Main news for 1 December 2025

Translated from Greek, the word "gospel" means "good news." And the meaning of this good news lay precisely in the fact that the Messiah whom the people of God had awaited for centuries had finally come into the world. This is what the angels announce to the shepherds. They call the newborn Messiah Lord and Savior.

The corresponding Greek word, however, is often interpreted as "Lord," meaning Yahweh, whose name in Greek texts was usually replaced by a word translated as "master" or "lord"; in Greek there is no difference between "master" and "lord." That is why it is sometimes not simple to determine what is being spoken of in a concrete Greek text. With Hebrew texts it is simpler: there the name Yahweh appears in its proper place without changes, whereas "pious" translations usually replace it with that same "master" or "lord." But if the text was written in Greek from the beginning, it is rather difficult to understand whether the sacred name or simply a title is meant.

In this case, however, what stands before us is quite plausibly precisely a title, because the Messiah was always regarded first of all as King. Of course, popular messianism supposed that the Kingdom would be entirely earthly, and that the Messiah too would become an entirely earthly King. But popular notions did not cancel the fact that the Messiah truly is King, though not of the kind of Kingdom most people expected in those days.

Jesus never renounced His Kingdom, while He never made any claims to earthly kingdoms. And the title Savior was also traditionally messianic in the Gospel era. True, here too popular messianism supposed something quite earthly: the King-Messiah would create a strong Jewish state, founded on laws corresponding to the Torah, in which not only every Jew, but in general everyone who worshiped the God of Israel and sought a devout life, would find refuge.

If people spoke of salvation as complete liberation from the power of sin and death, they did so only secondarily and in a more distant, eschatological perspective. But Jesus truly became Savior for everyone seeking the Kingdom, for there a person finds not only the fullness of life, but also deliverance from the power of evil and sin in which the fallen world lies. Deliverance forever: for the Kingdom, entering the world, sooner or later will transform it completely, making it part of itself and freeing it from the consequences of the fall. Finally, for all eternity.