The Oil Of Anointing

Author: Michael Gott

What is more essential for evangelists than God’s anointing?

But quickly, I make a bold disclaimer.  I am not speaking of some fantasy pretending or some weird private revelation experience.  Rather, I speak of an overwhelming presence of God’s Spirit coupled with a burning passion to magnify Jesus Christ.  I am speaking of heaven sent divine enduing and empowering.  God both appointed and anointed people by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, when He gave us new life in Christ, came in His living and abiding presence.  Paul is clear, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Romans 8:9).

Again and repeated for emphasis, the New Testament does not teach some “two-stage” process related to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives—that is, the idea He came at conversion, but we then need a second work of grace to be anointed.  No; rather, what is taught is that we are to continue what He, the Spirit, initiated in our lives.  In the process of spiritual maturity the degree of this anointing depends on our allowing the Lord to claim us fully, and our intimacy with the Anointed One, Christ.

Billy Graham agrees, “Some Christians have used terms like ‘the second baptism’ or ‘the second blessing’ or ‘a second work of grace.’  None of these terms are used in the Bible . . . the name we give the experience is less important than that we actually be filled with the Spirit.”

So then, I am not speaking of some second work of grace, but a glorious continuation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit first received at the moment of our conversion.  The English Baptist evangelist Lionel Fletcher said, “The Christian birthright is the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Dr. John Murray explains it in biblical balance; “If Pentecost is not repeated, neither is it retracted . . . that is the era of the Holy Spirit.”  Tozer adds, “I do not believe in a repetition of Pentecost, but I do believe in a perpetuation of Pentecost . . .”

Such a breakthrough occurred in D. L. Moody’s life; an overpowering sense of the presence of God flooded his soul.  The place seemed ablaze with God.  He said, “I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”  This was not an example of God’s doing something totally new in his life, rather, completing what He had already started long before.

All too often today—lacking is divine anointing.  Why?  Always and forever the authentic work of the Holy Spirit cannot be educationally bought or humanly caught.  God cannot be impressed; there is never flesh glorying in His presence.  Anointing is not for sale!

We all need to hear this—especially since a few years ago we had an edition of Madison Avenue evangelists who with used car salesman, high-pressure methods, extroverted personality, and public relations skills approached evangelism with something of the spirit of Simon Magnus!  (reference Acts 8)  It was evangelism in the flesh, pure and simple and ugly!

There’s a principle buried in the Old Testament.  In Exodus God gave amazing instructions about the oil of anointing which foreshadows New Testament anointing.  “This is to be my sacred anointing oil for the generations to come.  Do not pour it on men’s bodies . . . it is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred.  Whoever makes perfume like it and whoever puts it on anyone other than a priest must be cut off” (Exodus 30:31-33, NIV).  This is, of course, a divine blueprint.

Notice, the anointing oil was not to be put on man’s flesh or upon a person without a divine call on their life.  It was also forbidden to make perfume that smelled like it.  That is, it was not to be counterfeited.  What does it tell us?  The oil of anointing, the unction of the Holy Spirit, is reserved for the called and consecrated.  No one is to imitate it; there must be only the authentic.  The appointing and the anointing are exclusively God’s business.  We must forever appreciate that—those “in the flesh” cannot ever please God or bring real glory to God.  It is strictly forbidden; pretenders and strangers are forbidden to be anointed!  Unsanctified flesh God will not appoint or anoint in His service.  The New Testament simply adds “that no flesh should glory in his presence” (I Corinthians 1:29).

Throughout the Old Testament priests, kings, and prophets with oil were anointed.  This act set them apart and indicated a special purpose for a person’s life.  In the New Testament sense, it foreshadows and symbolizes the coming of the Holy Spirit on a person for two reasons:  to set them apart for a work and to fully enable them to do what they were set apart to do.

The very word Christ means “the anointed one.”  All people called by Him, then, are followers of the Anointed One.  John said in his letter, “we have this anointing” (I John 2:20).  So we are to be the anointed followers of the Anointed One.

