How Do We Know Jesus Is the Messiah?

00:00:00.000 | Today, we enter the second week of Advent, a season set aside to dwell on Christ, the

00:00:14.480 | King whom shepherds guard and angels sing.

00:00:18.480 | As Christians, we believe Jesus is the anointed Messiah, the Davidic King, the Christ.

00:00:24.820 | But how did we arrive at such a massive claim?

00:00:27.400 | Historically, this has proven to be no small debate.

00:00:31.420 | If Christ is the long-awaited Messiah, why does the Old Testament have so few unambiguous

00:00:36.720 | texts we can point to as proof?

00:00:40.540 | In his detailed investigation of the origins of Messianism, New Testament scholar Joseph

00:00:46.080 | Fitzmyer goes so far as to conclude that hopes of a Messianic figure within Judaism intensify

00:00:51.540 | only after the Old Testament canon is closed.

00:00:56.000 | And even when the term Messiah is used in the Old Testament, it often has nothing to

00:00:59.880 | do with a single Messianic figure.

00:01:03.940 | So how did the apostles and the earliest Christians arrive at such a clear link, claiming with

00:01:09.220 | confidence that the Jesus born in Bethlehem was the anointed King?

00:01:15.260 | To answer this question and to better understand what we celebrate in Advent, I turn it over

00:01:19.020 | to Dr. Don Carson, co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition.

00:01:23.640 | He joins us over the phone to answer the Advent question, "What child is this?"

00:01:30.200 | I suppose that for many Christians in the West who have not been exposed to much Bible

00:01:37.800 | reading yet, when they hear Jesus Christ, they're thinking Jesus is his first name and

00:01:44.480 | Christ is his second name or his family name.

00:01:47.780 | So one might almost refer to him as Mr. Christ.

00:01:51.080 | But of course it was never that way in the first century.

00:01:54.760 | Christ was not initially, at least in any sense, a family name.

00:02:00.240 | It was a title.

00:02:02.120 | And it's disputed today whether it ever becomes fully a name anywhere in the New Testament.

00:02:08.880 | My own view is that it never loses its titular function, even if it does pick up some naming

00:02:14.480 | function in the later New Testament books.

00:02:17.680 | But let's back up a wee bit.

00:02:19.440 | Christ is simply a translation for the Greek word "Christos," which means "someone who's

00:02:26.560 | anointed."

00:02:28.240 | And it's equivalent to Messiah, which is a translation from the Hebrew word "Meshiach,"

00:02:35.280 | which means "someone who's anointed."

00:02:37.480 | Thus, if we were actually using translation, Jesus Christ means something like "Jesus the

00:02:43.320 | anointed one."

00:02:45.320 | But that needs to be unpacked in any case.

00:02:48.560 | In the Old Testament, anointing that is literally carried out is the act of applying oil to

00:02:57.880 | an object or a person.

00:02:59.880 | This can be done by smearing the oil or pouring a little bit on the person or the thing, rubbing

00:03:05.720 | it in a little bit.

00:03:07.680 | And the thing that thus has been anointed then is set aside in some way.

00:03:13.960 | And in the Old Testament, in terms of people, there are two, just about three, categories

00:03:20.240 | of people who are anointed by oil as a way of indicating that they've been designated

00:03:28.320 | for a certain role, a certain function.

00:03:31.140 | For example, in the Jotham fable in 1 Kings 9, 7 and following, it's aimed at those who

00:03:39.320 | had made Abimelech king of Shechem.

00:03:41.920 | But in this fable, the trees are portrayed as wanting to anoint one tree to be king over

00:03:49.080 | them.

00:03:50.160 | That is, to designate one tree to appoint one tree.

00:03:53.400 | And then later on, for example, when the men of Judah anoint David king over the house

00:03:59.280 | of Judah, 2 Samuel chapter 2, the same sort of thing is operating.

00:04:05.320 | So anointing with oil is very, very common in the Old Testament in terms of designating

00:04:11.360 | someone a king.

00:04:14.240 | And then secondly, it's also used in connection with designating someone priest.

00:04:19.840 | Moses receives instructions to anoint Aaron high priest, Exodus 29, Leviticus 8, and so

00:04:25.760 | on.

00:04:27.000 | And not just Aaron, but his sons.

00:04:28.800 | And a number of times, the sons are said to have been anointed, Exodus 28, 41, Exodus

00:04:36.080 | 30, 30, and other passages.

00:04:38.720 | And indeed, in some sense, Leviticus 7, 36 goes so far as to say that it is God, Yahweh

00:04:45.160 | himself, who anointed Aaron and his sons.

00:04:48.040 | Now, obviously, that doesn't mean that he took a flask of oil and literally poured it

00:04:52.840 | over their heads or something of that order.

00:04:55.680 | But he did it through his designated agents.

00:04:59.000 | But again, it's a way of saying that someone has been set aside for a particular task.

00:05:06.080 | And although there's no general anointing of prophets, there is one remarkable passage

00:05:11.880 | in 1 Kings 19, 16.

00:05:14.520 | Elijah is told to anoint Elisha to be his successor as prophet.

00:05:21.320 | Now, when the event comes, we're not told that he actually poured oil on him.

00:05:26.600 | Rather, when Elijah departs, Elisha asks for and receives a double share of Elijah's spirit.

00:05:33.440 | So it may even be that that reception of the spirit is considered the reality of the anointing.

00:05:40.880 | Just as in 1 John, Christians are said to have the anointing, and in the context, almost

00:05:46.920 | certainly that means they've got the spirit, even though they haven't all been smeared

00:05:51.380 | with oil or the like.

00:05:52.760 | So you begin to get a kind of sense of the relationship between the physical act, the

00:05:58.680 | ritual act, and what it is designating.

00:06:01.840 | Now, by the time you get to the New Testament, it's not uncommon to ask questions about messianism,

00:06:11.280 | that is, the expectation that a Messiah would come who would save his people, who would

00:06:17.280 | transform them, who would bring in the new age, who would bring in the end of days, and

00:06:21.560 | so on.

00:06:22.560 | And a majority of scholars today argues that there is, strictly speaking, no use of Messiah

00:06:31.640 | Christ in the Old Testament that is unambiguously foretelling, that is, unambiguously announcing

00:06:38.120 | the coming of the Messiah, Paracelsus.

00:06:41.840 | That's almost right, but not quite, in my view.

00:06:47.400 | Usually the word "anointed" refers to ordinary kings and priests and so on, without pointing

00:06:54.560 | forward.

00:06:55.560 | For example, Saul, King Saul, before David, who eventually lost his throne, is called

00:07:01.120 | the Lord's Anointed, 1 Samuel 12, 3 and 5.

00:07:05.560 | And that's why David spares his life.

00:07:09.040 | One should not raise his hand against the Lord's Anointed, we're told, 1 Samuel 24,

00:07:14.240 | 7, and other passages.

00:07:17.320 | That means we're not to raise our hand against the person whom the Lord has appointed to

00:07:23.600 | a particular task, even if that person, like Saul, has become corrupt.

00:07:30.440 | God will deal with him.

00:07:33.120 | But likewise, later, the Amalekite, who claims to have killed Saul at his own request to

00:07:39.320 | put him out of his misery, he is put to death by David because he did not observe the rule

00:07:46.000 | of not killing the Lord's Anointed, 2 Samuel 1, 14-16.

00:07:51.360 | And specifically, Psalm 105, 15 says, "Do not touch my anointed ones, do my prophets

00:07:57.880 | no harm."

00:07:58.880 | So, in all such cases, the anointed person or persons are kings, priests, prophets, as

00:08:08.680 | in this last passage, and they are not themselves unambiguously messianic in the prophetic sense.

00:08:15.920 | They're not referring to the Messiah, the Christ.

00:08:19.680 | But there are some passages, like Psalm 2 and a handful of others, where the immediate

00:08:26.560 | context really does suggest a Davidic king in the historical sphere.

00:08:32.640 | And yet the same context also points forward beyond the immediate historical sphere to

00:08:39.360 | the ultimate David.

00:08:40.360 | There's a Davidic typology that is built right into the treatment.

00:08:47.080 | Psalm 2 is especially telling in that regard.

