…Covered Mashiach

A covenantal title became a surname. A surname points to a person. A covenantal title points to the entire story of what YHWH was doing from the beginning.

Part 3 of 5

 

Ask most English speakers what Christ means and they will pause. Some will say it means anointed. Most will simply say it is part of his name, Jesus Christ, a first name and a last name, two syllables following two others, the complete designation of the one the gospel proclaims. The pause itself is the evidence of what was lost. Christ has become so thoroughly a surname that the title it once was, the covenantal declaration it carried, the entire weight of the covenant testimony it was meant to invoke, has become invisible inside the familiarity.

Mashiach has no such pause. A first-century Jewish person hearing the declaration Yeshua HaMashiach, Yeshua the anointed one, was not hearing a name and a surname. They were hearing a claim about the entire covenant story. HaMashiach, the anointed one, was not a title of general honor or a designation of religious leadership. It was the specific title the entire Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets had been building toward, the one YHWH would anoint to complete the covenant, fulfill the offices of king, priest, and prophet simultaneously, and accomplish what no human anointing could accomplish.

To call Yeshua HaMashiach was to say: this is the one the first word of the Torah declared before the creation began. This is the destination the entire covenant story was aimed at.

Christ has become a surname. Mashiach was a covenantal declaration. A surname points to a person. A covenantal title points to the entire story of what YHWH was doing from before the foundation of the world.

The anointing tradition in the Hebrew covenant is ancient and specific. Oil was poured on the head of the one being set apart, the king, the high priest, the prophet, as a visible act of divine commissioning. The anointing did not confer ability or authority from the one doing the anointing. It designated the one YHWH had chosen and empowered for a specific function within the covenant. The anointed one was YHWH’s anointed, set apart by YHWH, commissioned by YHWH, empowered by YHWH’s own spirit for the work YHWH had determined.

The three offices of anointing, king, priest, and prophet, each carried specific covenantal functions. The king governed the people under YHWH’s authority, establishing justice and covenant fidelity in the land. The high priest mediated between the people and YHWH, carrying the sins of the people into the holy of holies on the day of atonement and emerging as the sign that YHWH had accepted the offering. The prophet declared the word of YHWH directly, thus says YHWH, carrying the divine speech into the human situation without filtering or diminishing it. No human being in the covenant history held all three offices simultaneously. The Mashiach was the one who would.

The Psalms are saturated with the Mashiach expectation. Psalm 2, YHWH said to me, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance. He is the anointed king. Psalm 110, YHWH said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. He is the anointed priest. Yeshayahu 61, the Spirit of YHWH is upon me, because YHWH has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives. He is the anointed prophet. Three psalms, three offices, one anointed one. HaMashiach.

When Yeshua stood in the synagogue in Natzeret (Nazareth) and read from Yeshayahu 61, the Spirit of YHWH is upon me, because he has anointed me, and then said today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, he was not making a modest claim about his teaching ministry. He was declaring himself HaMashiach, the anointed one of the covenant, the one the entire testimony had been building toward, the one declared in the first word of the Torah before anything was made. The room understood what he was saying. That is why some marveled and some immediately wanted to throw him off a cliff. He had claimed the title that the entire covenant testimony had reserved for the one YHWH himself would anoint.

When Yeshua said today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, he was not making a modest claim about his teaching. He was declaring himself HaMashiach. The room understood. That is why some marveled and some immediately tried to kill him.

Christos is the Greek word that translates Mashiach. It means anointed, and as a translation it is technically accurate. The problem is not in the translation itself but in what happened to the word after the translation. Christos in Greek, addressed to a Greek-speaking audience, carried less covenantal weight than Mashiach did for a Hebrew-speaking audience. The Greek reader knew anointed. They did not know the three offices, the covenant story, the Psalms and Prophets that the title was built to invoke. Christos pointed to a function. Mashiach pointed to the entire covenant narrative in which that function was embedded.

As Christos passed into Latin and English as Christ, the weight diminished further. By the time the tradition had been speaking of Jesus Christ for several centuries, Christ had become so thoroughly attached to Jesus as a two-word name that its function as a title ceased to be perceived. People said Jesus Christ the way they said any other two-part name, as a complete designation for a specific person, not as a name followed by a covenantal title that connected that person to the entire testimony of YHWH from the beginning.

The consequence runs deeper than vocabulary. If Mashiach is heard in its full covenantal weight, the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets are the primary testimony about who Yeshua is and what he came to do. The covenant text is not background material or helpful prophecy. It is the declaration that names him before he arrives, in the first word, in the anointed king of the Psalms, in the anointed priest of Psalm 110, in the anointed prophet of Yeshayahu 61. The gospel is understood as the completion of what YHWH declared before anything was made. But if Christ is heard as a surname, the covenant text becomes a prequel, useful for finding predictive prophecies but not the living primary testimony. The New Testament becomes the main event. The Old Testament becomes backstory. And the gospel becomes a new religion rather than the arrival of what the oldest testimony was always declaring.

This is the cost of Christ covering Mashiach. Not the loss of a title. The loss of the covenant connection. The loss of the story. The loss of the testimony that was written before the light was called and that named the anointed one in the first word before any of the covenant history had begun. A surname says here is a person. A covenantal title says here is the one YHWH has been pointing to from the beginning. One connects Yeshua to the present moment. The other connects him to everything YHWH has been declaring since before the creation began.

 

Mashiach, the anointed one of the covenant. The destination the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets were always moving toward. Not a surname. The completion of the testimony.

 

Christ: a surname. Points to a person.

Mashiach: a covenantal title. Points to the entire story.

 

The title connects Yeshua to the first word of the Torah.

The surname connects him to nothing before his birth.

 

Restore the title. Restore the connection. Restore the testimony.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams