Christ

Christ
He said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said to Him, You are the Christ. Mark 8:29

The word ‘Christ’ is not another name added to Jesus, but rather a title. Christos in Greek is the equivalent of the Old Testament Hebrew word ‘Messiah’. Messiah means the Anointed one whom the Old Testament prophets foretold would come.

The Old Testament makes it clear that the Messiah would come through the tribe of Judah and the linage of David. In the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 Luke outlines the ancestry of Joseph and Mary tracing the family line back to king David and beyond.

There are many prophecies outlining the details of the coming Messiah, here is just one example from the book of Micah: ‘But you Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be ruler in Israel, Whose going forth have been from old, from everlasting.’

One of the reasons why many of the rulers did not accept Christ as the Messiah was because they thought His origins were found in Galilee, when in fact, He was born in Bethlehem. The rulers who rejected Christ understood these prophecies, but mistakenly thought that Jesus had been born in Galilee as John 7: 42 shows, ‘Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?’ Even today many reject Christ through information based on false assumptions.

The Apostle Peter acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah when he declared, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Matthew 16: 16.