the sound of the word.
The example of the word at hand is very illustrative. “Christ” is a Spanish word, but it is not a translation of the original Greek; it is a transliteration. The Greek word is “Christos.” What has been transferred into Spanish is not the concept of what that word means but the sound of the word itself. The same happens with the corresponding Hebrew word, “Mashiach,” which we have transliterated into our word “Messiah.” Both words have the same meaning, but one comes from Greek, and the other from Hebrew. How could we translate these two words? Well, both “Messiah” and “Christ” mean “Anointed One.” Thus, basically, the words “Anointed One,” “Christ,” and “Messiah” are synonymous.
The Messianic Expectation in the Times of Jesus
The Jews in the first century had a very specific expectation, based on their reading, study, and interpretation of the Scripture passages, regarding the figure of the Lord’s Anointed One. We can see this in different texts. For example, at a time when the listeners of Jesus were confused about His identity, a group said, “Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” (John 7:41-42). In that statement of certainty about the ancestry and origin of the Messiah (or the Christ), we can see how they had unified different prophecies and covenants to apply them to a person they thought would fulfill them all: the Lord’s Anointed One.
This expectation was also embraced by the early Church, which affirmed not only that this Messiah was the person through whom God would fulfill His plans for Israel and the nations but that this Anointed One was none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in the first sermon of the Church era, the Apostle Peter asserts that “the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:18). Peter does not point to a particular prophet speaking of the Messiah’s suffering but affirms that all of them spoke of him, opening up their concept of the Lord’s Anointed One to the entirety of the Old Testament. Moreover, the Apostle continues to encourage his listeners to repent and be converted so that their “sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). What “times of refreshing” is Peter referring to? Evidently, to the rest promised by God to His people, to the climax of history, in which the Kingdom of God on earth would become an absolute reality, as the prophets affirm (Isa. 2:1-5; Dan. 7:13-14; Joel 3:1-21; Amos 9:11-15; Obad. 21; Zech. 9:9-10; Zeph. 3:14-20). In other words, Peter is underpinning the Messianic expectation of the Jews of his time, and affirming that this expectation is and will be explicitly fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Practice of Anointing in the Old Testament
We make a grave mistake if we take this word simply as an “honorific” title for Jesus and apply that idea to what we read in the Old Testament. That is, we should not acquire our concept of “Anointed One” from who we think Jesus is and then impose it on the writings of the prophets. On the contrary, we must try to understand what the concept of “Messiah” the prophets speak of, to correctly understand what that concept refers to when the New Testament affirms that Jesus is that “Messiah.”
The practice of anointing was deeply rooted in the people of Israel. Basically, anointing means “rubbing the skin with oil”[1]. Although the practice was commonly used for various purposes, such as a model of hospitality (Luke 7:46), a show of honor (John 11:2), or special preparation (Ruth 3:3; 2 Sam. 14:2; Isa. 61:3), in the liturgical sense, it had a very specific meaning, and that meaning is the basis of the concept of the Lord’s Anointed One that the Jews of Christ’s time had.
The practice of anointing was, on one hand, connected to the worship of God in the Tabernacle and later in the temple. So, when God was giving instructions for the proper functioning of the Tabernacle, He says that after offering a sacrifice as atonement for sin, “you shall anoint it to consecrate it” (Exod. 29:36). We see that the purpose of this anointing was to consecrate or set apart for the exclusive service of the God of Israel. The same was true of the other utensils used in divine worship (Lev. 8:12). In the same sense, priests were anointed (Exod. 28:41). They were anointed to consecrate them and make them fit for service to the God they were to serve, the thrice-Holy One.
Anointing was also the process used to appoint the nation’s leaders. We can see how, within the plan Abimelech devised to seize the government of Israel during the time of the judges, he tells a story that begins thus: “Once the trees went forth to anoint a king over them…” (Judg. 9:8). This same concept is reflected throughout Israel’s history, especially during the time of the united kingdom. Saul was anointed as king (1 Sam. 9:16; 10:1; 15:1), David was anointed as king (2 Sam. 2:4, 12-13), and Solomon was anointed as king (1 Kings 1:34). In other words, the way someone became king in Israel was not by being crowned but by being anointed.
The idea behind this was that royal authority came precisely from the same place as priestly service, from being chosen and set apart by God for that purpose. To emphasize this idea, although a human person poured the anointing oil on the monarch, that anointing was ultimately a divine act. It might seem contradictory when, after Samuel anoints Saul, he says, “Has not the LORD anointed you a ruler over His inheritance?” (1 Sam. 10:1). However, the reality is that although Samuel was the instrument through which Saul was anointed, the ultimate responsibility and authority rested with the Lord. Essentially, it was God Himself who anointed Saul as king.
This is why kings had such a special position. They deserved higher respect than any other Israelite. David understood this correctly when he spared Saul’s life, even when he deserved death, as his men reminded him (1 Sam. 26:9-23). David knew that if God had anointed the king, Saul was in a position of great honor, as sanctified and set apart by the Lord Himself for His purposes, and going against him was equivalent to going against the one who anointed him.
On the other hand, there was also a special responsibility that the anointed one had to honor. When Saul flagrantly disobeys the Lord, Samuel rebukes him, saying, “Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king” (1 Sam. 15:26). The concept Samuel projects is that royal authority, since Saul was anointed by God Himself, rested on divine authority. Therefore, by violating that authority, he was going against what upheld his very royal position. In other words, by disobeying God, his condition as anointed would inevitably fall.
Thus, priests and kings were anointed and thus set apart for divine service and obedience. But there was also another office that required anointing from the Lord, and that was the prophet. We can see how the psalmist says, “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm” (Ps. 105:15), putting an anointed one and a prophet on the same level. In fact, 1 Kings 19:16 is very revealing in this sense, for there we can see how Jehu is anointed as king over Israel, and Elisha is anointed as a prophet. Thus, the one who was tasked with speaking on behalf of God and the words of God was also sanctified through anointing, that is, chosen and set apart for a specific divine service purpose.
Up to this point, we have been able to verify what it meant to be anointed by the Lord. It was an act expressing being chosen and set apart (sanctified) by God Himself for a special mission, a mission we can summarize by examining the three offices that were anointed: the priest, the king, and the prophet. In the next installment, we will examine the Old Testament in search of a Messianic figure, the Lord’s Anointed One, to justify the first-century Jews’ expectation and how Jesus exactly fulfills those expectations, both from the Bible and His people.
Our Lord is exactly the one who was to come. He, and no other, is the Priest, the King, and the Prophet we need!
Originally published on the blog of the editorial EBI.
