1 John 2:20

THE ANOINTING

‘Ye have an unction from the Holy One.’ ‘But the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him.’

1 John 2:20; 1 John 2:27

The anointing is a sacred symbol. It speaks at once to us of a Divine operation. We know from other parts of Scripture that the unction from the Holy One is an appointed emblem of the Holy Spirit and His work.

I. The anointing is necessary:—

(a) To enlighten us. This oil gives light. What wondrous light it gave to St. Peter on the day of Pentecost.

(b) To emancipate us. Men want not only to know what to do, they want power to do it. They want not only a teacher, but a liberator.

(c) To establish us. It is, in fact, specially in this connection that the Apostle refers to it. False teachers and false doctrines had crept into the Church in his day, even as they have in our own, with the result that the most earnest Christians were most in danger of being led astray by them. But the Apostle had an unfailing resource. He appeals at once to the anointing as enough to safeguard his converts.

(d) To endear Christians to each other. It used to be said in the early days, ‘See how these Christians love one another.’ I fear it can hardly be said now. Alas, for ‘our unhappy divisions.’

(e) To encourage us. How much encouragement we want in this world of sadness and gloom, when sorrow and care seem ready to overwhelm us; ‘when we are in heaviness through manifold temptations’;

When gathering clouds around we view,

And days are dark and friends are few;

when we say, with Jacob, ‘All these things are against me.’ At such times let us remember that comfort is provided for us. The sweet name of the Holy Ghost is ‘Comforter.’

II. Upon what conditions will the anointing be ours?

(a) We must be united to the Anointed One. It is from the head of our great High Priest that the holy oil flows down, even to the very skirts of His garments. It is only through union with Christ that we can receive the unction which descends from Christ. If we have not experienced uniting grace, it is in vain that we look for anointing grace. We must be alive before we can be strong. The first and indispensable condition, before we are baptized of the Spirit, is that we be begotten of the Spirit ‘unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1 Peter 1:3).

(b) We must be surrendered and cleansed. Selfishness, slothfulness, waywardness, unbelief—these are the hindrances which clog the channel between our souls and Christ. Are you sincerely willing that Christ should banish them? When you are really willing, He can burn up these ‘thorns and briers in one day’ (Isaiah 10:17).

Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustration

‘Men do not readily acknowledge that all sinning is slavery. The subtler forms of evil so disguise themselves that men shut their eyes and refuse to acknowledge that they are chains at all. What shall we say of the bondage of heart sin; of the yoke of pride, hard, unbending, galling; of the yoke of ill-temper, which turns a happy home into a prison-house; of the yoke of some secret, besetting sin, eating like a canker into the soul? “The trouble is,” a Christian man once said to a friend who was speaking to him of these things, “I love some sins.” Ah, yes, that is the trouble. Nor can it ever be overcome until at length we learn that Christ can save us from the love as well as from the practice of the sins we deplore.’