In the life of Elijah there was a story of a couple who when they saw him passing by, sensed that he was a man set apart and anointed by God.  It should be so in all our lives!

D. L. Moody walked into a barbershop for a haircut and beard trim.  He was quiet and courteous as the barber did his task.  But an unexplainable spirit was sensed by everyone without any awareness of who Moody was.  When he paid and spoke kindly to all in the shop and walked out, someone said, “And who in the world was that?”  The barber said, “D. L. Moody, the evangelist preaching here this week.”  “Well,” said the anonymous customer, “I knew it was somebody!”  How?  The touch of God on him!

Vance Havner has a great word for us about this matter of anointing; “A preacher may be wrapped in robes of learning; his study walls may be decked with diplomas, his home may be filled with travel souvenirs from many lands, and he may wear all the trappings of ecclesiastical prestige and pageantry, but he cannot function without unction.”

To be intellectually prepared to preach is not one and the same as being spiritually anointed to preach!  We must long to be anointed by the Holy Spirit.  All this must be thought of as a very sacred matter never to be trivialized!  We must desire an anointing as absolutely indispensable for effective ministry.

This is beautifully pictured for us in Psalm 133, “the precious oil poured on the head and running down” (Psalm 133:2).  It’s an unforgettable picture of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in consecration flowing from up to down.
 
The Holy Spirit fills, anoints, and empowers.  The New Testament stresses that when we are filled, anointed, or empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Possibly, no one speaks with greater insight than Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  He said, “This ‘accession of power’ or if you prefer it, this ‘effusion of power’ upon Christian preachers is not something ‘once for all;’ it can be repeated, and repeated, and repeated many, many times.”

Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, has often reminded him to preach with an “overflow.”  He said, “I know what she means . . . this may be a quiet, unemotional reality—in fact, at times we may not even be conscious of it.  But when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we renounce our dependence on ourselves and our own strength, and yield ourselves to His control.  As we commit our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ each day, the Spirit of God fills us and empowers us for the work God has for us.”

The Holy Spirit is not a holy emotion, but a holy Person.  He imparts His divine adequacy, and we sense a special enablement and a dynamic enabling; we can call it anointing.

The touch of the Holy Spirit enables the evangelist to be fully used by God.  This cannot be thought of as an option, and it is not an extra.  Evangelists who came before us; Wesley, Finney, Moody, Sunday, Graham, and others; spoke of this anointing as an indispensable requirement to effective ministry in evangelism.  Related to this Billy Graham said that this anointing, this fulness, “is not an option, but a necessity.  It is indispensable.”  He added, this is “not abnormal . . . anything less is subnormal; it is less than what God wants and provides for His children . . . it is intended for all, needed by all, and available to all.”
 
We are to passionately desire this anointing, and we certainly are to minister in the benefits of the Spirit’s anointing.  Without this we are living beneath our great privilege; we are spiritually deprived and failing to appropriate all God has made available to us.  That is tragic especially as it relates to preaching the good news.

Evangelists have been chosen by God and gifted by the Holy Spirit.  All are, in a special sense, set apart, and there should be on our character the gold stamp of God—the discernable anointing.  In our lives there must be continual and repeated refreshing and renewal of this anointing.  The fresh new touch of the Spirit of God evident in our lives.  E. M. Bounds once wrote that without this continual fresh touch of God on our lives “there are no true spiritual results accomplished.”  Rejoice, God has wonderfully provided a divine enabling for each of us.  This anointing is readily available.

There is, it seems, a rather simple and practical explanation of anointing in the New Testament.  On one occasion Jesus took clay and “anointed the eyes” of a blind man.  Here, the meaning is that He touched the blind eyes.  Anointing them is the living, liberating touch of God on a person’s life.

Let it be evident to all that Jesus has anointed us.  Let it be seen in a godly character and the using of God’s gifts bestowed upon our lives for His exclusive glory.