The Son of God came to the earth to save mankind

The baptism of Jesus should be considered an anointing. The Hebrew word Messiah and the Greek word Christ mean: anointed one. This explains why Jesus is also called the Messiah and the Christ.

The word anointing as used in the Hebrew Scriptures and in connection with Jesus has the meaning of ordination: making it clear, through a visible sign, that somebody is going to occupy a unique position. Thus, in the centuries preceding the coming of Christ and also when Jesus was on earth, kings and priests were anointed: through visible signs (sometimes, but not always in the form of a special anointing oil) they were appointed in their high functions. The anointing of Jesus was visible for everybody in the form of a pigeon, which descended on Jesus as a bringer of God’s holy spirit.

All this makes it understandable why in the Hebrew Scriptures also people like Moses, Aaron and David were called anointed ones. These anointed ones were prefigurations of the greatest anointed one of all time: Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

For centuries the Hebrew Scriptures prepared the people for a Messiah who, being anointed by God Himself, would far exceed people like Moses, Aaron and David. Many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures contain lots of details regarding the life and the acts of the greatest Messiah of all time. These were meant to make it possible for people of good will to identify the Messiah during the time when He would actually be here on earth.

The gospels make it clear that by the time when Jesus arrived on our earth a number of details with regard to the life and the acts of the greatest Messiah of all time were generally known. Thus everybody knew that the promised Messiah would far exceed Moses as a prophet. Everybody knew that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. And it was generally known that the expected Messiah would be a king in the genealogical line of David.

What was unknown to everybody was that the Messiah would suffer and die. Though in the eyes of us, people of the 21st century, the Hebrew Scriptures contain a lot of prophecies which foretold this suffering and dying in great detail, nobody who lived in the days of Jesus ever applied them to Jesus Christ. Even the people who recognized Jesus as the Messiah were totally unprepared for His rejection, His suffering, His death and His resurrection.

Only after Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection had taken place, did people see the connection between these events and the relevant prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures.

In this learning process a particularly important part was played by God’s spirit of truth (God’s holy spirit), which was given to Jesus’ followers after His ascension to heaven. In the years following Jesus’ ascension to heaven this holy spirit brought about a learning process which resulted in a situation that Jesus’ followers began to understand His acts and His words better and better.

The people who lived in Jesus’ days and accepted Him as the promised Messiah expected that He would liberate them from the hated occupation by the Romans. They expected that in their own lifetime the promised King would start ruling their own country and make the country prosperous. This explains why at a given moment Jesus’ followers wanted to crown Him king. When He refused to be crowned king by them, many people did not understand Him and left Him. From the Bible it appears that also John the Baptist and Jesus’ own disciples expected an earthly king. And until shortly before His ascension to heaven it appeared that Jesus’ disciples expected Him to establish God’s Kingdom very soon.

The followers of Jesus in His own time understood very well that at His baptism He was anointed their future king and high priest and that He would be a key-figure in the carrying out of all God’s plans for the earth and for mankind. But they never realized that prior to His starting to act as king and as high priest, Jesus would first have to suffer, to die, to be resurrected, to return to His Father in heaven and to wait there until the day when His Father would decide to put an end to human history.

Notwithstanding all this: in His own time Jesus’ followers understood Him well enough to realize that He was speaking the truth when He announced to them: I am the way and the truth and the life. There is no other way for people to approach the Father than though Me.

Jesus’ followers also understood that He had come to sanctify the name of His Father, which had been besmeared by the fallen angels, by Adam and Eve and by all people who disobeyed God’s commandments.

They also saw in Jesus the fulfillment of the words of Moses, who had told them centuries earlier that JHWH would send them a prophet who would exceed Moses in all respects. Both Moses and Jesus told the Jews that they were sent by God and that God had commanded them to bring about an exceptional work of liberation and salvation. Both performed highly amazing miracles. Both were mediators in establishing a covenant between God and people. Moses played this part for the law covenant. Jesus did the same for the new covenant.

The miracles which Moses and Jesus were able to perform by means of powers that God had given to them, were mainly intended to convince the people that they had been sent to them by God. The miracles of Jesus made it possible for the people who witnessed them to identify Him as the Messiah.

The law covenant which Moses established with God provided for a class of priests: the Levites. And within the law covenant there was always a high priest: the eldest son of the genealogical line of Aaron. In the Greek scriptures it becomes clear that both the Levitical priests and the high priests were prefigurations of the Eternal High Priest Jesus Christ who, together with His 144,000 lower priests, will act as mediators between God and people, once the Kingdom of God will have been established.

The law covenant, which was concluded between Moses and God, and provided for a high priest and a class of priests from the people of Israel, came to an end at Pentecost of the year 33 A.D. The new covenant, which came into force on the same day when the law covenant ended through the pouring out of the holy spirit, was meant for all mankind: every human of good will, irrespective of nationality, can profit from it.

The essence of this new covenant is The Kingdom of God. Within this Kingdom Jesus Christ functions both as King and as High Priest. But in God’s Kingdom Jesus will have lower-kings and lower-priests. The Bible says that their number will be 144,000. These assistants of Jesus Christ will get a resurrection to life in heaven in the days when Jesus Christ will establish the Kingdom of God. From heaven these 144,000 assistant-kings and assistant-priests will rule the earth together with God and Jesus Christ.

As one big governing body, which rules in heaven and from heaven, they will see to it that the subjects of God’s Kingdom, the millions of people who will get a resurrection to life on earth, will be able to live in a paradise which is just as beautiful and as perfect as the paradise in which Adam and Eve could live before they were expelled.

Originally Adam and Eve were perfect people who could live in a perfect paradise. Through their sin they lost their own perfection, they lost their paradise and they also lost both these things for their offspring.

For people of good will Jesus has provided the possibility of salvation from their desperate situation. Jesus has established a new covenant. This new covenant is based on the ransom price which Jesus has paid by presenting His sinless and perfect human body to His Father. People of good will can make use of the infinite value of Jesus’ ransom sacrifice and acquire forgiveness of their sins and admittance to eternal life in God’s Kingdom on the basis of what Jesus has sacrificed.

As a matter of fact sacrifices formed an important aspect of the law covenant that Moses established. Within this covenant people could sacrifice animals to God, for instance as a sin offering. But these sacrifices of animals could not effect forgiveness of sins, let alone give people eternal life.

For centuries these animal sacrifices pointed forward to the sacrifice of Jesus, which was indeed effective enough to bring about reconciliation between God and people. Jesus offered His Father the perfect human life of a man who had never sinned. In the eyes of JHWH the value of this sacrifice is so great that it can really undo the sins committed by people who repent of what they did wrong.

Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God, which can take away the sins of the world. The body and blood which Jesus offered to His Father as a sacrifice can undo all the sins of repentant people and give these people eternal perfect life in God’s Kingdom.