Today, we enter the second week of Advent, a season set aside to dwell on Christ, the King whom shepherds guard and angels sing. As Christians, we believe Jesus is the anointed Messiah, the Davidic King, the Christ. But how did we arrive at such a massive claim? Historically, this has proven to be no small debate.

If Christ is the long-awaited Messiah, why does the Old Testament have so few unambiguous texts we can point to as proof? In his detailed investigation of the origins of Messianism, New Testament scholar Joseph Fitzmyer goes so far as to conclude that hopes of a Messianic figure within Judaism intensify only after the Old Testament canon is closed.

And even when the term Messiah is used in the Old Testament, it often has nothing to do with a single Messianic figure. So how did the apostles and the earliest Christians arrive at such a clear link, claiming with confidence that the Jesus born in Bethlehem was the anointed King?

To answer this question and to better understand what we celebrate in Advent, I turn it over to Dr. Don Carson, co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition. He joins us over the phone to answer the Advent question, "What child is this?" I suppose that for many Christians in the West who have not been exposed to much Bible reading yet, when they hear Jesus Christ, they're thinking Jesus is his first name and Christ is his second name or his family name.

So one might almost refer to him as Mr. Christ. But of course it was never that way in the first century. Christ was not initially, at least in any sense, a family name. It was a title. And it's disputed today whether it ever becomes fully a name anywhere in the New Testament.

My own view is that it never loses its titular function, even if it does pick up some naming function in the later New Testament books. But let's back up a wee bit. Christ is simply a translation for the Greek word "Christos," which means "someone who's anointed." And it's equivalent to Messiah, which is a translation from the Hebrew word "Meshiach," which means "someone who's anointed." Thus, if we were actually using translation, Jesus Christ means something like "Jesus the anointed one." But that needs to be unpacked in any case.

In the Old Testament, anointing that is literally carried out is the act of applying oil to an object or a person. This can be done by smearing the oil or pouring a little bit on the person or the thing, rubbing it in a little bit. And the thing that thus has been anointed then is set aside in some way.

And in the Old Testament, in terms of people, there are two, just about three, categories of people who are anointed by oil as a way of indicating that they've been designated for a certain role, a certain function. For example, in the Jotham fable in 1 Kings 9, 7 and following, it's aimed at those who had made Abimelech king of Shechem.

But in this fable, the trees are portrayed as wanting to anoint one tree to be king over them. That is, to designate one tree to appoint one tree. And then later on, for example, when the men of Judah anoint David king over the house of Judah, 2 Samuel chapter 2, the same sort of thing is operating.

So anointing with oil is very, very common in the Old Testament in terms of designating someone a king. And then secondly, it's also used in connection with designating someone priest. Moses receives instructions to anoint Aaron high priest, Exodus 29, Leviticus 8, and so on. And not just Aaron, but his sons.

And a number of times, the sons are said to have been anointed, Exodus 28, 41, Exodus 30, 30, and other passages. And indeed, in some sense, Leviticus 7, 36 goes so far as to say that it is God, Yahweh himself, who anointed Aaron and his sons. Now, obviously, that doesn't mean that he took a flask of oil and literally poured it over their heads or something of that order.

But he did it through his designated agents. But again, it's a way of saying that someone has been set aside for a particular task. And although there's no general anointing of prophets, there is one remarkable passage in 1 Kings 19, 16. Elijah is told to anoint Elisha to be his successor as prophet.

Now, when the event comes, we're not told that he actually poured oil on him. Rather, when Elijah departs, Elisha asks for and receives a double share of Elijah's spirit. So it may even be that that reception of the spirit is considered the reality of the anointing. Just as in 1 John, Christians are said to have the anointing, and in the context, almost certainly that means they've got the spirit, even though they haven't all been smeared with oil or the like.

So you begin to get a kind of sense of the relationship between the physical act, the ritual act, and what it is designating. Now, by the time you get to the New Testament, it's not uncommon to ask questions about messianism, that is, the expectation that a Messiah would come who would save his people, who would transform them, who would bring in the new age, who would bring in the end of days, and so on.

And a majority of scholars today argues that there is, strictly speaking, no use of Messiah Christ in the Old Testament that is unambiguously foretelling, that is, unambiguously announcing the coming of the Messiah, Paracelsus. That's almost right, but not quite, in my view. Usually the word "anointed" refers to ordinary kings and priests and so on, without pointing forward.

For example, Saul, King Saul, before David, who eventually lost his throne, is called the Lord's Anointed, 1 Samuel 12, 3 and 5. And that's why David spares his life. One should not raise his hand against the Lord's Anointed, we're told, 1 Samuel 24, 7, and other passages. That means we're not to raise our hand against the person whom the Lord has appointed to a particular task, even if that person, like Saul, has become corrupt.

God will deal with him. But likewise, later, the Amalekite, who claims to have killed Saul at his own request to put him out of his misery, he is put to death by David because he did not observe the rule of not killing the Lord's Anointed, 2 Samuel 1, 14-16.

And specifically, Psalm 105, 15 says, "Do not touch my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm." So, in all such cases, the anointed person or persons are kings, priests, prophets, as in this last passage, and they are not themselves unambiguously messianic in the prophetic sense. They're not referring to the Messiah, the Christ.

But there are some passages, like Psalm 2 and a handful of others, where the immediate context really does suggest a Davidic king in the historical sphere. And yet the same context also points forward beyond the immediate historical sphere to the ultimate David. There's a Davidic typology that is built right into the treatment.

