Now finally, he talks about the anointing and the truth in verses 20 and 21, "But ye have an anointing." That word is a word related to the word Christ. Christ means the anointed one, of course, Christos, Jesus the anointed one. Well this is an anointing, a christening in one sense. So, "You have an unction from the Holy One, and ye all know," the Seceders who went out claimed advanced knowledge. They claimed a grade of knowledge that was above the grade of knowledge that the vast majority had. Many of them were associated, it does seem, with at least gnostic types of individuals. They disparaged the elementary grades of spiritual life, claimed to have the higher grades, and also be able to dispense with them.
C. S. Lewis, in one of his writings, comments on the danger of inner ring; that is individuals who claim to be elitish and have special knowledge of things, and evidently there was just such a group of individuals in the early church. He says, this anointing, this unction is from the Holy One, that's Christ. But what's the anointing? What's the unction? Well putting together all that the Lord said in the upper room, and other parts of the New Testament, it's plain that they had the anointing of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, that which the Lord Jesus had promised. He said, "I will pray the Father he will give you another Comforter, the spirit of truth and he will abide with you forever." That's the unction that comes from the Holy One, the anointing.
Now remember, he was anointed for his ministry as Messiah by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon him at his baptism. So John says, "You have an anointing," "You have an unction coming from Christ," just as he had an anointing of the Holy Spirit that came to him for his Messianic ministry. So John is saying look, these individuals claim to have new light, different light, deeper light, but you have an anointing from the Lord himself, the Holy Spirit of God, and you all know, not some of you, some special group, you all know. Universal knowledge, they have a built in spiritual instinct, a built in spiritual power though the person of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The lies and the truths company together, but through the Holy Spirit, one is able to make the distinguishing perceptions. So we all know, guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth, we do have all of the capacity for knowing divine truth.
Incidentally, if he did say, "You know all things," he would, of course, not be saying we are omniscient. We're not omniscient, but we know all things with reference to his sonship and his messiahship would be the point. But I'd like to say something else here, when he says we have an unction from the Holy One, we have the Holy Spirit, and by virtue of him, we all know, think of what he's saying, he's saying, as he, the Son of God, carried on his ministry though the unction of the Holy Spirit who, from the Father, guided him in all of his Messianic ministry, we to have an unction from the Holy One. That lets us know how we know spiritual truth.
If you want to know astrological truth, who would want to know that anyway, but it seems to be the in thing today [laughter], with some people who belong to the inner ring [laughter], but at any rate, what you would do if you are going to learn any topic is to go to those who best understand that topic. Isn't that true? If you want to know scientific truth of a particular character, you go to the scientist who best understands that. If it's medical truth, if it's economics, if there is any truth in economics at all, [laughter], you would go to the individual who is an economist and so on. But look, in spiritual things, my Christian friend, you go to God through the Holy Spirit. We have an unction from the Holy One.
In fact, the Lord Jesus, remember, says that we are joint heirs with him. We are sons of God also. In effect, he's saying we are joint christs. That is, we have an unction. Our unction is the Holy Spirit. We are joint christs. Now mind you, there is a big difference, we'll put it in a little "c" because we don't know everything, we will never know everything, but we do know. We know him. It's like a little child who knows his parents but doesn't know everything about the parents, thank goodness. [Laughter] But you know them. Look, my father's voice, he's been gone for seventeen years, if I were to hear my father's voice behind this wall, I would know it was my father because I knew him, not everything about him, but I knew him.
So he says, we know God by virtue of the presence of the unction. Look if you want to know spiritual truth, you go to the teacher, the divine pedagog, the Holy Spirit. Here is the text, and he's well able to guide us into the truth. That's what Jesus, himself, said in the upper room. He will guide you in the spirit of the truth. We don't go to a scientist. We don't go to the professor of Old Testament theology. We don't go to the professor of New Testament theology. We don't go to the professor of New Testament exegeses, or the Old Testament professor of exegeses, they may say some things that are interesting tests of what we discover by the study of Holy Scripture. We don't abandon them, but we don't pay primary attention to them, we listen to our divine pedagog, because we have an unction from the Holy One.
If you look at it from the negative side, you of course would see the costliness of unbelief, of letting belief go. Think of what those individuals let go, ostensibly. The very consideration of what you might lose should be, as someone has put it, "a steadying reflection." They went out, and in going out, they abandoned what they had professed of the reality of spiritual truth.
What would we lose if we lost the Scriptures, lost the apostolic truth? What a security we have in possessing the Holy One, God's great gift to his own. Some men leave us to become antichrists, or the prey of antichrists. For some leave the company of Christ to become the prey of false teachers. But I cannot, you cannot. The Lord Jesus at a particular point in his ministry John says many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. He turned and said to them, "Will ye also go away?" And Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. We believe that Thou art the Son of God, the Holy One of God." And I want to say to you, as Peter cried out, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" Christ's joint christs, Christ's joint sons, Christ's joint heirs want no husks from the swine troughs of the seducers of the saints. We'll never be happy except with the Son of God, as set forth in Holy Scripture, and the triune God so beautifully unfolded in the word of truth.
If you're here today and you've never believed in Christ, you're not "of us." But you may become one of us by personally before the Lord acknowledging your lost condition, you're need of divine grace and the forgiveness of your sins and if within your heart you confess that you're a sinner, and you see that Christ has given himself according to the Scriptures for sinners, dying for the sins of sinners, God offers eternal life, forgiveness of sins, adoption within the family and all of the other blessings of life, and that unction to guide you, then you may today pass from death into life from darkness into his marvelous light. Come to Christ. Trust him right now. Let this be the moment of your conversion.
No comments:
Post a Comment