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Jesus
"Jesus" is the English form of "Iesous" (yay-zoose),
which is what Jesus is called in the Greek of the New Testament. This
in turn is a version of the common Hebrew name "Ieshua".
The Old Testament figure who is called "Joshua" in English
has the same name as Jesus.
The name means, "the Lord saves". According to the birth
stories of Jesus in both Matthew and Luke, his parents were told to
give him this name by an angel – because "he will save his
people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).
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Christ
"Christ" is a Greek version of the Hebrew word, "Messiah".
It literally means, "the anointed", and was a title that
the early church applied to Jesus. The first Christians first called
Jesus "Christos" when they started to talk about their
faith in Greek, which was the international language at that time.
But what did they actually mean by "Messiah" or "Christ"?
In the centuries before Jesus' time, the Jewish people developed
a passionate belief in a coming time when things were going to get
a lot better for them. First on the agenda, God would deliver them
from foreign rule. There would also be a great spiritual revival.
Part of this hope was belief in a coming Messiah, a man who would
be God's agent in making it happen. He would be anointed in the
figurative sense of being chosen by God for the task and the role,
as priests and kings were sometimes literally anointed with oil
in the Jewish tradition.
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Gospel
"Gospel" is an old English word meaning "good news".
It is a translation of "euangelion", a Greek word used
in the New Testament, which also, not surprisingly, means "good
news".
The word "gospel" is used in various ways:
The message of Jesus – "One day as he was teaching the
people in the temple courts and preaching the gospel, the chief
priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came
up to him" (Luke 20:1). We don't know if "gospel"
was a name that Jesus came up with himself, but he certainly seems
to have considered his message to be good news.
The message that Jesus's followers preached about him – "From
Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed
the gospel of Christ" (Romans 15:19). There is a lot of overlap
here, of course, in that much of what these followers preached was
repeating Jesus's own message.
A book about the life of Jesus – "The beginning of the
gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mark 1:1). There
are four Gospels in the New Testament, but also many more written
later that are not in the Bible.
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Son of God
For many Christians today, "Son of God" means "the
second person of the Trinity". The idea is that God is known
in three persons – God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit – but that there is still only one God. Jesus was
God the Son come to earth, fully God and perfectly human.
But is this what the writers of the New Testament meant when they
called Jesus the Son of God? Is it what Jesus meant when, and if,
he called himself the Son of God?
It is pretty certain that Jesus did talk about God as his father,
and about himself as the son, though maybe not as often as some
of the Gospels suggest. However, it probably wouldn't have come
over as quite such an astonishing claim as it may seem today. Here's
why:
1. Kings and angels are both called sons of God in the Old Testament,
so it wouldn't necessarily mean you're claiming to be divine.
2. "Son of" didn't necessarily mean "son of"
in the Jewish way of talking. "Son of sin" simply meant
a sinner. "Son of the Devil" simply meant someone who
followed in the ways of evil. Maybe, therefore, "son of God"
could mean someone who is extraordinarily full of the power, love
and holiness of God.
On the other hand, when you examine the ways Jesus talks about "my
father" and "the son" throughout the Gospels, it
is clear that he is claiming a unique relationship with God.
In other words, Jesus seems to have made some extraordinary and
controversial statements about his relationship with "my father".
But however Jesus himself may have understood that relationship,
he would not have been understood by other people to be claiming
to be God himself.
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Christian
Being a Christian means being devoted to Jesus and trying to follow
his teaching. Most Christians would add other qualifications, too,
but it's hard to get them to agree what they are.
Believing the creeds of the church, maybe – though that would
exclude more liberal Christians and some of the more radical churches.
Belonging to a church, maybe – though not all Christians accept
all churches as true Christian churches, and many people who don't
go to church would call themselves Christians.
Being baptised, maybe – though some churches don't practice
baptism and some people who are baptised don't practice Christianity.
Believing the Bible, maybe – though Christians tend to disagree
profoundly about what the Bible says.
Living a morally upstanding life, maybe – though of course
many non-Christians do this too; and just how bad do you have to
be to stop being a Christian?
