What Is “The Anointing?”

*In a previous post, I forewarned that I would be quoting from my favorite writers from time to time. This is one of those times; when someone else expresses thoughts and ideas from God’s Word so much better than I can! (Several paragraphs, but well worth the read).

“The Meaning of the Anointing” ~ excerpt, T. Austin Sparks, The School of Christ. (bold italics and some paragraph breaks, mine):

“‘You shall see the heaven opened.’ ‘He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descending on him.‘ What is the meaning of the anointing of the Holy Spirit? It is nothing less and nothing other than the Holy Spirit taking His place as absolute Lord. The anointing carries with it the absolute lordship of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit as Lord. That means that all other lordships have been deposed and set aside; the lordship of our own lives; the lordship of our own minds, our own wills, our own desires; the lordship of others. The lordship of every interest and every influence is regarded as having given place to the undivided and unreserved lordship of the Holy Spirit, and the anointing can never be known, enjoyed, unless that has taken place.

That is why the Lord Jesus went down into Jordan’s waters, into death and burial, in type, taking the place of man in representation, from that moment not to be under the government of His own life in any respect as He worked out the will of God, but to be wholly and utterly subject to the Spirit of God in every detail. Jordan’s grave set forth the setting aside of every independent lordship, every other lordship, every other influence, and if you will read the spiritual life of Christ in the Gospels you will see that it was to that position that He was every moment adhering. Many and powerful were the influences which were brought to bear on Him to affect Him and govern His movements. Sometimes it was the full force of Satan’s open assault, to the effect that it was necessary that He should do certain things for His cause, or for His very continuance in life physically. Sometimes it was Satan clothing himself with the arguments and suasions [sic] of beloved associates, in their seeking to hold Him back from certain courses, or to influence Him to prolong His life by sparing Himself certain sufferings.

In various ways influences were brought to bear on Him from all directions, and many of the counsels were seemingly so wise and good. For example, with regard to His going up to the feast, it was urged, in effect: It is the thing that everybody is doing: if you do not go up you will prejudice your cause. If you really want to further this cause, you must fall into line with the accepted thing religiously, and you only stand to lose if you do not do that; you will curtail your influence, you will narrow your sphere of usefulness! And what an appeal that is if you have something very much at heart, some cause for God at heart, the success of which is of the greatest importance.

Such then were the influences that were beating on Him. But whether it be Satan coming in all the directness of his cunning, his wit, his insinuation, or whether it be through beloved and most intimate disciples and associates, whatever the kind of argument, that Man cannot be caused to deflect a hairsbreadth from His principle. ‘I am
under the anointing; I am committed to the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, and I cannot move, whatever it costs. Cost it my life, cost it my influence, cost it my reputation, cost it everything that I hold dear, I cannot move unless I know from the Holy Spirit that that is the Father’s mind and not another mind, the Father’s will and not another will, that this thing comes from the Father.’ Thus He put back everything until He knew in His spirit what the Spirit of God witnessed. He lived up to this law, this principle, of the absolute authority, government, lordship of the anointing, and it was for that that the anointing had come.

That is the meaning of the anointing. Do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Why do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Is the anointing something that you crave? To what end? That you may be used, may have power, may have influence, may be able to do a lot of wonderful things? The first and preeminent thing the anointing means is that we can do nothing but what the anointing teaches and leads to do. The anointing takes everything out of our hands. The anointing takes charge of the reputation. The anointing takes charge of the very purpose of God. The anointing takes complete control of everything and all is from that moment in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and we must remember that if we are going to learn Christ, that learning Christ is by the Holy Spirit’s dealing with us, and that means that we have to go exactly the same way as Christ went in principle and in law.

So we find we are not far into the Gospel of John, which is particularly the Gospel of the spiritual School of Christ, before we hear even such as He saying, ‘The Son can do nothing of himself”. ‘The words that I say to you I speak not from myself.’ ‘The works that I do are not Mine’; ‘the Father abiding in me does his works’.

‘The Son can do nothing out from himself.’ You see, there is the negative side of the anointing; while the positive side can be summed up in one word – the Father only. Perhaps that is a little different idea of the anointing from what we have had. Oh, to be anointed of the Holy Spirit! What wonders will follow; how wonderful that life will be! The first and the abiding thing about the anointing is that we are imprisoned into the lordship of the Spirit of God, so that there can be nothing if He does not do it. Nothing! That is not a pleasant experience, if the natural life is strong and in any way in the
ascendant. Therefore Jordan must be there before there can be an anointing. The putting aside of that natural strength and self-life is a necessity, for the anointing does carry with it essentially the absolute lordship of the Spirit.

You notice the issue of that in 2 Cor 3:16. ‘When it shall turn to the Lord’, when the Lord is the object in view, ‘the veil is taken away, and we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are transformed into the same image . . . even as from the Lord the Spirit‘, or ‘the Spirit which is the Lord’. You are in the School and you can see Christ and learn Christ; which is being transformed into the image of Christ under the lordship of the Spirit. ‘When it shall turn to the Lord’, when the Lord is our object in view! But with us, with us Christians, with us very devoted, very earnest Christians, what a long time it takes to get the Lord as the sole object. Is that saying a terrible thing? We say we love the Lord; yes, but we do love to have our own way as well, and we do not love to have our way thwarted.

