English history, and famous kings appear bearing descriptive epithets in
addition to their original single names--Alfred the Great, Edward the
Confessor, William the Conqueror.

Christ is not a proper name but an official title. Although now often
used to designate the person of the Lord Jesus, it was not so when He
lived in the world. As John was the Baptist or Baptizer, Jesus was the
Christ--the Anointed. The title is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew
Messiah, and means the Anointed. It denotes that He who bore it was
separated, consecrated, and invested with high office. These
distinctions met in Jesus, rendering the title appropriate.

At the time of the birth of Jesus, the coming of a great deliverer was
at once the desire and the expectation not of Jews only, but of many
nations. Roman historians of that period tell us that a redeemer was to
make his appearance from among the nation of Israel. This belief was no
doubt spread abroad by Jewish exiles, who, scattered through many lands,
carried with them the hopes and prophecies which had been given from
time to time to their own people.

That the expected Messiah had come to the world bearing with Him from
heaven a message of salvation was the cardinal doctrine of Apostolic
preaching. To accept Jesus as the Christ was to accept Him as the
Saviour and Deliverer. When Andrew found his brother Simon he said to
him, "We have found the Messias."[041] "Is not this the Christ?"[042]
was the appeal of the woman of Samaria to the people of her city; and
the confession of Peter that Jesus was the Christ, was declared by our
Lord to be a revelation not of flesh and blood, but of His Father in
heaven.[043] Not Apollos only, but Paul and the other inspired teachers
also, set it before them as their appointed work, "to show by the