Week 3 | The Gospel and the Messiah

The Gospel and the Messiah 

In Week 1 we learned that the gospel is the announcement that Jesus is King and that it happened 'according to Scripture', 'for our sins'.  In Week 2 we discovered that 'according to scripture' means that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament narrative, not simply a small handful of random passages but the entire story of the Hebrew scriptures. 

This week, we will explore what it means for Jesus to be the messiah. Central to the gospel is the confession that Jesus is king. In the opening passage of Paul's letter to the Romans, Jesus is called 'Christ', 'Son of David', Son of God', and 'Lord', all titles that denote kingship (Romans 1:1-5). In Paul's shortest summary of the gospel (2 Timothy 2:8), he simply states that Jesus is the resurrected Christ, descendent of David. Matthew begins his Gospel with the statement 'Jesus the messiah, son of David' (Mt. 1:1) and Mark, in the opening statement of the first written Gospel, says that he is recounting 'The beginning of the Good News about Jesus the Messiah' (Mk. 1:1). The writers of the New Testament are adamant that at the heart of the gospel is the announcement that Jesus is King. 

New Testament scholar Joshua Jipp, in his book The Messianic Theology of the New Testament (Eerdmans Press, 2020), argues that "the messianic identity of Jesus of Nazareth is not only the presupposition for, but is also the primary content of, New Testament theology...Jesus's messianic kingship is something of a root metaphor, a primary designation and driving image for making sense of New Testament Christology (p. 3)". In other words, the identity of Jesus as the messianic king is absolutely central to the writers of the New Testament. Paul, after all, can simplify his gospel as the announcement of Jesus the king. An obvious question follows: what does it mean to call Jesus 'king'? 

Like every important New Testament concept, the roots of Jesus's kingship are buried deep in the soil of the Old Testament. The terms 'Christ' and 'Messiah' both mean 'anointed one', someone who is tasked with a special purpose by God, and in the Old Testament refers to the offices of prophets, priests, and kings. The idea that Jesus is the 'messiah' is a deliberate reference to the Old Testament hope for a future king. In their book God's Messiah in the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2020), scholars Andrew Abernethy and Gregory Goswell state that the concept of Messiah is "understood to refer to the hope of the coming of a royal agent who will serve God's kingdom purposes, and expectation that Christians believe finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ" (pg. 1). 

Deuteronomy 17:14-20 clearly states that if Israel asks for a king, the king cannot be like those of the pagan nations but instead must guide Israel to follow the law and remain faithful to God. Israel was set apart for the purpose of revealing God to the world, and any legitimate king of Israel would fulfill those obligations. 1 Samuel 8 reveals that Israel wants a king that looks like the nations surrounding them, ignoring God's command. Samuel warns the people that a king who conforms to the pattern set by the pagan nations would be a disaster for Israel. As we learned last week, it was. 

King David, however, was a king that sought to be obedient to God. God promises David in 2 Samuel 7 that He would one day establish for his descendants an everlasting kingdom. Even though the monarchy fails and Israel is taken into exile, the hope that God would make good on his promise to David and enthrone a king that was faithful to the Deuteronomy 17 model of kingship (instead of the type wished for by Israel in 1 Samuel 8) became integral to the belief that God would one day rescue his people. The prophets, in passages like Isaiah 11:1-5, Jeremiah 33:14-22, Ezekiel 34:23-24, proclaimed that this hope in a restored monarchy was bound up with God's larger promise to restore Israel. When God finally returned to rescue his people, one of the ways in which he would do so was through the reestablishment of the house of David. 

In the years between the return from exile under Persian rule (538 BCE) and the birth of Jesus (c. 6-4 BCE), the Jewish people found themselves subsumed under several empires and kingdoms that controlled the region. Alternating between Persian, Greek, and Roman occupation, the hope for the restoration of Israel became clearer, and the promise made to David was central to the Jewish hope of deliverance.  

The writers of the Gospel all affirm that Jesus was the promised messiah. He was the son of David, and he proclaimed the Kingdom of God, the return of God to rescue his people. But Jesus was not the messiah that many expected. In Luke 7:18-30, John the Baptists sends messengers to ask Jesus if he really is the messiah, and Jesus responds by quoting passages from Isaiah that shows how God's rescue of Israel was taking place in his ministry of preaching and healing. Many Jews at this time believed that the messiah would be a military leader, a general who would overthrow the Roman occupiers and establish a political kingdom of God centered in Jerusalem. Jesus claims that he is indeed the messiah, but it wouldn't look like what his Jewish contemporaries had expected. In Matthew 16, Peter affirms that Jesus is the messiah, but can't understand why Jesus then claims that he must suffer and die. This wasn't supposed to be what messiahs do. But all throughout the gospel passion narratives (the stories of Jesus' crucifixion), the writers of the gospels demonstrate that Jesus is both the true king of Israel and that his reign requires his death on a cross (ex. John 18:33-38). Jesus is killed by the Romans, but God vindicates him by raising him from the dead. Then, after he is raised from the dead, Jesus ascends into heaven to rule over all creation at the right hand of the father, making him the de facto king of the world (Acts 1:4-11). 

When Paul claims that his gospel is the announcement that Jesus is King, this is what he means by that term. Jesus isn't the 'king of our hearts', or a 'spiritual' king, he is the crucified, resurrected, and enthroned king of the entire creation, and all who hear the gospel are summoned to follow him. In Paul's letter to the Romans, which was written to the church in the imperial capital of the Roman empire, Paul begins and ends the entire letter with the powerful affirmation that Jesus is the true king (Romans 1:1-5, 16:25-27). 

But there is a catch. 

As we have already seen, the gospel writers affirm that Jesus is the Davidic king who brings about the Kingdom of God, although it happens not through a military campaign or a political revolution but instead through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. This, the writers of the gospels are saying, is what it means to be a true king. This is what a Deuteronomy 17 kind of king looks like. The other writers of the New Testament agree. Paul, in his famous 'Christ Hymn' found in Philippians 2:5-11, tells his audience (who live in the Roman colony of Philippi, by the way), that they are to 'have the same attitude that was in Christ Jesus', and then explains that Jesus existed 'in the form of God, but did not consider equality with God something to be held onto'. Jesus becomes a human being, and then suffers like a slave the death on the cross. The Christ, the messiah, the king of the world, twice sacrifices himself to bring about the restoration of God's people, through the incarnation and crucifixion. This is what true kingship looks like. But that is not the end of the story. Paul then states "For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father'. Jesus is the true king because he sacrificed himself. This is a challenge to all earthly conceptions of kingship and political power: true leaders sacrifice themselves for others. This is what it means for Jesus to be king. This is at the heart of Paul's gospel announcement that Jesus alone is the Christ.