Christians, the saying goes, are to be other Christs. By grace, Christians become more and more like Jesus. Yet Christians can be other Christs in a different (yet related!) respect as well. “Christ” is Greek for “anointed” (“Messiah” means the same in Hebrew), and Christians are anointed in rituals like Confirmation. Anointing has an Old Testament context, and the story of David shows us, in part, what it means to be God’s anointed.

As it happens, David was anointed three times in his life. First, the prophet Samuel anointed the adolescent David privately in the little town of Bethlehem, with only David’s brothers and father as witnesses (1 Sam 16:1–13). Second, after the death of King Saul, the men of Judah anointed David king over the house of Judah in place of Saul (2 Sam 2:1–7), and this anointing gave David legally recognized power over that tribe and region. Third, following a civil war among the tribes of Israel, all the elders of Israel anointed David as king over the whole nation, recognizing him as king of all God’s people (2 Sam 5:1–5).

In the eyes of the people, David’s second and third anointings “did more,” since those anointings gave David worldly power. Yet Scripture shows David’s first anointing as the most fundamental. Samuel’s anointing of David set the stage for the whole rest of David’s life, and for one reason: “Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David” (1 Sam 16:13, emphasis added).

God chose David and gave David the Spirit. Later on, David eventually gained power over all Israel because the Holy Spirit first gave him the power to accomplish the king’s mission. King Saul was not up to the task of king, but because of Samuel’s anointing, David had the strength of the Lord to defeat the enemies of Israel: first Goliath, then a host of Philistines.

In the Gospel, Jesus’s mission follows the kingly pattern set by David. Jesus’s public ministry begins with an anointing. At Jesus’s baptism, “the holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove” (Luke 3:22), an act always understood as an anointing, thus showing Jesus to be the Messiah (see Acts 10:38). Immediately after his spiritual anointing, Jesus defeats the champion of the enemy—this time, not a mere man of a worldly nation, like Goliath of the Philistines, but the devil himself, the fundamental enemy of mankind (see Luke 4:1–13). Jesus proceeds to preach the kingdom of God. Jesus gains loyalty and spreads his kingdom by defeating spiritual enemies of sin, death, and the devil, and by giving his followers grace, life, and holiness in their place.

That our spiritual salvation follows the blueprint of David’s temporal kingdom lets us understand Christ’s spiritual kingdom through the story of David’s kingdom. As David fought physical battles to expand an earthly kingdom, Christ fought spiritual battles that expanded a heavenly kingdom.

Christ’s kingdom and its growth did not end with Christ’s earthly mission, but it continues with the Church. We fight a spiritual battle for the growth of grace in this world, and we receive an anointing that enables us to do so. The grace of the sacrament of Confirmation specifically strengthens Catholics to offer public witness to the Faith for the growth of the Church.

When we understand the providential relationship between the anointings of Scripture, the story of David becomes more than an account of an ancient king—it becomes a spiritual guide for us today. As anointing by Samuel enabled David to defeat Goliath, an enemy whom he could never defeat by his own power, so the anointing of Confirmation strengthens Christians to overcome even devils. God’s spiritual anointing of David did not make David’s life a cakewalk, nor did it make him resist all sin, but it certainly shaped everything that followed in David’s life, including his repentance. Likewise, we who receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit by the anointing of Confirmation are forever influenced by that holy oil. If we embrace this anointing and its giver, we will be strengthened like David to expand the kingdom. We will be other Christs.

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Image: David Anointed (The Crusader Bible)