Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Calling
- Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.
In my
blog three years ago, I comment on how much I like this chapter. I still do.
It is chapters like these that push us out of our restrictive
theological constructions that we as human beings like to make. We like to think of Jesus as the only
Messiah. Of course, Jesus is the only
Messiah who can wash away our sins and grant us access to eternal life. But as this chapter clearly says, Jesus is
not the only anointed one of God. Cyrus
is God’s Anointed. The word in Hebrew
that we often translate as anointed one is the word from which we get the
English word Messiah.
For the
record, David was called God’s anointed.
The phrase anointed one just means someone who is doing the will of
God. That’s why God calls Cyrus His
anointed one. Cyrus is anointed to come
and bring judgment upon Babylon. Cyrus
is anointed to come and open the doors for the people to return to Jerusalem. Cyrus is in no way the one anointed to give
us salvation, but he still is anointed by God to do His will! And what’s really significant is that Cyrus
is a Gentile king!
So what
does this mean for us? It is a huge
reminder for us who are in Christ to remember that we are anointed by God for a
purpose. We are not Christ. We are not anointed to grant salvation
through our sacrifice. But we are
anointed to bring this message of salvation to the people around us. We are anointed to teach people about God’s
grace through our love and peacefulness and kindness and gentleness. We are not The Anointed One, but are
called. We are anointed by God as Cyrus
was called.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment