The Anointing

But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” (I John 2:27)

The above verse of Scripture is the only place in the New Testament where the phrase “the anointing” appears.¹ Earlier in this same chapter, verse 20, it says:

“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”

Both words are translated from the Greek, “Chrisma,” which means “a special endowment of the Holy Spirit.”² This endowment, according to the verses, supernaturally endues its recipients with the knowledge of “all things,” that are “truth.” We find a similar promise of this endowment in the letter to the Hebrews:

For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. (Heb 8:8-11)

This is almost a facsimile of Jeremiah 31:33, 34, which also speaks of Israel under the New Covenant. Therefore we can at least conclude that this special endowment is part of the New Covenant. The next most obvious question should be: are we presently in it (the New Covenant)?

The orthodox³ position overwhelmingly says that we are in the NC.⁴ If this is the case, then all Christians, that is, all true believers, should possess this endowment called the anointing. Obviously, most don’t believe this because most avail themselves of (Bible) teaching and it clearly says that the “anointed” need not do this because, as it says, the anointing causes them to “know all things,” and, therefore, they have no need to be taught.

How does the orthodox position get around this discrepancy? They simply say the endowment is exclusive to a special class of believers. Roman Catholicism makes the anointing the exclusive possession of the priesthood, through what they call “apostolic succession.”⁵ Protestants generally make a weaker claim to it for the “ministerial” offices listed in Ephesians 4:11, who obtain it through the ordination process.

In the last century, the Neo-Pentecostal (Charismatic)⁶ wing of Protestantism has come to make a much stronger claim for it in these offices. Everything from the power to heal by the laying on of hands, to visualizing future events,⁷ to exorcising demons, to new (extra-Biblical) revelations directly from God, to being abundantly “blest” with material possessions are claimed by Charismatics for those possessing “the anointing.”⁸  One of the most popular proponents of this teaching is televangelist Benny Hinn, who claims that those who desire to possess the anointing must be under the tutelage of a teacher who is “walking in the anointing:”

“The anointing cannot come upon us unless we are under the right leaders. Without proper leadership in the Spirit, we can’t be anointed because the anointing flows from the head down.”

He sights Psalm 133:1,2 as his proof text for this contention,

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;

SEE! The oil (anointing) flows from the head down to the lowest part of the garment. We were taught that our pastor got the blessings first and then they trickled down to the members of the local church. ⁹

The Dispensation of Grace

In the letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes:

For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,
If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
Eph 3:1-5

This is what the world presently rests in: the dispensation of the grace of God.

Orthodoxy would claim that this and the New Covenant are one and the same. There are several reasons why this can’t be, the most prominent among them being that “the mystery,” spoken of in this passage, isn’t revealed in prophecy. I put the words “which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men” in italics to emphasize this. The letter to the Colossians, written about the same time as the Ephesian letter, makes a similar statement:

Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God;
Even the mystery, which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:   ((Col 1:25-26))

The New Covenant is, indeed, openly prophesied of in the Old Testament. But there is no place in Old Testament prophecy where one can find a statement including the Gentiles as “fellowheirs,”¹⁰ or “joint heirs”¹¹ with Israel under the New Covenant. Gentiles are always a subordinate class of citizens in this covenant.¹²

Moreover, Paul says that the ministerial offices of Ephesians 4:11 are:

“for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”(verses 12,14)

Folks in the body of Christ are to come to the knowledge of the Son of God through edification or teaching, whereas 1 John 2:27 and Hebrews 8:11 says to those in the New Covenant:

“the anointing teacheth you of all things… And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.”

Galatians 6:6 speaks of folks being taught by a man who occupies one of the teaching offices: “Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.”

Furthermore, 2 Timothy 2:15 admonishes believers to “study….the word of truth.” Can anything be more different?

Concerning the claim that those in the ministerial offices or the priesthood have an exclusive lock on the anointing, do those occupying these offices, who are part of the various religious systems, just pop up one day and start teaching? Of course not. They go through a seminary or a Bible school where someone teaches them what someone else taught them, ad infinitum.

Rightly Dividing The Word Of Truth.

There is simply no way one can rightly meld these two programs together, and this is because they aren’t meant to be combined—doctrinally speaking—they are meant to be divided. Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, says:

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15)

One may benefit greatly in this life by ignoring this plain directive and claiming the powers of the New Covenant to be part of the present dispensation—and indeed many have built huge followings and fortunes by doing this—but in doing so they are clearly perverting the truth,¹⁵ and it has to be obvious to those of a discerning spirit that they do it for temporal gain.¹⁴

One might say: if this is not of God, why do those who claim  it prosper? It prospers for the same reason other lies prosper in this world: the “god of this world”¹⁴ rewards it, and “the God of heaven and earth” allows it.

Surely, God would issue a warning to folks who are in error—give them a chance to repent. The answer to this is the same answer Abraham gave the rich man, in a state of torment in hell, who pleaded with him to send someone to warn his brothers that they might not come to the same fate:

“…They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.. .If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”¹⁶

In other words, he says they have the word of God, replete with warnings, and they’ve read it and heard it. If they won’t obey it, sending someone to warn them will be a waste of time, and God isn’t in the business of wasting time.

We have the finished revelation of God to us¹⁷ in a King James Bible, which gives clear directives concerning who we are (and aren’t), and what we possess (and don’t possess) in the present dispensation, and this is repeated there many times over in the epistles of the Apostle Paul, Romans through Philemon, which contain the doctrine and promises to the “church”¹⁸ of this dispensation. What is not a part of this body of scripture, and therefore can not be a possession of the church, is “the anointing.” The anointing is an endowment provided to saints under the New Covenant, which is yet in the future, not the body of Christ in the (present) dispensation of Grace.

Mike Schroeder

Feel free to re-print this article or distribute it via the internet. All Scripture references are taken from the King James Bible.

Post Script

None of us knows when this world in which we presently exist will come to its end. Neither do we know when the Lord will return to take his true church out of it. What we do know is that our individual lives will someday come to an end, and that we aren’t guaranteed another heartbeat, much less another day, week or year here. What we can know is, if the end of this life comes for us today, that we will be present with our Lord in heaven. In this respect may I ask you: are you personally assured of this? Have you ever trusted Jesus Christ and what he did for you at Calvary to secure your salvation? Do you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you are saved, sealed and bound for heaven? If you aren’t sure, make this the day of your salvation by admitting to your lost condition, and then simply asking the Lord to save you. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Notes