THE CHRIST. What does this term mean? Many Christians may say, "That's easy—the Christ is the man Jesus, who walked the earth some 2,000 years ago." Search the word Christ in many Bible dictionaries, commentaries, and encyclopedias, and you're most likely to be directed to references for Jesus or for the Messiah, the "anointed one." However, the term Christ is much more than the master Christian's full name or title. The Christ is way too big a concept to be limited to just one person.
And because the Christ is such an all-encompassing concept, every metaphor to illustrate this concept will have its shortcomings. However, let's consider the sun and its rays. The rays are not the sun but are inseparable from it. All individual rays are made up of the essence of the sun. The essence of all those rays is something itself. We call it light. Now let's think of the sun as representing God, the individual rays representing each of us emanating from our source, God, and the light as the Christ. While not being God Himself, the Christ is the emanation, the expression, or the essence of God, and that Christ is what comprises every spiritual being (you and me and everyone else).
Jesus often spoke in metaphors. He said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). He also said of the rest of us, "Ye are the light of the world" (Matt. 5:14). Obviously, he was talking about the light of his teachings reaching out into the world to bring humanity to "enlightened" understanding of their goodness and spiritual relationship to the Divine. And as each of us grasps this understanding, our uplifted thought and consequent actions bring that Christly light to the rest of the world, too. Jesus, in his unparalleled example, expressed this light in every aspect of his life.
