IV. JESUS THE MESSIAH
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THE word Christ is the translation into Greek of the Hebrew word Messiah. The Hebrew Messiah, or "Anointed One," was to be the deliverer of their race. Jesus claimed to be that Messiah. When the woman of Samaria said to Jesus, "I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he." (John 4:25—26.) His claim to be the Messiah could not have been more unequivocal.
And his religion is founded upon that claim. On one occasion he asked his disciples, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ [the Messiah], the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter: and upon this rock [evidently upon this confession of Peter's faith in him as the Messiah] I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 16:13—18.)
The religion of Jesus the Christ is the religion of Jesus "the Messiah," of him who claimed to be the deliverer of the Jews and who claimed to come in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies. If there is one fact that stands out with more distinctness in his claims than another it is his assertion of his Messiahship. On his trial before the Sanhedrin the high priest asked him, "Art thou the Christ [that is, the Messiah], the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am." (Mark 14:61—62.) Christianity as a religious system is based upon the Messiahship of Jesus.
Now let us look at some of the prophecies upon which the Jews based their hopes of a deliverer, an Anointed One, or a Christ—a Messiah.
One notable thing which we shall find in regard to these prophecies is that the one who was to come was to be born a man, of the seed of Abraham and David.
To the serpent in the Garden of Eden the Lord said, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15.) We understand, of course, that the serpent was a type or representative of the power of evil which was to be at enmity with the human race; that there should be a perpetual conflict between them; but that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, yet at great personal cost. It is the first apparent prophecy of the coming of a deliverer.
To Abraham the Lord said: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 22:18.) The Lord repeated this promise at various times to Abraham and also to Isaac and to Jacob.
Another prophecy is contained in Jacob's blessing to Judah: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." (Gen. 49:10.)
We recall also the prophecy of Balaam, "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel" (Num. 24:17), and also the search for this star ages later by people who came out of the country of Balaam.
We likewise remember the prophecy of Moses about the time of his departure, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken." (Deut. 18:15.) When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to interrogate John the Baptist concerning his mission they asked him if he were this great prophet which the nation was expecting, and he answered, No. (John 1:21.)
We might sum up the promises to David in this quotation from Jeremiah: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth." (Jer. 23:5.)
It is undeniable that these prophecies were uttered ages before the coming of Jesus, who claimed to be their fulfilment. Of course, I am perfectly aware that most of my readers are familiar with these prophecies; but they are facts whose existence must be mentioned.
And furthermore it is my object to show that as the coming of the long-promised Messiah drew nearer the description of him began to vary. In one set of passages it is shown that he will be a conqueror and a deliverer, and in another that he will be poor and despised. Let us glance at some of them in order to understand why the Jews expected possibly two Messiahs in order to be able to combine the fulfilment of all the prophecies.
Concerning the Messiah as a conqueror and deliverer, in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah we read:
"And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. . . And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."
Many of the glorious conditions foretold of the reign of the Messiah are found in this chapter. It is a type of many prophecies. For example, we read:
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."
Of the Messiah, who is often spoken of as a servant, the thought of him as poor and despised appears in passages like the following: "His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men." (Isa. 52:14.) And again we read:
"He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." (Isa. 53:2, 3.)
This description of the Messiah is to Christians one of the most beautiful and affecting ones to be found in all the world, but to the Jews their Messiah, so pictured in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, was "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." They rejected it, as they later rejected him who so perfectly fulfilled it. They esteemed him "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." They saw to it that he was brought "as a lamb to the slaughter," that he "was taken from prison and from judgment," that "he was cut off out of the land of the living." But in spite of them he did "make his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." And because he "poured out his soul unto death," and "was numbered with the transgressors," and "bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors," therefore the Lord did divide him "a portion with the great," and he did "divide the spoil with the strong." It was just because he fulfilled so beautifully and unselfishly this ideal of the Messiah that the world loves him. For he conquered by hearing patiently and overcoming lovingly rather than by might. It is because of this that the world regards him as the most Divine man of history.