What does ‘Messiah/Christ’ actually mean?

Question 3045.

Messiah and Christ both mean the anointed one, and that single fact unlocks more of your Bible than almost any other piece of vocabulary. Many people assume Christ is simply Jesus’ surname, as though Joseph and Mary were Mr and Mrs Christ of Nazareth. It is nothing of the kind. It is a title, a job description and a claim, all at once.

The Hebrew word is mashiach, the Greek is christos, and both mean exactly the same thing: someone smeared or anointed with oil. To understand why that matters, we need to see what anointing meant in Israel, and who was waiting to be the anointed one when Jesus stepped into history.

What anointing meant in Israel

In the Old Testament, anointing with oil was the act of setting a person apart for a God-given office. The oil itself was ordinary; the meaning was extraordinary. Samuel poured oil on Saul’s head and then on David’s, and of David we read that ‘the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward’ (1 Samuel 16:13). The oil marked the man; the Spirit made the ministry.

Three offices in Israel were entered by anointing. Kings were anointed to rule. Priests, beginning with Aaron, were anointed to represent the people before God (Exodus 29:7). And prophets could be anointed to speak for God, as Elisha was appointed in Elijah’s place (1 Kings 19:16). So an anointed one was a person authorised by God, empowered by God and accountable to God for a particular calling.

From anointed ones to the Anointed One

Across the centuries, Israel’s Scriptures began to speak of a coming figure who would be not an anointed one among many but the Anointed One, the mashiach in whom every strand of promise converged. Psalm 2 shows the nations raging ‘against the LORD and against his Anointed’, the King whom God installs on Zion and calls His Son. Daniel 9:25 counts the years ‘to the coming of an anointed one, a prince’, and even foretells that this anointed one would be ‘cut off’ (Daniel 9:26).

By the first century the expectation was white hot. Andrew’s first words to his brother Simon were, ‘We have found the Messiah (which means Christ)’ (John 1:41). The Samaritan woman said, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (John 4:25). Israel was a nation on tiptoe, waiting for God’s promised deliverer.

Jesus claims the title

Did Jesus accept the identification? Emphatically. In the synagogue at Nazareth He read Isaiah 61, ‘The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me’, and announced, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:21). To the Samaritan woman who spoke of Messiah He said plainly, ‘I who speak to you am he’ (John 4:26). When Peter confessed, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’, Jesus blessed him for it (Matthew 16:16).

Under oath before the high priest, asked directly whether He was the Christ, He answered ‘I am’ (Mark 14:62), an answer that took Him to the cross. And notice when His anointing occurred: at His baptism the Spirit descended on Him, and Peter later summarised it exactly in these terms: ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (Acts 10:38). No oil this time; the reality the oil always pictured.

After the resurrection He used the title of Himself freely, the danger of political misunderstanding now past. To the two on the Emmaus road He said, ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:26), and He opened Moses and all the Prophets to show them the pattern. The risen Lord’s own Bible study had one subject: the Scriptures had always spoken of Him.

The anointed one holds three offices

Here is where the background pays off. Because anointing consecrated prophets, priests and kings, calling Jesus the anointed one declares Him all three at once. He is the Prophet greater than Moses, God’s final word to us (Hebrews 1:2). He is the Priest who offered Himself and ever lives to intercede, as I show in What does it mean that Jesus is our High Priest? And He is the King, the Son of David whose throne is everlasting, which I unpack in What does ‘Son of David’ mean?

Every earlier bearer of the office failed somewhere. Kings fell into idolatry, priests into corruption, prophets into fear. The offices were fragments, waiting for the one Person large enough to hold them together. In Jesus the fragments meet, and none of them cracks.

Christ is a confession, not a surname

So when the New Testament says Jesus Christ, it is making a claim: Jesus is the promised anointed one. That is why the earliest preaching sounds the way it does: ‘God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified’ (Acts 2:36); Paul in the synagogues ‘proving that Jesus was the Christ’ (Acts 9:22). The very nickname Christian, first coined at Antioch (Acts 11:26), brands us as people of the Anointed One.

John even makes it a test of truth: ‘Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?’ (1 John 2:22). And he wrote his whole Gospel ‘so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). The title carries the gospel inside it. I explore the relationship between the name and the title further in What is the difference between Jesus and Christ?

It is worth letting the label examine us. At Antioch the name Christian was probably coined by outsiders, possibly with a sneer, because the believers talked so much of Christ that they were branded with Him. The question for us is whether the label would still occur to a stranger listening to our conversation. To wear the name of the Messiah is a privilege with an edge to it: ‘if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name’ (1 Peter 4:16).

The anointed one and His anointed people

There is a lovely final turn. Those who belong to the anointed one share His anointing. ‘It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us’ (2 Corinthians 1:21), and John tells believers, ‘you have been anointed by the Holy One’ (1 John 2:20). The same Spirit who rested on the Messiah at the Jordan indwells everyone who trusts Him.

That does not make us little messiahs, and it gives no cover to modern teachers who market ‘the anointing’ as a commodity. It means something better: united to the anointed one, every believer is set apart, Spirit-indwelt and commissioned to serve. His anointing guarantees ours.

Why Jesus silenced messianic talk

One puzzle remains. If Jesus accepted the title, why did He so often command silence about it? He ordered demons not to declare Him (Mark 1:34), told the disciples after Caesarea Philippi ‘to tell no one that he was the Christ’ (Matthew 16:20), and repeatedly withdrew from crowds eager to crown Him (John 6:15). Scholars call it the messianic secret, and some treat it as an embarrassment. It is nothing of the kind. It is pastoral realism.

The popular expectation of the day had collapsed the office into politics: a warrior king to expel Rome. Had Jesus embraced the title without correction, He would have been conscripted into a revolution He had not come to lead. So watch what He does the moment Peter confesses Him: ‘he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things… and be killed, and after three days rise again’ (Mark 8:31). He accepted the identification and immediately filled it with Isaiah 53. Peter’s protest, and the Lord’s sharp reply, show how unwelcome that correction was.

Scripture had always held both notes: the sufferings of Christ first, ‘and the subsequent glories’ (1 Peter 1:11). Two comings, one office: the cross before the crown. Much confusion about unfulfilled messianic prophecy, then and now, dissolves once those two comings are kept distinct, as dispensational reading has always insisted.

So, now what?

Next time you say or sing the word Christ, hear it properly: the Anointed One, God’s appointed Prophet, Priest and King. Titles this rich should never become wallpaper. Let the word recover its weight in your worship.

And ask the question the title forces: is He anointed King over you? A Messiah acknowledged but not obeyed is a contradiction. Bring your plans, your fears and your loyalties to Him, because every office He holds, He holds for the good of His people.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke 4:18-19 (ESV)