Messiah (Christ) – A Messianic Title of Jesus
What This Title Means
The word Christ is so familiar that we often overlook it as a title.
We say Jesus Christ the way we say John Smith: a first name followed by a last name, the whole thing a proper noun that identifies a specific person. Christ has become a name rather than a claim.
But Christ is not a name. It is a title, and it is the most power-packed title in the entire New Testament.
Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah, and both words mean the same thing: the Anointed One. The one who has been anointed by God for a specific, long-awaited, history-altering purpose. When the New Testament calls Jesus Christ, it is not completing his name. It is making a declaration: Jesus is the Messiah, the one the whole Old Testament was expecting, the one in whom every covenant and every promise and every prophetic word finds its yes.
When Peter confesses at Caesarea Philippi, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God," he is not giving Jesus a compliment. He is identifying him as the central figure in the whole story of God and humanity: the Anointed One, the one who has come to do what only the Messiah can do.
Everything before it leads toward it. Everything after it flows from it.
The Hebrew and Greek Roots
Mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ) is the Hebrew word, from the root mashach (H4886), meaning to anoint, to smear with oil, to consecrate by anointing. The noun mashiach (H4899) describes the anointed one, the one on whom oil has been poured as a sign of divine appointment and consecration.
Anointing in the Old Testament was the ritual act that set someone apart for a holy office. BDB notes the three offices anointed in Israel: priests were anointed (Exodus 29:7), kings were anointed (1 Samuel 10:1; 16:13), and at least one prophet was anointed (1 Kings 19:16). The oil was the sign that God had chosen this person for this purpose, that his Spirit rested on them for the work they had been called to do.
The word mashiach appears in the Old Testament in both immediate and eschatological senses. Kings like Saul and David are called the LORD's anointed, mashiach Yahweh. But the term also develops a forward-pointing, capital-M meaning: the Messiah who is coming, the ultimate anointed one who will fulfill what every anointed king and priest and prophet only partially accomplished.
Daniel 9:25–26 is the most explicit use of the title in its messianic sense: "Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes... After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing." The Messiah will come and the Messiah will be cut off. His suffering is built into the prophecy.
In Greek, Christos (Χριστός) is the direct translation of mashiach, meaning the anointed one. BDAG defines it as the one anointed, specifically the Jewish Messiah expected to fulfill God's covenant purposes. In the New Testament, Christosbegins as a title applied to Jesus and gradually, through frequency of use, comes to function as part of his proper name. Paul uses Christos Iēsous and Iēsous Christos hundreds of times, but the title never loses its content: this person is the Anointed One.
Strong's H4899 (mashiach) and G5547 (Christos) together trace the title from its anointing roots through the full development of messianic expectation.
Key Occurrences in Scripture
The Three Anointed Offices
The Old Testament prepares for the Messiah by anointing three offices that together point toward him. Priests stood between the people and God, offering sacrifices and interceding. Kings governed the people of God with justice and led them in the worship of Yahweh. Prophets spoke the word of God to the people and called them back to covenant faithfulness.
Every individual who held any of these offices was a partial mashiach, an anointed one who partially fulfilled what the office required but always left something unfulfilled. Aaron's priesthood required annual repetition. David's kingship was great but marked by catastrophic sin. Every prophet spoke truly but only in part.
The accumulated inadequacy of every anointed one in every office sharpened the expectation of the one Anointed One who would fulfill all three perfectly and permanently.
Isaiah 61:1–2
"The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor."
Isaiah 61 is the Messiah's own description of his anointing and his mission. The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on him, the oil of the Spirit rather than the oil of the sanctuary, and the mission flows from the anointing: good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, freedom for captives.
Jesus reads this text in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4:18–21, sits down, and says: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." He is the anointed one of Isaiah 61. The Messiah is present. The mission has begun.
Caesarea Philippi: Matthew 16:13–20
The hinge of the Gospels. Jesus asks his disciples who people say the Son of Man is. They report the various opinions: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Then he asks: but who do you say I am?
Peter answers: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Jesus does not correct Peter or qualify the confession. He affirms it: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven." The confession is not the product of human reasoning. It is revelation. And it is the rock on which the church will be built.
Then Jesus commands them not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. The disciples have the title right, but they do not yet understand what being the Messiah means. That understanding will come only after the resurrection.