00:08:50.360 | It's a wonderful psalm and it's unambiguously messianic in some respects.

00:08:55.400 | But it's messianic through a typology.

00:08:59.800 | We've dealt with this one briefly before when we considered the sonship language.

00:09:04.080 | You recall how it begins, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?

00:09:09.200 | The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against

00:09:14.560 | His anointed."

00:09:15.560 | That's against His Meshiach, against His Messiah, against His Christ, saying, "Let

00:09:20.880 | us break their chains and throw off their shackles."

00:09:23.760 | And in one sense, of course, that can be read against the background of local regional petty

00:09:28.800 | kings trying to rebel against David or Solomon in the days of the unified monarchy.

00:09:35.160 | Yet when you press on, you discover that the language becomes so extravagant that it's

00:09:41.520 | looking forward to the ultimate Messiah against whom people rebel.

00:09:46.760 | And it's quoted by the Christian church in Acts chapter 4, for example, when persecution

00:09:53.720 | is arising and Christians are thinking it through in the light of Scripture.

00:09:59.960 | And they quote precisely these words, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot

00:10:06.400 | in vain against the Lord and His Messiah?"

00:10:10.960 | And in all such contexts, such use of Messiah in Psalm 2 and related passages is clearly

00:10:16.800 | referring to the Davidic king, either at the historical level, the immediate Davidic king,

00:10:22.840 | or on the long scale typological level, the ultimate Davidic king.

00:10:29.840 | So that when you get to the wonderful confession of Peter in Matthew chapter 16 and parallel,

00:10:36.640 | who do people say that I am?

00:10:39.040 | And Peter responds, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

00:10:45.600 | You are the Messiah."

00:10:47.160 | And how is Messiah understood in that context?

00:10:49.320 | The Son of the living God.

00:10:51.280 | Probably not in the context understood to be the second person of the Trinity or something

00:10:57.360 | of that order, though that's not denied.

00:10:59.120 | It simply isn't the focus.

00:11:00.480 | But the Son of God language, as we have seen earlier when we considered both the expression

00:11:05.460 | Son of God and when we considered kingship themes, Son of God is regularly used once

00:11:10.800 | a Davidide has come to the throne.

00:11:13.360 | The day that he comes to the throne, God says to him, "Today I have begotten you."

00:11:21.040 | He's taken on as God's son, as God's king.

00:11:25.440 | God is the supreme king, and insofar as the Davidide reigns under God with God's concern

00:11:30.840 | for justice and integrity and the preservation of the covenant and all of that, then he's

00:11:34.680 | acting like God.

00:11:36.080 | He's God's son.

00:11:38.560 | And the Son of God in one of its uses regularly refers to the Davidic king.

00:11:44.560 | And my guess then is that what Peter is saying, most people would agree with this I think,

00:11:50.600 | is when he confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, he's really saying

00:11:55.920 | he's the promised Davidic king.

00:11:58.320 | He's the messianic king.

00:11:59.800 | He's the anointed king.

00:12:01.040 | And there was expectation that when that messianic king came, he would bring in the ultimate

00:12:05.160 | age and that grows with time.

00:12:08.840 | Many of the connections with the Old Testament, however, are through these typological lines

00:12:13.240 | of sonship and Davidic kingship and so on of that order.

00:12:18.600 | So in the New Testament, then, Jesus is regularly referred to as the Christ.

00:12:25.320 | And in most cases, it means the promised Davidic king.

00:12:29.680 | It's a way of alluding to the coming, dawning kingdom.

00:12:34.160 | But in some passages, the title gets blurred over, I think, to a larger sweeping expectation

00:12:40.960 | of God's promised redeemer, God's promised revelation of himself, so that he comes to

00:12:48.000 | transform.

00:12:49.360 | There are hints of that in the Old Testament when you see in Isaiah 9, for example, that

00:12:55.160 | the one who is coming, "Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given, and he shall

00:13:00.040 | reign on the throne of his father David."

00:13:02.280 | There's the Davidic sign.

00:13:04.480 | But he shall also be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting

00:13:07.880 | father, the prince of peace.

