The Jewish people accepted that God would send them a king who would liberate them, politically, renew them personally and redeem them spiritually. He was the Messiah. The disciples and others recognized Jesus as the Messiah (Matt. 16:16).
In the Gospels this is twice transliterated from the Hebrew into the Greek (John 1:41; 4:25) but usually it was translated into the Greek word “Christ”. Usually it was used as a descriptive term: “You are the Christ” (Mk 8:29); “Jesus the Christ” (Acts 5:24); “the Lord’s Christ” (Lk 2:26). But within the time between the death of Jesus and of the writing of the earliest scriptures (1 Thess, Mark etc) it had become a surname for Jesus. For example, Mark commences “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God” (Mk 1:1).
Luke, both in his Gospel and in Acts, seems to have special access to the details proving from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Messiah. In the first two chapters of his Gospel there are more than a score of references to support the messiahship of Jesus, most of them uniquely his. Luke’s attitude in Acts would have been strongly influenced by his companion Paul. In all of Paul’s letters, Christ is used either as a surname to Jesus or as a substitute for His name. His use of the word Christ is restricted to the risen Lord, whereas the name Jesus was used to refer to his earthly life. Paul’s most significant phrase “in Christ” which dominates his writing was the description of all aspects of a Christian life. We live, behave, believe, die and are saved in Christ.
The early church members at Antioch were called “Christians” because they were recognised as believers in Jesus, God’s Messiah. The Old Testament background will be dealt with in the study entitled Messiah.
FOR TODAY
Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ of God” (Lk 9:20) is the minimum requirement of a person desiring to be a Christian, and the unique claim of Christianity. Many people who do Christian deeds claim to be “true Christians”. But performing good deeds without the confession of faith is not sufficient. Unless Jesus is the Christ of God and the Lord of their lives no amount of good deeds will make one a Christian. This was so recognised in the early Church that an early copyist of the Acts of the Apostles, being concerned that the Ethiopian was truly a Christian concluded as he felt sure the Ethiopian would have said, Verse 37 of Acts 9, which is the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. We have no less a privilege today in making the same confession.
Most Christian denominations state that the only test of the orthodoxy of a believer should be this same confession that Jesus is the Christ the son of God. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Christadelphians and the like may be very sincere in their beliefs but they are not Christians even though some of their doctrines may be Christian. They are sincere, but sincerely wrong for they do not accept the fact that Jesus is the Christ. This is the touchstone of our faith and is the uniqueness of Christianity that must stand even in an age of syncretism and the desire to unite people of different religious and cultural backgrounds.
“We are all going the same way.” That is not true, if Jesus, who claims to be the way, is not accepted as the Christ.