I Am Not The Anointed One

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”

John 1:20

John the Baptist had been sent by God to be a witness, to testify of the Light, to carry a message of repentance and baptism, and to call people to turn back to God and to prepare the way for His Messiah.

But John had no Savior complex. He knew who he was, and who he was not. He was not the Christ, (anointed one).

And I thought of the people that have come in and out of my life over the years. The ones I thought I could change. Fix. Be the solution they needed. These people have included my husband, my kids, family members, friends. All the people. I wore their problems and their hurts like they were my own and in the end, they were still broken and I was exhausted.

Through a long process I am learning to do things differently. To untangle myself from things that are not mine to hold or carry. To have compassion without needing to have the answers. I still don’t do it well, which may be why God needed to give me the words I need to speak to my own soul.

I am not the anointed one. I am not the Savior.

We are His witnesses, and we carry the message of salvation through the gospel, but we are not the Christ.

We cannot save anyone. We aren’t anyone’s greatest need. We cannot fix what is broken. But if we don’t remind ourselves of who we are, and who we are not, before you know it we are neck deep in someone else’s brokenness, trying with all our might to save them, change them, or convince them.

We can invest ourselves in the lives of others, but doing it without taking on the weight of their lives requires that we know the difference between bringing them to Jesus, and trying to be Jesus for them.

I am not alone. Many of us are fixers by nature. Helpers to the core, because helping someone else, having, or being the solution to their problem, meets some kind of need in us.

We can help, but we can’t be their hope. We can walk with them, but they cannot need us more than they need Jesus. We can speak truth, but we can’t obey it for them. For their sake and ours, we have to freely make our confession:

I am not the anointed one.