We refer to our Saviour as Jesus Christ so habitually that we often forget that Christ is a title and not his surname. Jesus Christ is, therefore, a shortened form of Jesus the Christ. The importance of this title is clearly reflected in its immediate association with Jesus, and from it Christians derive their name and distinctive identity.
The word derives from the Greek verb chrioo for "anoint," i.e., to rub with oil. Christos (Greek) or Christ (English) is, therefore, "the Anointed One," and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Mashiach or Messiah; this is especially clear when John tells us that "the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah' (which is translated, the Christ)" (Jn 1:41; NKJ). Though the word occurs very frequently in the New Testament (about 350 times), it was not a "Christian" expression; it was the word that the Greek translators of the Septuagint used to translate the Hebrew mashiach.
While it is perfectly natural for a Jewish Christian to refer to our Saviour as Yeshua' Hammashiach, there is no cause for, or spiritual benefit in, insisting, as often happens in some quarters of the Church today, that Christians of non-Jewish descent should do the same. God chose for the New Testament to be written in Greek and Iesous Christos or Jesus Christ (when the Greek is rendered into English) is a perfectly God-ordained and Christ-honouring name for our Saviour. It actually sounds flaky when non-Jewish Christians do so.
Three Hebrew verbs may be translated by the English "anoint," two of which - suk and dashan (Psm 23:5) have no theological significance, and are more often translated "poured out."
The Hebrew verb mashach, in everyday usage, can refer to such mundane activities as rubbing oil on a shield to polish or protect it (Isa 21:5; or it may refer to rubbing oil on the leather components of the shield to keep them supple), painting a house (Jer 22:14; NIV translates the verb as "decorates"), or applying cosmetic lotions to the body (Amos 6:6).
The verb also refers to the ancient Israelite practice of consecrating an object to God by ritually rubbing or smearing it with oil. Jacob, e.g., anointed an stone pillar at Bethel as an act of commitment to God (Gen 31"13). Unleavened wafers "anointed" with oil were used in the consecration of the priests (Exo 29:2). Similarly, the Tent of Meeting and the ark of the Testimony were set aside for worship by "anointing" them with oil (Exo 30:26). Belonging to this category of usage is the anointing of the priests for service in the tabernacle and temple. In all these instances, anointing does not seem to imply anything more than consecration to divine service.
The vast majority of its occurrences, however, has to do with the ritual of setting aside and inaugurating the kings to rule over Israel and Judah. At least three ideas are associated with such royal anointings. First, such anointing implied an authorized separation for God's service, and with it the consequence of honour, divine protection and favour (Psm 18:50; 20:6; 28:8) as well as divine empowerment (1 Sam 10:6; 16:13), but also accountability (1 Sam 15:17-19; 2 Sam 12:7-12). Eventually, the idea of the Lord's anointed became deepened so that he is counted as inviolable—"Do not touch my anointed one" (Psm 105:15; also 1 Sam 26:9-23; 2 Sam 1:14-16)—and the anointed is identified as God's vice-regent so that dishonouring the anointed is equivalent to dishonouring Yahweh (Psm 2:2; 89:51).
John Oswalt observes that all of these instances of royal anointing have in common special circumstances related especially to dynastic changes:
Saul is anointed as the first king of Israel; David is anointed because the Saulide dynasty has been rejected; Solomon is anointed to stop the pretenses of Adonijah; Absolom was anointed in an attempt to usurp the throne; Joah was anointed to replace the usurper Athaliah; Jehoahaz was anointed to replace his dead father Josiah; and Hazael was to be anointed king of Syria so as to become a divine scourge upon Israel. Even the first occurrences of the concept in the royal context, the figurative references to the attempt to make Gideon's son Abimelech king of Israel (Judg. 9:8, 15), support this observation. This is not to suggest that other Israelite and Judean kings were not anointed. It would seem certain that they were, as a matter of course. It is just that the instances that the biblical writers choose to report are these special ones. This choice seems to underline the element of particular selection and empowerment that the act of anointing represented. The use of oil as a symbol of the Holy Spirit and the explicit connection of the Holy Spirit with anointing in Isa 61:1 reinforce that the act of anointing symbolized this divine appointment.
John N. Oswalt, s.v., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, ed by W. A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 2:1125.
The one anointed by the Lord is therefore special to the Lord. The Old Testament recognizes this and in psalm of thanksgiving recorded in 1 Chron, God is quoted as commanding "Do not touch my anointed ones" (1 Chron 16:22). It is one of the great tragedies of church life that we often hear of pastors who foist this expression on their members in an effort to enforce compliance to their pastoral decisions. This is at once, presumptuous and arrogant, as well as an abuse of Scriptures.
