Sometimes we make things more difficult and complicated that they need to be. When we try to explain about Jesus Christ, we get off track when we make things to difficult. We say Jesus is the” eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being,” and before you know it we have lost those who wanted to hear the simple message of the Christ.Jesus asked His disciples who they said He was and Peter said “You are the CHRIST, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Then Jesus praised Peter for that statement saying that this declaration (the confession of Jesus being the Christ) would be the rock upon which the Church would be built.Paul would say that Christ was the foundation stone of the church (I Corinthians 3:11). In fact, there’s an old Gospel hymn that echoes that truth: “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is shifting sand.” I like to think that when Christ said “upon this rock” he was pointing to Himself.The word “Christ” is a title that told us something about Jesus and his mission. It was a description of WHO Jesus was. “Christ” was the Greek word for the Hebrew word “Messiah” and both mean “the Anointed One.”We find in the Old Testament that there were three types of people that were anointed to have a specific responsibility: prophets, priests, and kings. Being anointed meant that that person now had a job or mission to do and the authority – they were RECOG NIZED as either a prophet, or a priest, or a king.Now, what’s interesting is that Jesus came to be anointed to do all three of these responsibilities. He was the Christ who came to be our prophet and our priest and our King. As a prophet He came to declare the will of God. Moses prophesied this (Deut. (18:18-19). He spoke with authority as a prophet would (Matt. 7:28-29). He then inspired the apostles to speak on his behalf with the same authority. So the words of the inspired writers in the New testament are just as important as the words we have that Jesus spoke.But He also was anointed to be our priest – OUR HIGH PRIEST (Heb. 9:11-14). The priests in the Old Testament offered up the blood of animals. But these sacrifices had to be repeated. But Jesus didn’t offer the blood of calves and ...