Have any of us yet reached that point of spiritual attainment where we never have a bad time at all with the Lord? Oh no, we are still found at the place where we so often think it is in the interests of the Lord that our hearts go out in a certain direction, and the Lord does not let us do it, and we have a bad time; and that has betrayed us absolutely. Our hearts were in it. It was not easy, absolutely easy and simple for us to say, Very well, Lord, I am just as pleased as though you let me do it, I delight always to do Your will! We are disappointed the Lord does not let us do it; or if the Lord delays it, what a time we go through. Oh, if we could only get at it and do it! The time is finding us out. Is that not true of most of us? Yes, it is true. We do come into this picture, and that just does mean that, after all, the Lord is not as truly our object as we thought He was. We have another object alongside and associated with the Lord; that is, something that we want to be or to do, somewhere we want to go, something we want to have. It is all there, and the Holy Spirit knows all about it. In this School of Christ, where God’s objective is Christ, only Christ, utterly Christ, the very anointing means that it has to be Christ as Lord by the Spirit. The anointing takes that position. Well, so much for the moment for the meaning of the anointing. It was true in Him, and it has to be true in us.”

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The Titanic: A Sailor’s Story

In your opinion, which is the more challenging: diving headfirst into the frigid water of the deep end of a swimming pool and acclimating quickly, or creeping tortuously down the steps of the shallow end – an inch at a time and shivering the entire way – until your whole body is finally submerged?

I recall reading the account of a British second officer aboard the RMS Titanic who had been working furiously on the boat deck helping to get passengers, beginning with women and children, off the doomed ocean liner and into lifeboats. After all of the boats had been lowered and were away, he watched as the water began to overtake the clustering crowds of people who had retreated toward the stern of the badly listing ship. Instead of an agonizing wait for the freezing black depths to overtake him, he made a choice. He decided to take a “header” and dove headlong into the icy surge!

His decision at first appeared to be a mistake, as he was pulled down and pinned against a metal grate by the force of water rushing into the ship through a ventilator. As he held his breath, hoping that the grate would not collapse, a boiler explosion well below the deck sent a burst of hot air to the surface and blew him far enough from the maelstrom that he was able to swim, gasping, to an overturned collapsible lifeboat to which several other men were clinging. He was later rescued.

I remember being impressed at the time with the spiritual symbolism of this account, and it has stayed with me ever since. The decision of the disciplined sailor to go “all in” was for him the difference between life and death.

Am I “all in” with regard to my relationship with Jesus?

The answer will often require some serious, and sometimes painful, introspection. The times we as believers find ourselves the most miserable are those when we have merely dipped a toe into the icy water of the unknown and are vacillating over our next step and our intended level of commitment, considering even the possibility of waiting until the weather gets “warmer”; until conditions “improve”, and the “water” is more conducive to taking that imposing “leap of faith.”

In his daily devotionals Oswald Chambers wrote often of the need for “total abandonment” of ourselves as believers to God. That is, by far, the most difficult thing for our (my) flesh to contemplate. It was this same voluntary self-abandonment that enabled the Son of God to brave His own dark descent into death, relinquishing His authority to summon 10,000 angels to His rescue, and believing that His Father would raise Him back up again. Am I willing to be accused by others of going “overboard” in my passion for Jesus? His sacrificial choice to be “all in” became our very salvation, and we are faced with the exact same choice as our Lord: to cast ourselves with abandon upon the unfathomable love, grace, and mercy of our heavenly Father!

Philippians 2:5-11 NASB “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

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The best preachers are the ones who will tell you, with honesty, that God preached the message to them before they ever preached it to their congregation. Before you or I can proclaim God’s Word to God’s people with any sense of power or authority, the Cross – the pangs of Holy Spirit conviction and the healing result of Self-surrender – must first be applied to my own heart and life.

Bryan

Do You Think They Will Like Chocolate?

A cosmic, allegorical, Three-way conversation…

The Father (Chief Architect and Designer): “Well, it’s ready! By the way, they will eventually come up with an odd name for it, ‘The Big Bang.’ So…who wants to light it?”

The Son (Chief Engineer and Builder): “I enjoyed building it!”

The Holy Spirit (Chief Technician and Quantum Mechanic): “I WILL!”

Genesis 1:16-18 NASB God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; [BTW] He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

John 1:9-14 NASB There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

“We’re talking about a lot of people on that tiny blue planet, Father. How are We going to keep them all occupied?”

“We will put it in the hearts of some to invent the wheel, others to discover electricity, and still others to achieve powered flight. Some will serve their fellow humans with nursing care and by performing complex surgeries. Others will love to entertain with dance, or by writing poems and children’s books, while others will inspire with the gift of making music. Some will have a passion to grow plants and harvest crops for food. Many will have the gift of working with their hands and go on to build houses and huge skyscrapers (not to mention My Tabernacle!) Others will thrill to explore Our magnificent creation – the home especially prepared for them all – through mathematics and science; they will build great ships and computers and rockets. Photographers, fishermen, truck drivers, soldiers, artists, lawyers, salespersons, dishwashers, stay-at-home moms. (Of course, We will call out apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers from among them). It’s a very long list!”

“But what about your Law and the free will prerogative? What if they make bad choices?”

“My Son…You and I need to have a good talk about that.”

“Do you think they will like chocolate?”

“You have no idea!”

: ) Bryan

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The Ultimate Logic: GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE > GOD IS LOVE > THEREFORE, LOVE CREATED THE UNIVERSE! : )

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Salvation and sexual reproduction? The new, revised 2019 paperback edition of my (ghost-written) book, Born of the Water Born of the Spirit, can be found at the following link. It is also available as a Kindle ebook download: