Transcript & Slides: The Spirit’s Anointing (1 John 2:12-29)

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The Spirit’s Anointing (1 John 2:12-29)
By David Feddes

We’ve been studying 1 John, that great epistle about being children of God. Today we’re going to focus on the Spirit’s anointing. We’re going to be reading a bit later from 1 John 2:12–28, and in that passage it says, “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. The anointing you received from him remains in you. His anointing teaches you about all things.” Before we get into that passage, I just want to begin by thinking with you about anointing. What is anointing? That’s a word we don’t use all that often nowadays, but let’s think about what it is.

In Old Testament times there were three kinds of people who were anointed in a special way: priests, kings, and prophets. When the tabernacle of God for his worship was being dedicated and the priests were being consecrated to be priests, they had oil poured on their heads. Moses poured anointing oil on the head of the high priest Aaron, and there was a special formula to that oil—it had certain kinds of scents mixed into it. You were consecrated to be holy. The various articles of the tabernacle had that oil poured on them. You could smell holiness. It was oil that set them apart for that high calling of being a priest in God’s house.

Still today, those who have an anointing, the Bible says, have a fragrance about them, and that fragrance is the fragrance of life to life for some, and it stinks like death to others when you have the anointing of the Holy Spirit on you. So priests were anointed; kings were anointed. The prophet Samuel poured that oil on the head of a young shepherd named David, and David became the heir apparent to the throne of Israel. Sometimes we think of David as a little kid who got lucky with a slingshot, but he did not simply decide to take a shot at it when he was a little kid. He was probably a youth or a young man by then, and he wasn’t just any young man. He was a young man who had been anointed by the prophet to be a king, to defend Israel against its enemies. When the king who was presently on the throne wasn’t taking care of that, David stepped up and took out that giant because he’d been anointed by God to be a king in Israel.

Prophets also were anointed. The prophet Elijah anointed his successor Elisha to be a prophet. If you were anointed, you were a prophet, a priest, or a king. When Jesus was baptized by John, even though he didn’t actually need baptism but was doing it to fulfill God’s righteousness, at that time the Holy Spirit was seen to come down on him in the form of a dove. John had been told, “The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” So when John saw the dove come down and rest and remain on Jesus, he knew that this was the one God had ordained, appointed, consecrated. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit.

The Bible talks about that. In fact, there are some words that we use a lot that we don’t always connect with the word “anointed.” The word “Messiah” is the Hebrew word for “anointed.” The Greek word “Christ” is simply the word for “anointed.” Jesus himself said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me” (Luke 4:18). When the apostles were preaching, they said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). So no longer was it just an anointing with special oil that had a special smell to it, but it is God sending the Holy Spirit—the third person of the Trinity—to anoint Jesus for his powerful mission.

Then on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit anointed the church, and the sign of that anointing was not a dove but fire. Remember, in the Old Testament there was a pillar of fire that traveled with the people of Israel as God led them out of Egypt and guided them through the wilderness. On Pentecost, God didn’t just give a pillar of fire to the nation as a whole, but he sent that fire individually on people so that they would be anointed by him, empowered by him to spread the gospel, to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says, “God anointed us, put his seal on us, and gave us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 1:21–22). And as the passage we’re going to look at today says, “You have an anointing from the Holy One. The anointing you received from him remains on you” (1 John 2:20, 27). When it speaks of the anointing, it’s talking about this gift of the Holy Spirit to those who believe in Jesus so that we’re enabled to live the life of Christ and to have the life of Christ right inside us.

There’s a confession of faith from the Reformation, the Heidelberg Catechism, which talks about what it means to be anointed. It speaks of Jesus and says that he’s been anointed to be a prophet, a priest, and a king.

Q. 31 Why is he called Christ, meaning Anointed?
A. Because he’s been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher, who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our deliverance; our only high priest, who has delivered us by the one sacrifice of his body and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king, who governs us by his Word and Spirit and who guards us and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us.

As prophet, he reveals God and his Word. As priest, he gave himself on the cross to take away our sins, and as priest, he’s in heaven talking to the Father on our behalf all the time. As king, he governs and rules us. He also fights for us against the forces of evil. He keeps us in the freedom that he’s won for us. He’s been anointed as prophet, priest, and king.

Then the catechism goes on to say, if he’s Christ, then why are you called a Christian?

Q. 32 But why are you called a Christian?
A. Because by faith I’m a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity.