Psalm 2 is especially telling in that regard. It's a wonderful psalm and it's unambiguously messianic in some respects. But it's messianic through a typology. We've dealt with this one briefly before when we considered the sonship language. You recall how it begins, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against His anointed." That's against His Meshiach, against His Messiah, against His Christ, saying, "Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles." And in one sense, of course, that can be read against the background of local regional petty kings trying to rebel against David or Solomon in the days of the unified monarchy.

Yet when you press on, you discover that the language becomes so extravagant that it's looking forward to the ultimate Messiah against whom people rebel. And it's quoted by the Christian church in Acts chapter 4, for example, when persecution is arising and Christians are thinking it through in the light of Scripture.

And they quote precisely these words, "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain against the Lord and His Messiah?" And in all such contexts, such use of Messiah in Psalm 2 and related passages is clearly referring to the Davidic king, either at the historical level, the immediate Davidic king, or on the long scale typological level, the ultimate Davidic king.

So that when you get to the wonderful confession of Peter in Matthew chapter 16 and parallel, who do people say that I am? And Peter responds, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. You are the Messiah." And how is Messiah understood in that context? The Son of the living God.

Probably not in the context understood to be the second person of the Trinity or something of that order, though that's not denied. It simply isn't the focus. But the Son of God language, as we have seen earlier when we considered both the expression Son of God and when we considered kingship themes, Son of God is regularly used once a Davidide has come to the throne.

The day that he comes to the throne, God says to him, "Today I have begotten you." He's taken on as God's son, as God's king. God is the supreme king, and insofar as the Davidide reigns under God with God's concern for justice and integrity and the preservation of the covenant and all of that, then he's acting like God.

He's God's son. And the Son of God in one of its uses regularly refers to the Davidic king. And my guess then is that what Peter is saying, most people would agree with this I think, is when he confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, he's really saying he's the promised Davidic king.

He's the messianic king. He's the anointed king. And there was expectation that when that messianic king came, he would bring in the ultimate age and that grows with time. Many of the connections with the Old Testament, however, are through these typological lines of sonship and Davidic kingship and so on of that order.

So in the New Testament, then, Jesus is regularly referred to as the Christ. And in most cases, it means the promised Davidic king. It's a way of alluding to the coming, dawning kingdom. But in some passages, the title gets blurred over, I think, to a larger sweeping expectation of God's promised redeemer, God's promised revelation of himself, so that he comes to transform.

There are hints of that in the Old Testament when you see in Isaiah 9, for example, that the one who is coming, "Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given, and he shall reign on the throne of his father David." There's the Davidic sign. But he shall also be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.

So that even though Messiah is not used there because Messiah is regularly used for the Davidic king, this becomes a passage that is espousing a messianism, that is an expectation of a redeemer to come who's in the line of David, even though the term Messiah is not actually used there.

And this is so important a title that John's Gospel, for example, when it articulates its purpose in John 20, 30, and 31, many things have not been written about Jesus, but these are written that the Christ, the Son of God, to show that the Christ, the Son of God, truly is Jesus, and that by believing we might have life in his name.

So this messianic language is tied to a number of other biblical theological themes that we really don't have time to unpack here, but I'll mention one of them. People who study Mark's Gospel often detect what is sometimes called in Mark's Gospel the messianic secret. And what they mean by that is that sometimes Jesus' identity as the Messiah is hidden, or is a title that is actually not to be disclosed right away because for whatever reason Jesus tells the disciples or tells the person who's been healed, for example, not to announce who he is.

So in some sense it's a messianic secret. That language can go too far and become instantly deceptive. Part of the reason why Jesus hides his identity in some respects is because local expectations of a coming redeemer, of a coming king, were often so political that if Jesus simply said, "I am the Messiah," he would be urged to be saying something that he doesn't in fact mean.

"I am here to establish a political kingdom and turf out the Romans and set up the throne exactly as it was in the days of David a thousand years earlier, and this time we're going to win." Whereas the kingdom that Jesus has in mind is far more transcendent than that, far more sweeping but working on very different principles.

And so Jesus is in the strange place where sometimes he acknowledges that he's the Messiah and sometimes he skirts the question precisely because he doesn't want false expectations to arise. But writing decades after the event, then John can say far more categorically, "These are written in order that you might believe that the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God really is Jesus." So part of the problem then is the inability of the disciples, let alone of the larger crowds to see how rich and biblically faithful and Davidic this notion of the Christ, the Messiah, the Sonship of God really is as applied to Jesus.

And it cannot be reduced to merely lineal descent and an earthly kingdom that does not have all of the sweeping power of the kingdom displayed in the New Testament. So that's how the term Messiah works. And when we say Jesus Christ, we should be thinking in our mind, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the promised priest, king, prophet, Jesus the one who is anointed by God to bring about our redemption, Jesus who has been set aside by God, anointed by God, the ultimate Redeemer, the ultimate anointed one, the ultimate Christ.

Amen. That's so helpful. Very grateful to God for Dr. Carson, the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition for his willingness to take up the topic. This is our 14th installment of Don Carson working through major themes in biblical theology here on the podcast. Sonship was earlier. He alluded to that a couple of times.

Today, of course, the topic was Messiah. You can find the other episodes at desiringgod.org. Search for Don Carson's name in the search bar. Thanks for listening to this extra long APJ episode. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. Bye. Bye. Bye.