00:13:09.640 | So that even though Messiah is not used there because Messiah is regularly used for the

00:13:13.200 | Davidic king, this becomes a passage that is espousing a messianism, that is an expectation

00:13:19.680 | of a redeemer to come who's in the line of David, even though the term Messiah is not

00:13:24.440 | actually used there.

00:13:26.000 | And this is so important a title that John's Gospel, for example, when it articulates its

00:13:31.560 | purpose in John 20, 30, and 31, many things have not been written about Jesus, but these

00:13:36.800 | are written that the Christ, the Son of God, to show that the Christ, the Son of God, truly

00:13:42.320 | is Jesus, and that by believing we might have life in his name.

00:13:46.600 | So this messianic language is tied to a number of other biblical theological themes that

00:13:52.720 | we really don't have time to unpack here, but I'll mention one of them.

00:13:57.880 | People who study Mark's Gospel often detect what is sometimes called in Mark's Gospel

00:14:02.800 | the messianic secret.

00:14:05.640 | And what they mean by that is that sometimes Jesus' identity as the Messiah is hidden,

00:14:13.240 | or is a title that is actually not to be disclosed right away because for whatever reason Jesus

00:14:21.320 | tells the disciples or tells the person who's been healed, for example, not to announce

00:14:26.720 | who he is.

00:14:27.720 | So in some sense it's a messianic secret.

00:14:31.760 | That language can go too far and become instantly deceptive.

00:14:36.520 | Part of the reason why Jesus hides his identity in some respects is because local expectations

00:14:44.260 | of a coming redeemer, of a coming king, were often so political that if Jesus simply said,

00:14:50.600 | "I am the Messiah," he would be urged to be saying something that he doesn't in fact

00:14:55.760 | mean.

00:14:56.760 | "I am here to establish a political kingdom and turf out the Romans and set up the throne

00:15:00.760 | exactly as it was in the days of David a thousand years earlier, and this time we're going to

00:15:05.160 | win."

00:15:06.160 | Whereas the kingdom that Jesus has in mind is far more transcendent than that, far more

00:15:09.960 | sweeping but working on very different principles.

00:15:13.800 | And so Jesus is in the strange place where sometimes he acknowledges that he's the Messiah

00:15:19.320 | and sometimes he skirts the question precisely because he doesn't want false expectations

00:15:24.280 | to arise.

00:15:26.060 | But writing decades after the event, then John can say far more categorically, "These

00:15:30.560 | are written in order that you might believe that the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God

00:15:35.040 | really is Jesus."

00:15:37.720 | So part of the problem then is the inability of the disciples, let alone of the larger

00:15:44.560 | crowds to see how rich and biblically faithful and Davidic this notion of the Christ, the

00:15:53.200 | Messiah, the Sonship of God really is as applied to Jesus.

00:15:57.920 | And it cannot be reduced to merely lineal descent and an earthly kingdom that does not

00:16:06.400 | have all of the sweeping power of the kingdom displayed in the New Testament.

00:16:13.720 | So that's how the term Messiah works.

00:16:16.680 | And when we say Jesus Christ, we should be thinking in our mind, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus

00:16:22.840 | the promised priest, king, prophet, Jesus the one who is anointed by God to bring about

00:16:28.880 | our redemption, Jesus who has been set aside by God, anointed by God, the ultimate Redeemer,

00:16:35.000 | the ultimate anointed one, the ultimate Christ.

00:16:37.400 | Amen.

00:16:38.400 | That's so helpful.

00:16:39.840 | Very grateful to God for Dr. Carson, the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition for

00:16:46.200 | his willingness to take up the topic.

00:16:47.960 | This is our 14th installment of Don Carson working through major themes in biblical theology

00:16:52.200 | here on the podcast.

00:16:53.640 | Sonship was earlier.

00:16:54.640 | He alluded to that a couple of times.

00:16:56.000 | Today, of course, the topic was Messiah.

00:16:58.920 | You can find the other episodes at desiringgod.org.

00:17:02.560 | Search for Don Carson's name in the search bar.

00:17:05.680 | Thanks for listening to this extra long APJ episode.

00:17:09.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:17:10.840 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:17:12.800 | Bye.

00:17:13.800 | Bye.

00:17:18.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Do We Know Jesus Is the Messiah?

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