We share in that anointing of the Holy Spirit. We have the very same Holy Spirit who came to live on Jesus. So we confess his name; we declare that Jesus is Lord, that he’s our Savior. That’s our role as prophet—to say Jesus is our Savior and to let other people know that’s how you get saved, through Jesus. As priests, we offer ourselves to him, and we can also be priests like Jesus is—praying for other people and being intercessors for them. As kings, we are appointed. The Bible says we’re to reign with Christ (2 Timothy 2:12). If you’re the child of a king, that makes you a prince or princess, and so we’re appointed as royalty in him. We’re also part of the battle right now, fighting the devil.

Those are the things that the Bible means when it talks about anointing. In today’s passage, we’re going to see a number of things that are involved and revealed to us by God. When you’re anointed by the Spirit, when Christ is living in you, you’re alive, and you grow and develop and mature. You resist the evil world. You reject the antichrists that are running around out there teaching falsehoods. You know the truth because you’ve been anointed with the Spirit of truth. Because you have the Spirit, you abide in the Son and in the Father, because the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity who leads us to the Son and to the Father. So let’s listen to what John says by the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

¹² I write to you, dear children,
   because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
¹³ I write to you, fathers,
   because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
   because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, dear children,
   because you have known the Father.
¹⁴ I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
   because you are strong,
   and the word of God lives in you,
   and you have overcome the evil one.

 ¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

 ¹⁸ Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. ¹⁹ They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

 ²⁰ But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. ²¹ I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. ²² Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. ²³ No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

 ²⁴ See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. ²⁵ And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

 ²⁶ I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. ²⁷ As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

 ²⁸ And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

 

We’ve been studying what John says about the Spirit’s anointing, and the first thing he tells us is that the Spirit makes you alive and helps you grow. He says, “I write to you, fathers; I write to you, children; I write to you, young men.” In saying those things, John is conveying several truths. One of them is his confidence that God is already at work. He believes that the people he’s writing to—including us, who are reading these words centuries later—are already alive in Christ. God is already doing his work, and John wants to encourage us in that.

He also wants to erase some excuses, because too many of us are inclined to say, “Well, I really can’t do that,” or “You can’t expect all that much from me.” But John says, no, God is at work in you. You’re already alive! And so he talks about people at different stages of spiritual maturity. He’s not dividing them by age in years—like four-year-olds, youth, or seniors—but by spiritual age: how long you’ve been a Christian and how you’ve been developing in faith.

He speaks to those who are new in the faith—baby Christians—and says, “I write to you because your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus’ name, and I write to you because you have known the Father.” Isn’t it wonderful that when you’re a brand-new Christian, you can already know that your sins are forgiven and that God doesn’t hold them against you anymore? You don’t have to go along for years and years and finally rise to some high peak of maturity to discover that. The moment you put your faith in Jesus and his blood, your sins are forgiven, even if you’re a total beginner.

And not only that—you’ve known the Father. You don’t have to be an expert in theology to know, “My sins are forgiven, and God has adopted me as his child, and I can pray to him and say, ‘Father.’” In fact, the Bible says, “The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and pours the love of God into our hearts, and by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father,’ and the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15–16). That’s for the newbies! What a start—to know that everything you’ve done wrong is wiped clean by Jesus’ blood, and that God loves you with the forever love of the everlasting Father.

As you grow in faith, that’s something you don’t leave behind. Whatever your stage of maturity, it’s always wonderful to know that God forgives you for Jesus’ sake and that he loves you as a Father. But there are stages of development too. After you’ve been a Christian for a while, you find out you’re in a fight. Sometimes God is very gentle and tender with you in the earliest stages of being a Christian—not always, but often. There’s that wonderful discovery: “My sins are forgiven! God loves me! I’m excited!” And then the bullets start flying.

Hard times come. The devil comes after you. But that’s not outside of God’s control either. When God lets you face those things, he’s saying, “Now you’re a young adult Christian.” John says, “You are strong, and the Word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:14). We need to hear that. The world may be powerful, and the devil may be fierce, but as you grow in faith, you’re growing in strength. You’re ready, like David, who said, “I’ve already killed a lion and a bear; I’m not scared of that giant either, because God’s anointed me.”

If you’re a young adult in the faith, God wants you to summon your strength, be confident in it, and take on the forces that still try to drag you down—and to overcome them. That’s part of your spiritual growth in that stage of the journey. We all, at every stage, have to deal with sin and the devil, but especially in that “young adult” season of spiritual life, you’re excited, idealistic, and ready to take on the world. John doesn’t want to discourage that spirit—he wants the Holy Spirit to build it up in you.