The Samaritan Woman: John 4:25–26
"The woman said, 'I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.' Then Jesus declared, 'I, the one speaking to you, am he.'"
The Samaritan woman has no political agenda and no messianic nationalism to redirect. And to her, Jesus speaks plainly: I am he. It is one of the few places in the Gospels where he claims the title without qualification or command of silence.
John 20:31
John's Gospel closes with its stated purpose: "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
The entire Gospel is written so that readers will arrive at Peter's confession. The title is not incidental to John's narrative. It is the destination toward which every sign and every discourse points.
Theological Significance
Messiah declares that Jesus fulfills all three anointed offices. He is the prophet who speaks the word of God with final authority ("You have heard that it was said... but I say to you"). He is the priest who offers himself as the once-for-all sacrifice and intercedes permanently. He is the king whose kingdom has no end. No previous anointed one held all three; Jesus holds all three perfectly and permanently.
Messiah and the suffering that precedes the reign. The messianic expectation in first-century Judaism was shaped primarily by the royal, victorious dimension: the Son of David who would restore Israel's greatness and defeat her enemies. The disciples shared this expectation. What Jesus revealed, and what proved so difficult to receive, was that the Messiah must first suffer and die before he would reign. The cross was the Messiah's most essential act, the fulfillment of Daniel 9's prophecy that the Anointed One would be cut off.
Messiah and Israel's story. The Messiah is the climax of Israel's entire history: the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, the completion of the Mosaic covenant, the realization of the Davidic covenant, the arrival of the new covenant promised by Jeremiah. Every covenant finds its yes in the Messiah. The whole Old Testament is the preparation for the arrival of the Anointed One, and every reader of Scripture is being led toward the question Jesus asks at Caesarea Philippi.
Messiah and the confession of faith. Peter's confession is the model confession of Christian faith. The question Jesus asks is the question every person must answer: who do you say I am? The answer that the New Testament declares right, drawn not from human reasoning but from divine revelation, is: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
The Messiah in the Rest of the New Testament
Acts 2:36 gives Peter's Pentecost declaration its full weight: "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah." The resurrection is the messianic vindication. God has confirmed by raising him from the dead that Jesus is the Messiah despite the crucifixion, because the crucifixion was the Messiah's most essential act.
Acts 17:3 gives Paul's synagogue method: "explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. 'This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah.'" The two-part argument: first, that the Messiah must suffer; second, that Jesus is that Messiah. The first part establishes the category; the second makes the identification.
Colossians 2:2–3: "Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The Messiah is the one in whom the fullness of divine wisdom and knowledge is hidden, the cosmic Anointed One whose work is not for one nation but for all creation.
Revelation 11:15: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever." The messianic kingship reaches its eschatological completion. The kingdoms of the world are absorbed into the kingdom of God and of his Messiah, and the Anointed One reigns without end.
What This Title Means for Christian Faith and Practice
Recovering the weight of the title means recovering the weight of the claim.
When you confess Jesus Christ as Lord, you are not saying: I follow a good teacher named Jesus who is also called Christ. You are saying: I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, the prophet-priest-king in whom the whole history of God's dealings with humanity reaches its climax and its completion. The title is not decoration on the name. It is the theological substance of what the name means.
Jesus's question at Caesarea Philippi is still the question. It cannot be answered by reporting what others say. It requires a personal confession, and the confession has not changed since Peter made it on the road: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
That confession is the foundation of the church, the unlocking of eternal life, and the answer to which the whole story has been leading. It is given by the Father to those who seek it honestly, the same way he gave it to Peter on that road.
Ask. Seek. And when the answer comes, say it plainly: he is the Christ.
Everything follows from that.
Sources
Brown, F., Driver, S. R., & Briggs, C. A. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Entries: מָשַׁח (mashach); מָשִׁיחַ (mashiach).
Bauer, W., Danker, F. W., Arndt, W. F., & Gingrich, F. W. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG). 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Entry: Χριστός(Christos).
Strong, J. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Entries: H4899 (mashiach); G5547 (Christos).
Brand, C., Draper, C., & England, A. (Eds.). Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003. Entry: "Messiah"; "Christ"; "Anointing."
France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. See commentary on Matthew 16:13–20.
See Also
Names of God:
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