“An Unction from the Holy One”
I John ii. 20. “/E have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” It is only in the power of that anointing that our service is true, effective, or well pleasing to God. But what is this anointing? “The word, which expresses not the act of anointing, but that with which it is performed, marks the connection of Christians with their Head. As He was ’ anointed ’ for His office, so, too, are they” ( Westcott).
Christ was anointed of the Spirit from His birth. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost. Therefore He was the Son of God as well as the Son of man. As to His humanity, He was absolutely pure and sinless. But it was not in the power of His sinlessness that He accomplished “UNCTION FROM THE HOL V ONE.” the work His Father had given Him to do. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and heahng all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.”
That anointing He received when He entered on His public ministry. He was the true meat offering. The meat offering consisted of four things: fine flour, oil, frankincense, and salt. The fine flour pointed to the essential purity of His nature. It was not sinful flesh — not our fallen humanity that He took upon Himself — though it was a true humanity. All that was pure and lovely in human nature was in Jesus, but He was separate from all sin, absolutely pure from the beginning. It was not that the flour, originally impure, became purified by a subsequent process. He was spotless from the first. It was not the discipline or trial through which He passed that refined or purified His nature. The suffering and the trial
Actb X. 38.
Lev. ii. II.
Lukeiv. 16.
He endured found Him pure, and manifested the excellency of His nature. There was no unevenness in the fine flour of His perfect humanity. “No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven.” So the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the true meat offering, was separate from sin. He did no sin. He knew no sin.
The holy oil was mingled with the fine flour. There we see the Incarnation of the Son of God. But not only was the oil mingled with the flour — it was afterterwards poicred upon it. There we have the special anointing of the Holy Ghost which the Lord Jesus received at His baptism, just at the commencement of His public ministry.
After this anointing for service came the temptation in the wilderness. And immediately after this the Lord Jesus came to Nazareth, “And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.”
What was the passage He read? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, t6 preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” And when He had closed the book He said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
It was then that He presented Himself as the true meat-offering. It was then that the oil was poured out upon Him. The Holy Ghost descended on Him visibly.
Does not this teach us that in addition to being born of the Spirit we need the anointing of the Spirit?
What is the source of this anointing? It is “from the Holy One.” The Lord Jesus is the “Righteous One,” and He is the “Holy One.” Our first need has reference to our guilt and sin. So our first view of Christ is as the” Rinlueous
One.” Christ made of God unto us righteousness — in His work of propitiation. Righteousness brings in the idea of a just claim, and the answer to that claim. We ee God in connection with His broken law — a law that is holy and just — but a law whose demands we are utterly unable to meet, and under whose condemning power we have been brought through
Rom. X. 4, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” He is the “Righteous One” because He meets for us all those claims, and delivers us from the condemnation.
Righteousness is the prominent thought johnii.i. when sin is between us and God. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”
But it is not to a life of perpetual falling that we have been called. We may know what fellowship with the *’ Holy One “means, as well as acceptance in the “Righteous One.”
‘’UNCTION FROM THE HOLY ONE” 155
Jesus, the Holy One, is the glorified Head of the mystical body, the Church.
The holy oil has been poured upon the head of our mystical Aaron, and by virtue of our union and fellewship with Him we are under the same Divine anointing. But only those who are walking in fellowship with Christ know what this means as a continuous blessing. For we must observe the words do not put before us one completed act, something experienced on some one occasion, or at a particular time in the past; but rather the words point to that which is a present and continuous privilege. It is not, “Ye were anointed,” but “Ye have an anointing.”
It is quite possible, through carelessness and lack of abiding, to lose the blessing, and to find ourselves no longer walking under the power of this anointing from the Holy One. Our service then at once becomes formal and unfruitful. There may still be earnestness, and zeal, and activity, but it will not be by virtue
Ex. XXX.
32. 33-
of the anointing; it will not be the energy of the Spirit, but of the flesh. It is just here that a peculiar danger occurs. Finding an absence of spiritual power, the soul is tempted to make efforts to produce an effect, or make power. But God had expressly forbidden any imitation of the holy oil to be made. ‘* Neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you. Whosoever compoundeth any like it, shall be cut off from his people.”
False spirituality may show itself in the matter of guidance as well as of service There is a danger, even amongst the children of God, of assuming to be guided by the Spirit, when all the while they are only indulging their own self-will or self-conceit. Our safety lies only in abiding; a humble dependence upon Christ, keeping close to Him, ever conscious of our proneness to go astray, but restfully confident that He will keep us from falling.
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