Theopedia

Messiah

“We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).

— John 1:41

Definition

Messiah translates the Hebrew mashiach, “anointed one,” from the verb mashach, “to anoint.”1 In the Old Testament the term named whoever had been set apart for office by anointing with oil: kings, priests, and at least one prophet.1 Only some Old Testament uses of the term point forward to a single coming deliverer; others name a reigning king of Israel, or even a pagan ruler God raised up for his own purposes.2 Christ, the New Testament’s usual title for Jesus, is simply the Greek equivalent of the same word.1

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession does not use the word “Messiah,” but it makes the same claim the title carries: God “did choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only-begotten Son… to be the Mediator between God and man, the Prophet, Priest, and King.”3 Prophet, priest, and king were exactly the three offices Israel’s own anointing ceremonies conferred, so the confession’s threefold title is the doctrinal content of calling Jesus “the Anointed One,” worked out office by office in the Threefold Office of Christ.

Biblical Basis

Anointing with oil marked a formal appointment to office and, in Israel’s own understanding, the accompanying gift of God’s Spirit to the person anointed.1 Kings were anointed (1 Sam. 10:1; 16:13; 2 Sam. 19:10), as were priests (Exod. 29:7; Lev. 4:3), and Elijah was told to anoint Elisha as his prophetic successor (1 Kings 19:16). Saul, once anointed, is called “the LORD’s anointed” (1 Sam. 24:6, 10), a title later Old Testament writers apply even to Cyrus, a pagan king God raised up to free Israel from exile (Isa. 45:1).2 Most occurrences of the term in the Old Testament refer to a reigning or recent king rather than to a still-future deliverer.2

A smaller number of texts do point ahead to one particular anointed figure. God promised David that his line would hold the throne forever (2 Sam. 7:8-16), a promise later prophets describe in terms that outstrip any merely human king: an eternal ruler called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God… Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6-7), on whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest (Isa. 11:1-2), who is himself prophet, priest, and king at once.4 Daniel’s seventy-weeks prophecy names this figure outright: “from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks… and after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off” (Dan. 9:25-26), a text whose scope, final atonement for sin and everlasting righteousness, cannot be satisfied by a merely human ruler such as Zerubbabel.5 The New Testament identifies Jesus with this figure directly: Andrew tells his brother, “We have found the Messiah (which means Christ)” (John 1:41), and the Samaritan woman’s own messianic hope is met the same way (John 4:25-26).

Historical Development

Israel’s hope for the promised king did not fade after the prophets fell silent. Jewish writings from the centuries before Christ, 1 Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra among them, elaborate the same expectation, describing the coming figure as the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Chosen One, or the Son of David.4 But by this period, Israel generally read its own possession of the law as proof it needed no savior; what expectation remained mostly narrowed to an earthly king who would throw off foreign rule and restore Israel’s political fortunes.4

Jesus’s own preaching entered directly into that expectation and redirected it. Where the prevailing hope was for political deliverance, Jesus announced a kingdom that was “religious-ethical,” present already in repentance and faith even as it awaited a final consummation.4 The Old Testament prophets had spoken of the Messiah’s coming as a single event; Jesus divided it into two, one coming to save, a second to judge, one to prepare, a second to complete.4 Jesus was clear from the start, from the moment of John’s own testimony at his baptism, about his identity as this figure, and grounded that identity in his unique relationship to the Father rather than in any late reconsideration of a failed program.4

Objections and Responses

If Jesus is the Messiah, why did he not deliver Israel from foreign rule the way the term’s other Old Testament uses would suggest? The objection assumes Israel’s own late, narrowed expectation, an earthly king who restores national fortunes, is what the Old Testament itself promised. Bavinck’s answer is that this narrowing was Judaism’s own doing: the Old Testament’s messianic vision was never merely political but universal and spiritual from the start, promising that God himself would be God to his people and extending that blessing to the nations, not only to Israel’s throne.4 The pagan nations around Israel likewise expected kingly deliverers and even called their own rulers “savior,” but the New Testament applies that title to one who delivers people from sin and death, not from foreign armies.4

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 296-97: “If Jesus is the personal, Christ is the official, name of the Messiah. It is the equivalent of the Old Testament Mashiach (from mashach, to anoint), and thus means ‘the anointed one.’ Kings and priests were regularly anointed during the old dispensation… Only a single instance of the anointing of a prophet is recorded, I Kings 19:16.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Foreshadowed,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 178-79: describing the term’s frequent use for a reigning king, and noting that “the foreign and wicked king Cyrus is even called God’s” anointed one in Isaiah 45:1, “yet surely there is no prophecy here of a coming redeemer; rather Cyrus is simply God’s chosen vessel for the time to inflict judgment on God’s people.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 1, text as reproduced by The 1689 Confession. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  5. McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Foreshadowed,” 180-81. ↩