Then, as you develop further and become more of a senior in the faith—a father or mother to others—you don’t leave behind the forgiveness of sins, the battles, or the fatherhood of God. But something else becomes central: you want to know Jesus more. John says, “Fathers, I’m writing to you because you’ve known him who is from the beginning.” At the very start of this letter, he wrote, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). He’s talking about Jesus Christ there.

So when he says, “I’m writing to you because you’ve known him who is from the beginning,” he’s saying, “You know Jesus, and you want to know him better.” Paul says the same thing in Philippians 3: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection... forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Then he adds, “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.”

One sign of deep maturity in faith is that, although the fights of faith may still be there, you become more and more eager to know Jesus better. You realize the day of seeing him is coming closer, and instead of shrinking from it, you echo Paul: “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). That’s when you’ve become a father or mother in the faith—when your heart says, “To live is Christ, to die is gain. I just want to know him better and better.”

And you’re not doing that on your own. Remember, we’re talking about the Holy Spirit’s anointing. He’s the one who makes you alive. He’s the one who helps you grow and develop—from being a baby Christian into someone whose central desire is, “I just want to know Jesus better, and I can’t wait for the day when I see him face to face.”

A second aspect of the anointing in this passage is that you resist the world. “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:15–17).

Right away you see something amiss when you love the world—two major things, in fact. One is that if you love the world, the love of the Father isn’t in you. The other is that the thing you’re loving so much—the world—is a goner. It’s passing away. You’re setting your love on something that’s going to get vaporized. So you need to resist the love of the world.

Now, when the Bible speaks of not loving the world, what’s it talking about? The word “world” can refer to a number of different things. One meaning is the earth—planet earth—or even more broadly, the universe. Are we told not to love the earth and the universe that God made? Another meaning of “world” is the population of the world—the humans who live all over the world. Are we supposed to say, “Yuck, I don’t like humans”? No. There’s another meaning of “world” that refers to creation itself—the mountains, rivers, hills, birds, animals, and all the wonders God has made. We’re not told that we shouldn’t love that created world. We’re not being told that we shouldn’t love the people of the world.

We are told that we shouldn’t love the world as an evil system. Sometimes the Bible pictures the world as Babylon, or as a prostitute. John, who wrote this epistle, also had visions from God recorded in the book of Revelation. There he sees a prostitute seated on a terrible beast that symbolizes the antichrist. That prostitute represents the great civilization, the city on seven hills—Rome at that time—but it’s really a picture called “Babylon the Great.” Centuries earlier, Babylon had been the world power set against the people of God. So “the world” means a godless system organized on anti-God principles. When it says not to love the world or to resist it, that’s what it’s talking about.

When it comes to the physical universe, we should enjoy the good things that God has made and take care of them—that’s part of our human calling. When it comes to other people, we’re not told, “Don’t love you.” We’re called to love and honor people made in God’s image. But when it comes to the world as an evil system, we have to resist its pleasures and its pressures.

The world comes at us in at least two ways. One says, “Isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t this delicious? This will make you happy—chase it!” The other says, “If you don’t, you’ll suffer.” One side is allurement or enticement; the other is threat or intimidation. Pleasures and pressures. John says we need to resist both.

He says everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from God but from the world. What’s he talking about? The lust of the flesh are inner urges without God. Some urges are fine, because God gave them, but they become distorted when separated from God. Your urge for food is good and necessary, but it turns into gluttony when pursued without moderation or gratitude to God. Your desire for the opposite sex can be God-given, but when distorted and expressed outside God’s design, it becomes lust. Anger can arise from a desire for justice, but when it becomes vengeful and unforgiving, it turns into sin—the lust of the flesh.

The lust of the eyes refers to the outer attractions that correspond to inner urges. Eve already had an inner urge to listen to the serpent and be like God, but then she saw that the fruit “was good for food and pleasing to the eye,” and she took it (Genesis 3:6). She knew God said no, but Satan said yes, and it sure looked delicious. So the lust of the eyes goes along with the lust of the flesh. Or take David—he’s on the palace roof, looks around, and sees someone bathing. The next thing you know, he’s in bed with her and has her husband murdered. The lust of the eyes joined the lust of the flesh, and he did terrible things because of it.

Then there’s the pride of life. The word there is bios, from which we get “biology.” It refers to the pride of biological life—how you look, the impression you make. The pride of life is getting your sense of worth and success not from God but from the impression you make on others. That’s a huge temptation, especially in the age of social media, where how many “likes” you get in the last 24 hours can feel like the measure of your worth.

We all have ways of feeding the pride of life. The sad part is that people aren’t as impressed with us as we think. Sorry to deliver the news, but most people aren’t as obsessed with you as you are with yourself. If you live for other people’s attention, many of them won’t be paying attention—or if they are, they may be less impressed than you wish they were.

