LOTR has a Christ figure, but it is one refracted into aspects: the whole Fellowship. Gandalf dies and rises, Frodo undergoes a passion, Aragorn is the rightful King, Samwise is the suffering servant, Bormomir personifies Christ's doubt in Gethsemane, and the others each may be seen as a refracted aspect of His humanity even as their races are refracted aspects of common humanity. Tolkien did not design this in. He did not mean for the interpretation I just gave to be there. It came out simply because Tolkien was sufficiently Christian that when he set about myth-making, he ended up with Christian myth not pagan myth.
Oh yes he did "design it in". You need to go read Joseph Pearce's books on Tolkein. You've got that totally wrong. The great man believed that allegorical works like C.S. Lewis' Narnia books were the wrong way to reach the "unwashed". He had every intention of creating a Christian myth that could make its way into the minds and hearts of readers who were not Christian or were only nominally so.