“But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” 1 John 2:27
There came a day in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus that He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and the book of Isaiah was given to him. He opened the book to the passage in Isaiah which had been written around seven hundred years before. He then read the following: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (61:18,19) It was at this point that He closed the book and began to say to those assembled: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk. 4:21) There are several very important things to note in Jesus’s words, the first of which had to do with the anointing of the Father by the Spirit. That anointing of which Christ spoke was the spiritual oil of the Spirit, that very confirmation of the Father that He had chosen Christ to not only be declared as the Son of God, but His Servant, and the Savior of mankind. The blessed Spirit of God which came quietly upon Him at His baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, was the proof that Christ was the Beloved Son of God, well pleasing to the Father, having come into the world to accomplish a singular sinless, and perfect work on the cross of Calvary, so that men could be saved. We might ask, “What are men to be saved from?” The answer lies at the point where Jesus stopped reading in Isaiah’s book. After saying that He had been sent to proclaim the acceptable YEAR of the Lord, the Lord Jesus stopped just before He would have read concerning “…the DAY of vengeance of our God.” (Is. 61:2) Christ came to a lost world, a world where men were living in darkness, an absence of His truth, light, and love. He came to a world that by nature had gone its own way, chosen to live and die independently of God. It would be for this reason, as Isaiah again would declare: “…that the Lord (the Father) has laid on Him (Christ) the iniquity of us all.” (53:6) The news that Jesus brought that day to that group gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth was that the Eternal God had now chosen, not only a moment in time, to send His Son into the world to be the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world, but that by His shed blood those in the world could be saved. But alas, would this be so? Sadly not. But, to those who by the grace of God were awakened to their need and received the grace of God to humble themselves before this One proclaiming the Means and the Mission of His coming, salvation would come to the individual heart. It would be a salvation, not only concerning the forgiveness of sins, but the imparting of a new Life, that of Christ by the Spirit. God’s working by grace in the individual heart, bringing one to faith in Christ, would result in the new birth, one where the “new creation in Christ” would himself know the reality of the anointing of the Father. The essence of the anointing that Jesus knew would be forever imparted to every believer in Christ. Why is this matter so important?
Christ’s anointing by the Spirit was God’s sufficient and abounding provision for all that Christ needed to live righteously, and to accomplish perfectly His saving work.
Dear Father, Anoint us afresh today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.