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| Christ as Anointed (Christ) and as King.
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30. Christ as Anointed (Christ) and as King.
In addition to these titles we must consider at the
outset of our work that of Christ, and we must also consider that of
King, and compare these two so as to find out the difference between
them. Now it is said in the forty-fourth Psalm,4599
“Thou hast loved righteousness and
hated iniquity, whence Thou art anointed (Christ) above Thy
fellows.” His loving righteousness and hating iniquity were
thus added claims in Him; His anointing was not contemporary with His
being nor inherited by Him from the first. Anointing is a symbol
of entering on the kingship, and sometimes also on the priesthood; and
must we therefore conclude that the kingship of the Son of God is not
inherited nor congenital to Him? But how is it conceivable that
the First-born of all creation was not a king and became a king
afterwards because He loved righteousness, when, moreover, He Himself
was righteousness? We cannot fail to see that it is as a man that
He is Christ, in respect of His soul, which was human and liable to be
troubled and sore vexed, but that He is conceived as king in respect of
the divine in Him. I find support for this in the seventy-first
Psalm,4600
which says,
“Give the king Thy judgment, O God, and Thy righteousness to the
king’s Son, to judge Thy people in righteousness and Thy poor in
judgment.” This Psalm, though addressed to Solomon, is
evidently a prophecy of Christ, and it is worth while to ask to what
king the prophecy desires judgment to be given by God, and to what
king’s Son, and what king’s righteousness is spoken
of. I conceive, then, that what is called the King is the leading
nature of the First-born of all creation, to which judgment is given on
account of its eminence; and that the man whom He assumed, formed and
moulded by that nature, according to righteousness, is the King’s
Son. I am the more led to think that this is so, because the two
beings are here brought together in one sentence, and are spoken of as
if they were not two but one. For the Saviour made both
one,4601
that is, He made them according to the
prototype of the two which had been made one in Himself before all
things. The two I refer to human nature, since each man’s
soul is mixed with the Holy Spirit,
and each of those who are saved is thus made spiritual. Now as
there are some to whom Christ is a shepherd, as we said before, because
of their meek and composed nature, though they are less guided by
reason; so there are those to whom He is a king, those, namely, who are
led in their approach to religion rather by the reasonable part of
their nature. And among those who are under a king there are
differences; some experience his rule in a more mystic and hidden and
more divine way, others in a less perfect fashion. I should say
that those who, led by reason, apart from all agencies of sense, have
beheld incorporeal things, the things which Paul speaks of as
“invisible,” or “not seen,” that they are ruled
by the leading nature of the Only-begotten, but that those who have
only advanced as far as the reason which is conversant with sensible
things, and on account of these glorify their Maker, that these also
are governed by the Word, by Christ. No offence need be taken at
our distinguishing these notions in the Saviour; we draw the same
distinctions in His substance.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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