The Names Jesus and Christ

Now is the time to show that the very name of Jesus, and the name of Christ as well, were held in honor among the ancient prophets whom God loved. Moses himself was the first to make known the name of Christ as a name supremely august and glorious. He handed down patterns of heavenly things, symbols, and mysterious images, as the oracle told him: “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.” And when he proclaimed a man high priest of God, as far as a man could possibly be that, he called him Christ. So to this dignity of the high priesthood, which in his eyes surpassed every place of honor among men, he added the name of Christ, for honor and glory. [a]

So well did he know that Christ was something divine. The same Moses, foreseeing the name Jesus very clearly by the divine Spirit, also counted it worthy of a special privilege. The name of Jesus had never once been spoken among men before Moses came to know it, and Moses gave it first and only to the one who he knew would succeed him after his death—again as a type and symbol—in the rule over all. His successor had not used the name Jesus before; he was called by another name, Hoshea, which his parents had given him. Moses himself named him Jesus, bestowing the name on him as a prize of honor far greater than any royal crown, because this Jesus, the son of Nun, himself bore the image of our Savior—of the one who alone, after Moses and after the symbolic worship handed down by Moses had run its course, succeeded to the rule of true and most pure religion. [b] In this way Moses gave the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, as the highest honor, to the two men of his own time who surpassed all the people in virtue and glory: to the high priest, and to the one who would lead after him.

The prophets who came later also plainly foretold Christ by name, bearing witness in advance both to the plot the Jewish people would form against him and to the calling of the nations through him. Jeremiah, for example, speaks this way: “The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in their destruction; of whom we said, ‘Under his shadow we will live among the nations.’” And David, at a loss, says: “Why did the nations rage, and the peoples plot empty things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” To which he adds, speaking as Christ himself: “The Lord 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, and the ends of the earth as your possession.’” [d]

Among the Hebrews, then, the name of Christ adorned not only those honored with the high priesthood, who were anointed with specially prepared oil for the sake of the symbol. It adorned the kings as well, whom the prophets anointed at a sign from God and so made into christs in image, so to speak; for these too bore in their own persons patterns of the royal and sovereign authority of the only and true Christ, the divine Word who reigns over all. We have been told, too, that some of the prophets themselves became christs in type by anointing. So all of these point to the true Christ, the divine and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, the only King of all creation, and the Father’s only chief prophet of the prophets. The proof of this is that none of those anointed with the symbol in ancient times—priests, kings, or prophets—ever acquired such power of divine virtue as our Savior and Lord Jesus, the only and true Christ, has displayed. However much they shone in rank and honor among their own people for generation after generation, not one of them ever named his subjects “Christians” after the title of Christ that he bore in image. No subject ever paid any of them an honor of reverence. After their death no one felt such devotion to them as to be ready to die for the one he honored. Nor did such a stir arise among all the nations of the world over any man of that time, since the power of the symbol could not work in them as strongly as the presence of the truth, displayed through our Savior.

He received no symbols or patterns of high priesthood from anyone. He did not trace his bodily descent from priests. He was not raised to a throne by men with spears. He was not a prophet like those of old. He held no rank or precedence of any kind among the Jews. Yet the Father had adorned him with all these things—if not with the symbols, then with the truth itself. So though he received nothing like those we have spoken of, he is called Christ more than all of them. And because he alone is the true Christ of God, he has filled the whole world with Christians, who bear his truly august and holy name. To his followers he has handed on no longer patterns and images, but the virtues themselves, unveiled, and a heavenly life in the very teachings of the truth. And he received his anointing—not the anointing prepared from material things, but the one fitting for God—by the divine Spirit himself, through sharing in the unbegotten divinity of the Father. Isaiah too teaches this, crying out as if from Christ’s own mouth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” [e] And not Isaiah alone, but David too addresses him directly, saying: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; that is why God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” Here Scripture calls him God in the first line, and in the second honors him with a royal scepter. [f] Then, going on, after his divine and royal power, it presents him in the third place as having become Christ—anointed not with oil made from material substances but with the divine oil of gladness. By this it hints at his special honor, far greater than and different from that of the men who were anointed of old, in a more bodily way, as images.

Elsewhere the same writer makes things about him plain in this way: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet, and from the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.’ The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’” [g] This Melchizedek is introduced in the sacred writings as a priest of God Most High. He was not installed with any prepared anointing oil, and he did not even belong by descent to the priesthood of the Hebrews. That is why our Savior has been proclaimed Christ and priest, under an oath, according to his order, and not according to the order of the others, who received symbols and patterns. [h] So the history does not hand down that he was anointed bodily among the Jews, or that he came from the tribe of the priests, but that he was brought into being from God himself before the morning star—that is, before the world was founded—and that he holds a priesthood immortal and ageless into the endless age.

And there is great and clear proof of the bodiless and divine anointing he received. He alone, out of everyone who has ever lived, is called Christ to this day by all people throughout the whole world. Under this title he is confessed and witnessed to by all, and remembered among Greeks and barbarians. To this day he is honored as King by his followers all over the world, wondered at as more than a prophet, and glorified as the true and only high priest of God. Above all, as the pre-existent Word of God, brought into being before all the ages, who has received an honor of reverence from the Father, he is worshiped as God. Most extraordinary of all, we who are consecrated to him honor him not only with our voices and the sound of words, but with the whole disposition of our souls, so that we value bearing witness to him above our very lives. I have had to set these things here, before the history itself, so that no one would think our Savior and Lord Jesus, the Christ, is of recent origin because of the date of his life in the flesh.