The name “Jesus” (in Hebrew, Jeshuah), common enough in first-century Jewish culture, means “Yahweh saves.” And therefore the name at the heart of Christian faith compels us to acknowledge both that God is incomparably good (for he is in the business of saving) and that something has gone wrong with God’s good creation (for it needs saving). The book of Genesis tells us what this dysfunction is.
As God speaks the world into being, and the figure at the end of such a procession is always the one who will lead the praise. Hence, we understand the role of other creatures in relation to the human creature: the latter is to lead the former in a chorus of praise of the Creator.
In making themselves the criterion of good and evil, Adam and Eve turn to themselves rather than to God, and the result—in the evocative rendering of the author of Genesis—is an animosity among themselves, and between them and nature. This is the fallen condition, the depth-level dysfunction, from which it is, in principle, impossible to extricate themselves. Since the compromised will is the problem, more human willing will not be the solution; since the fallen mind is the problem, more human thinking will not ultimately solve anything.
Rather, some power has to come radically from without the fallen situation, but at the same time it has to enter fully into it. Though I am anticipating the fuller argument a bit, Jesus (Yahweh saves) is precisely that figure, Savior, derived from the Latin 𝑆𝑎𝑙𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟, the bearer of the 𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑠 or health, is related to the English word, “salve.”
𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐬, 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞.The second name that the Creed gives for this Jesus is “Christ.” From the Creek 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑠, the term renders the Hebrew 𝑀𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑎𝑐ℎ, which means “the anointed one.” Though priests and kings were anointed in the ancient Hebrew tradition, the term is used most often and with greatest resonance of David, the greatest of Israel’s kings.
David sees the re-establishment of right praise as essential to the success of his kingdom; all the tribes of the Lord united around the worship of the one God. And David is assuredly king, indeed the greatest of Israel’s leaders. His triumph was to have held off the enemies of the nation and to have expanded its borders so as to establish a kind of empire. This was, int he estimation of the ancient teachers of Israel, the mission given originally to Adam.
However, what becomes eminently clear in the biblical account of Kind David is that, though he was to be sure a morally and spiritually imposing figure, he did not utterly fulfill his destiny.
There is probably not greater anticipation of the coming of the definitive David than the words spoken by the prophet Nathan to David himself (2 Sam. 7:12-17). The Lord has promised, the prophet tells the king, that the Lord will put a descendent of yours on the throne forever and that his reign will last for all time.
In the opening chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we find the account of the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, she will give birth to a son and that “he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1: 32-233). This is nothing other than the announcement of the fulfillment of Nathan’s prophecy that a definitive son of David would come, a 𝑀𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑝𝑎𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, the warrior and the priest, the Christ.
-Excerpts from Bishop Robert Barron, 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝐵𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 -𝑈𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑁𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒 𝐶𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑.