As I say, it's a tricky one.
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Crucifixion
Crucifixion is killing someone by nailing or tying them to a cross
and leaving them to die. It was not invented by the Romans, but
practised in India, Assyria and Persia before being taken up by
Greece and then Rome.
It was an extremely cruel death, often embellished with other punishments,
and a shocking spectacle, useful in setting an example to would-be
troublemakers. Because of its disgrace it was generally restricted
to the lower orders and military or political victims.
It was particularly disgraceful in Jewish culture because of the
verse in the law of the Bible that said, "Anyone who is hung
on a tree is under the curse of God" (Deuteronomy 21:23).
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Resurrection
"Resurrection" means being miraculously raised to life
from the dead.
In the case of Jesus, though, all four of the biblical Gospels present
Jesus, in different subtle ways, not merely having come back to
life, but having become something strangely different. Most intriguingly,
each of the Gospels has a story – different stories in every
case – of Jesus's followers meeting him afterwards and not
recognising him, until he did or said something familiar that made
the penny drop.
In some sense, then, resurrection meant being the same Jesus, and
yet not the same.
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Salvation
It means being saved, if that's any help. The Jewish people of Jesus's
time talked a lot about the hope of salvation, but this was largely
focused on being saved from their Roman enemies.
Jesus also talked about saving people, but not in such political
ways. For a start, he often spoke of saving people from disease,
disability and evil spirits – i.e. healing them. He also used
it in a more spiritual sense, which seems to mean entering the kingdom
of God and being rescued from the guilt and punishment of sin.
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Parables
Parables are stories told to convey a spiritual point, or to make
you think about a spiritual issue.
Parables were a central feature of Jesus's teaching. There is so
little evidence of any other Jewish rabbi using parables before
Jesus' time that he may have invented the parable himself. For this
reason, the parables are considered by many scholars to be some
of the most historically reliable material in the Gospels. They
are not something his followers would naturally have put into his
mouth.
For other interesting stuff on parables, see Why
did Jesus tell stories?
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Kingdom of God
It is an idea that is absolutely central to Jesus's teaching and
his life. He announced the coming of the kingdom and called upon
his followers to work and pray towards that end.
So what does it mean?
"The kingdom of God" is not a phrase Jesus invented. Jewish
revolutionaries at the time wanted to throw off imperial Roman rule
and get rid of the monarchy, so that there would be no king but
God. Many of Jesus's followers seem to have assumed that he had
the same manifesto.
But Jesus clearly had no interest in taking on the Roman army. He
called for the people of Israel to become "one nation under
God" even under its oppression by Rome, and for his followers
to make a start by being a holy community.
For Jesus, the kingdom of God seems to have been more about God
ruling in our lives than about who rules the country, and this is
one reason why his teaching proved such an international hit –
it applies equally to everyone everywhere. In practice, it was a
mix of personal spiritual life – such as praying, forgiving,
giving, holiness – and social change – such as a new attitude
to the excluded, to women, to foreigners and to the poor.
"Now and not yet" is a phrase often used to describe Jesus's
attitude to the kingdom. In one sense he was proclaiming its arrival:
the kingdom was coming now through his own life and work, and that
of his followers. But there is also a strong sense that he saw the
kingdom not only as something that we would always be working towards,
but something that would only be fully realised in the world to
come.
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Liberal, conservative, traditional
When it comes to studying, writing about, or just having opinions
about Jesus, we tend to divide people into liberals and traditionalists/conservatives
– though of course this covers a whole range of opinions.
The traditionalist tendency sees Jesus as he has been presented
by Christian teaching, and sees the Gospels as accurate, reliable
accounts of his life. So Jesus is the Son of God, divine, born of
a virgin; he performed miracles and rose from the dead.
The liberal tendency sees Jesus as a religious teacher about whom
many fantastic stories developed. It attempts to cut through the
legendary aspects of the Gospels, and their "unreliable"
accounts of his words, to uncover the real Jesus.
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DEFINITIONS