Have You Been Anointed Yet?

By Neil Earle

Queen Elizabeth II (played by Claire Foy) is anointed. Image Credit: The Crown (episode: “Smoke and Mirrors”, Netflix) 2016. Screenshot.

There are few more religious or churchly words than “anointed.”

We hear preachers say, this man has powerful anointing. Or in my church it is a question to those really ill, have you been anointed for healing? The latter refers to our ministers daubing a little drop of oil on people’s foreheads when they ask for healing – borrowed from instructions in the early church to both pray and anoint with oil those who are sick.

The Episcopal, Catholic and other churches call it “unction” and use it on special occasions of healing and setting apart for special service. Kings and queens are usually anointed with oil, borrowing a tradition strongly recorded in the Old Testament where kings, priests and prophets were usually anointed before setting out on their task.

In that sense I find it an encouraging and upbeat practice especially since oil was chosen for divine setting apart and such a vital part of life in ancient times, oil being used for everything from cooking to a major item of Israel’s export trade to a mild laxative. Gospel readers are familiar with the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem and the Garden of Gethsemane (oil-press). Its medicinal uses were and are well-known and its presence was used as a symbol for gladness while three texts tout it as a term connoting nourishment or prosperity:

• Deuteronomy 33:24: “…let him be favored by his brothers and let him bathe his feet in oil…”
• Job 29:6: “Oh for the days when my paths was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil”
• Psalm 45:7: “God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy”

A Quantum Leap

This whole subject takes on a radically more upward and heavenly dimension when we realize that Jesus’ usual surname as “the Christ” is actually a title built around the Greek word “Christos” from “chrio” or “anointing” from which we get the word “chrism” today. In 1 John 2:20-27 the writer John makes a pertinent point for Christians resisting a dangerous heresy in his day by reminding them they have already received “the anointing,” in this case the Greek derivative is almost identical with our English “charisma.”

Who doesn’t want more charisma?

“But you have received an anointing from the holy One and all of you know the truth,” John tells his disciples, concluding with a reference to the anointing that is real and not counterfeit.

There is a linkage here to one of the Bible’s grand and glorious subjects: the Holy Spirit.

What the Spirit Gives You

For believers the Holy Spirit fulfills and completes Jesus’ ministry as Jesus himself prophesied. Here are some if the main expressions of the Spirit in our lives:

• The Spirit indwells believers, granting them an inward freedom and comfort and faith from God bubbling up from deep inside, a Presence to help weather the toughest storms in life.
• The Spirit renews and refreshes believers by bathing them – chrism like – in the upbuilding and uplifting manifestations of love, joy, peace, patience and self-control and provides inner power to meet whatever the future holds (2 Timothy 1:7-8).
• The Spirit solves the quandary of human existence and futility and the nagging worry of what happens after death by uniting believers here now already into a spiritual union with the resurrected, immortal glorified Christ. This union, already present, takes on vivid and transformative effect in the future when we become literally like Him!
• The Spirit places believers in a family of brothers and sisters in a new relationship through the church that expresses the diversity and mutual support of those striving together in a common cause for the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 12:13).
• The Spirit floods their inward selves with a certain conviction of relief in forgiveness when Christians see their sins, acknowledge and confess them and go forward in believing confidence, supernaturally fortified to face the times ahead.

And so on and so on. Longtime Christians who have walked with the Holy Spirit across their lives can barely imagine how people can cope with life on a daily basis without the gift of the Holy Spirit, that invisible, immortal chrism for heaven that is the Christian’s daily staff and stay.

How about you: have you been anointed yet? Have you experienced the peace and optimism that can only come from a deepened relationship with the Son of God and his Father in heaven? Acts 2:38 is your best path forward. It has worked for millions and millions across history. It will work for you!