While it is laudable that a pastor should exercise his ministry with the confidence and conviction that he has been called and appointed to his office, it is presumptuous to claim such authoritarian powers on the basis that he is "the Lord's Anointed." It is an attitude that forgets that, in the light of what Jesus has done, we are all mere servants. It represents one of the worst examples of pastoral duplicity to demand obedience to a Scriptural injunction when the pastor is himself disobedient to the equally important Scriptural injunction to be "shepherds of God's flock" but "not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock" (1 Pet 5:3).
It is also instructive that there is only one example of an application of the principle of the inviolability of the Lord's anointed in Scriptures; it is the well-known case of David's refusal to harm Saul when he had him cornered and vulnerable in the cave in Ein Gedi (1 Sam 24). It is important, however, to notice the dynamics of the encounter. It was David who volunteered not to do Saul harm because he understood Saul to be his king and the Lord's anointed. It was not Saul who demanded David's submission on account of him being David's king and the Lord's anointed. To assert one's right on the basis that one is the Lord's anointed is to put oneself in the shoes of Saul. Why would anyone want to do that? Saul was rejected. And he died beheaded!
The abuse of this expression is, of course, not new. If only we read more history, we would learn that countless preachers have hankered back to this expression when they do not like what they are offerred (more usually, what they are not offerred). In the early 16th Cent England, e.g., there was a custom in the Church that clergymen who had committed murder could be tried by the Church court and spared the penalty of death. This privilege naturally lend itself to great abuse. In 1512 the English parliament decided that an end should be put to such injustice, and it passed a bill that this "benefit of clergy" be removed, at least, from those in the minor orders, where discipline was always the worse and such abuse was most likely. One would have thought that any officer of the Church would be glad that a source of grave injustice was being eliminated. It was then that the abbot of Winchester declared in a sermon before the lords in parliament that the Act so passed stood against the laws of God and the freedom of the Church. You can guess the Scripture text on which he based his sermon. Yes, 1 Chron 16:22.
We end this discussion with this thought: Is not a leader one whom followers follow? If we need to assert our right to be respected and obeyed as a leader, we need to begin asking if we really have what it takes to be a true leader. Instead of abusing Scriptures to get our flock to obey us, perhaps we should spend some time in quiet before the Lord and ask if we have not sinned or if we have what it takes to lead God's people?
It has often been claimed that Jewish society in the time of Jesus was rife with expectations of a messianic figure. N. T. Wright, however, provides a different take on things:
Modern scholarship has made one thing quite clear: there was no single monolithic and uniform 'messianic expectation' among first-century Jews. Most of the Jewish literature we possess from the period has no reference to a Messiah; a good deal of prominent and powerful writing ignores the theme altogether. Such evidence as there is is scattered and diverse, spread across very different writings with a hint here, a dark saying there, and only occasionally a clear statement about a coming Son of David who would execute Yahweh's wrath on the Gentiles, or rebuild the Temple, or otherwise fulfil Israel's hopes. Nor can we easily appeal to the rabbis for help here, any more than elsewhere in second-temple Judaism. . . So, despite the confident pronouncements of may generations, both christian and Jewish, we must conclude initially that we cannot say what, if anything, the average Jew-in-the-market-place believed about a coming Messiah. In the surviving literature, 'when an individual Messiah is envisaged, his role and character remain vague and undefined.
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 2004) 307-8.
This, of course, does not mean that such expectations were absent; only that such evidences as would allow us to trace a clearly defined shape of such expectations are not clearly presented in the Jewish writings of the time. The historical circumstances of the day may provide a possible explanation for this lack. Soon after Jesus death, the Jewish commonwealth went through a cataclysmic disrupture. The First Jewish Revolt that began in 66 AD ended with the sack of Jerusalem and the and destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The Second or Bar-Kokhba Revolt of 133-35 AD was put down with even greater rigour from the Romans so that Jews were afterwards banished from the City which was then rebuilt as the pagan Roman city of Aelia Capitolina, and the name of the country Judea was banned and replaced by Palestine (a cruel pun on Philistine, the pagans from whom the Israelites have conquered the land). This latter revolt was particularly significant because the leader clearly harboured messianic aspirations that were given open support by Akiva, the most imminent rabbi of the time. It is not difficult to imagine how the terrible consequences of the rebellions' failure may have driven Jewish society of the time to suppress any expressions of messianic hope afterwards.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2013