Your Majesty

A couple years ago, as a deacon, it was my privilege once a month to welcome the congregation at the beginning of the Sunday morning service and then open with prayer. One Sunday morning I began the prayer with, ‘Your Majesty.’ I know that is a little odd, but I did receive several compliments about the prayer, although I am not fishing for platitudes when I pray. After all, prayer is conversing with our holy God.

Under religious viewpoint on my Facebook, I have ‘serving King Jesus.’ My personal view concerning the Kingdom of God is not that we are to be bringing in the Kingdom, because the Kingdom is already here. Although the Kingdom does not consist of any land here on earth, nor is the King present physically, He has many subjects who not only serve Him, but also worship their King. Being of the pre-millennial persuasion, I believe that King Jesus will return seven years after the Rapture and set up a kingdom on earth. But that doesn’t stop me from believing that the kingdom He was referring to in the parables in Matt. 13 is one which is here on earth now.

All of this is just the introduction to comments about Jesus the Messiah. Many people have the mistaken belief that Jesus had a first and last name, Jesus Christ. Actually the word Christos is the Greek word for the Hebrew Messiah. Messiah may be translated as ‘Anointed One’ and throughout the Old Testament God was developing the doctrine of the coming Savior/King. Because of the difficulty in understanding prophecy, many Jews mistakenly believed that the Messiah would come to set up an earthly kingdom. They did believe correctly that the Messiah was the Son of God. It was the whole rationale behind their desire for a death sentence – Jesus in so many words admitted that He was the Messiah (Matt. 26:64).

Since He has already paid the penalty for our sins, Jesus is now in Heaven, seated at the right hand of God the Father. He is the King of kings and when we refer to Jesus Christ, let us be conscious of what we are saying. Every time the word Christ is used, it should remind us that He is the Anointed One – the coming King, but also the present King. I love the Jewish Yeshua-ha-Mosshiach, Jesus the Messiah! I may have butchered the spelling, but let’s all love and serve our great and good King, our wonderful Jesus Christ!