Holy and Anointed One
One of my favourite worship songs when I was growing up was a song called Holy and Anointed One, which was written by John Barnett in 1988. We sang it a lot growing up, but it's kind of fallen out of favour. This is how it starts:
Jesus, Jesus
Holy and Anointed One
Jesus
It's a stunning song.
Jesus: The Holy and Anointed One
I love these words that it starts with: “Jesus, Jesus, holy and Anointed One”. What a great description of Jesus - holy, in other words, set apart, sacred, stainless, pure, perfect - and the anointed one. Now maybe, like me, you can't have always thought that Jesus’ surname was Christ, because that's how everyone knows Him - Jesus Christ. But it wasn't His surname; it was His title.
Christ, literally from the Greek, means “the anointed one.” The translation that we use is the Messiah. It was His title proclaiming that He was the anointed one from God, and He truly was. He was set apart for a special work for God, and it had been prophesied so many years before that He would be this person.
The One We Follow
And so, as we start our week, I want to remind us to see Jesus as the holy and anointed one of God. Towards the end of John 6, a bunch of people started leaving Jesus because He was a bit too radical for them, and He turns to His disciples and says:
“Are you also going to leave?” And Peter pipes up and in John 6:68–69 says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
A Call to Worship
Do you know today that Jesus is not just a great spiritual leader or a great teacher, but that He was the Holy and anointed one from God? I hope that these words will ring in your ears today and that you will see Jesus as not just a good man who loved people, but as the Holy One, the anointed One from God.
Worship Him in your heart. Give Him all that you have today and sing those words throughout the day: holy and anointed one, Jesus. Jesus.
Peter's fumbling start in the Gospels was not the end of his story - his simple faith in Jesus as Messiah laid the foundation for an extraordinary, Spirit-filled life. Ask God today whether you have built your life on that same foundation.