So the world may seem enticing, but it’s self-defeating to live for its approval. “The world and its desires pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17).

“Don’t love the world,” John said. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). James, who is even more hard-hitting, wrote something very similar: “You adulteresses, don’t you realize that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Sometimes we need a scolding, and sometimes we just need to be reminded not to be so foolish.

When you’re in love with the world, John Bunyan pictured it in The Pilgrim’s Progress by a scene in the Interpreter’s House. As Christiana and her children are there, the Interpreter shows them a man raking. He’s raking dirt and straw and pebbles—head down, eyes on the ground—just raking and raking. Right above him stands a figure holding a beautiful, splendid crown. But this man never looks up. He’s obsessed with the dirt and the sticks and the pebbles, raking a few more, enlarging his little pile, and he never looks up to see the crown that could be his if only he would lift his eyes. That’s Bunyan’s picture of loving the world instead of loving God—choosing dirt over glory.

Warren Wiersbe used a different picture for life in the world: a scuba diver. You’re really not in your element. The Bible says we’re “strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11). We don’t truly fit within this world’s system. How does a scuba diver survive? By having a constant supply from another world. You’re meant to live in the open air, but if you’re underwater, you need oxygen flowing from above. That’s what the Holy Spirit is for us. We’re not in our natural environment here, so we survive by the breath of the Spirit. Without that supply from him, we spiritually suffocate.

So when you have the Spirit’s anointing, you have life. You grow, mature, and develop. You resist the world. And along with resisting the world, you reject the antichrists. John says, “This is the last hour, and as you’ve heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. Who is the antichrist? It is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:18, 22).

We need to unpack what John means. He says, “This is the last hour,” and there are antichrists out there. To understand that, we have to grasp how the Christian calendar works. Jesus launched the new covenant era—the era God promised when he said he would forgive sins and fill people with his Holy Spirit. When Jesus died, rose again, and sent the Holy Spirit after returning to heaven, he began that new covenant era.

That’s what’s already happened. What’s yet to come is his return. Jesus will come again, defeat the final, terrible figure called “the antichrist,” put an end to the fallen world, and bring heaven to earth. Those two events—his first coming with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and his second coming in glory—are the great bookends of the age we’re living in right now. Between those two points, the Bible calls this time “the last hour,” “the last days,” or “the last times.”

People sometimes ask, “Are we living in the last days?” The biblical answer is yes—we have been since Jesus’ first coming. His death, resurrection, and the sending of the Spirit launched the last days, and we may well be close to the very end, but the “last days” began two thousand years ago. During this era, Christians mature, develop, spread the gospel, and see Christ’s kingdom advance—but antichrists also attack.

The Bible says there will be a final, terrible antichrist, but John says, “You’ve heard that he’s coming, but don’t kid yourselves—many antichrists are already out there.” There are many, not just one. And at first, they seem Christian. John says, “They went out from us,” meaning they were part of the church. They were even around the apostles, but they weren’t true believers. “If they had been of us, they would have continued with us,” he says, “but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19). They never really had the Holy Spirit or belonged to Christ.

They seem Christian at first but abandon apostolic truth and deny the real Jesus. John says, “Who is the liar? It is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist” (1 John 2:22). In his letters, he also says that anyone who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, or that he is the Son of God, is antichrist (1 John 4:2–3; 5:5). There have been entire religions built on the denial of Jesus’ divinity, and even some churches calling themselves Christian that reject his miracles, his resurrection, or his deity. The Bible’s word for that is “antichrist”—not just the final figure at the end, but all who oppose or counterfeit Christ between his first and second comings.

And another important thing to know about antichrist is this: they lose. People say, “That book of Revelation—so many visions and symbols! It’s so hard to understand.” It may be hard to figure out every detail, but I can give you Revelation in four words: Jesus wins. Satan loses. That’s the main message. You can study the details of the visions, but the victory of Christ over the forces of evil is the central truth of Revelation.

The final and worst antichrist loses after God takes the chains off Satan for a season and allows antichrist to do worse than the limits previously imposed. Antichrist does as much damage as he can, but even then “the Lord will destroy him by the breath of his mouth.” The word for breath is Spirit, by the way. But the Lord will destroy the antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:8). If that is what is going to happen to the worst one who becomes the dominant power in the world, the Lord Jesus will surely be able to mop up any of the lesser antichrists who pop up here and there throughout history. The last and worst antichrist will lose, and so will all the others.

The Spirit’s anointing doesn’t just tell us about that big bad world out there or about the antichrist. He says, “You know the truth. You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I’m not writing to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth. The anointing you received from him remains in you, and his anointing teaches you all things” (1 John 2:20–21, 27).

That is one of the great statements about the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is called many different things in the Bible: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of grace, the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. There are so many wonderful statements and titles given to the Holy Spirit. But do not forget the title that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit when he was promising the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of truth. Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17). He spoke of “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I’ve said to you. ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid’” (John 14:26–27). “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify” (John 15:26–27). “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you” (John 16:13–15).

Jesus is saying everything about the Father has been given to the Son, and everything of the Son is given to the Holy Spirit to share with his people. When he is called the Spirit of truth, another way of saying that is he is the Spirit of reality. He is the Spirit of what is real. What is real? God is the supreme reality. God has existed before anything else ever existed. The Father is supreme reality, the Son is supreme reality, and the Spirit of truth is the Spirit of reality who brings us into contact with that reality.

The Bible speaks of the Spirit as the mind reader of God. He reads the Father’s mind, and he gives us the mind of Christ. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,” but “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit… We have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:9–10, 11–13, 16).

It is not just that you are reading a few sentences here and there and trying to file them away in the mental filing cabinet. God makes the reality of God known to you by the Holy Spirit. If you have the Holy Spirit, you already are beginning to grasp the deepest things of God. If you know Jesus as the Son of God and as your Savior, you know more of reality than the greatest cosmologist who is talking about the galaxies. You know the supreme reality. You know God.

When he says you really do not need anyone to teach you, keep in mind that he is actually writing to them and teaching them. If you want to say, “I read in the Bible it says I don’t need any teacher. I already know all things,” be careful about carrying that too far. In one sense, you do know all things as soon as you know the richness of God in Christ, but you still have a lot to learn, and the Bible has a lot to teach us. The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, and it is a tremendous mistake to say, “I will ignore the Bible because I have the Holy Spirit. He tells me everything I need to know.” How does he tell you what you need to know? One of the main ways he tells you is through the words of the Bible.

You have a lie detector built right into you. The Holy Spirit gives you a pretty good sniffer for big errors. You might not be able to sort everything out, but if somebody comes along and tells you, “Jesus isn’t really God,” right away you know there is something wrong with that. If they tell you, “People don’t really need Christ to save them. Everybody kind of makes it,” if you have the Spirit of Christ in you at all, you say, “I don’t believe that.” You will sometimes hear teaching that you are not even sure you can put your finger on what is wrong with it, but something smells off. Very often that is the Holy Spirit in you teaching you, “That is not right. That is not God’s truth.”

So you have an anointing. You have the Spirit of truth when you believe in Jesus. You have an inner helper. He does not leave you on your own to figure everything out on your own. Count on the Holy Spirit. Trust the Holy Spirit. Go to that Word that he inspired and let him teach you what that Word has to say, and let him teach you the deep things of God.

One of the deep things of God I just read this week in a book I’m enjoying said this: the original language of the Bible is not Hebrew, and it’s not Greek. God doesn’t speak Hebrew or Greek. The original language of the Bible is love. When God speaks his love to your heart, when the Holy Spirit pours out the love of God in your heart, then the content—the reality—of God becomes real to you. Then the teachings of the Bible suddenly click into place and make sense, because now the Spirit is revealing to you the deep things of God.

So you live, you grow up, you resist the world and reject the antichrist, you know the truth—and then John says, you abide. That’s a bit of an old-fashioned word. Some translations say “remain” or “continue.” It means to live in, to continue in, to persevere in. You abide in the Son and in the Father. And when you do that, there’s a reason John emphasizes it.

As I mentioned before, some people say, “Well, we all believe in the same God; some just happen not to believe in Jesus.” But John says, no—you have to remain in the Son and in the Father. “Anyone who does not have the Son does not have the Father; anyone who confesses the Son has the Father as well” (1 John 2:23). You can’t chop up the Trinity. God is one. If you have God at all, you have the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit connects you to Jesus, and Jesus connects you to the Father. That’s how you know God—the Spirit is in you, and you are in him.

Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you will bear much fruit. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5–6). They’re dead. So the anointing of the Spirit—the Spirit being in you—is what makes you alive.

He also says that fake spirituality is not true spirituality. If you’re not abiding in Christ, you’re not spiritual. It’s common nowadays for people to say, “I’m not very religious, but I’m spiritual. I don’t believe in doctrines and stuff like that, but I’m spiritual.” Well, everybody’s got a spirit, so in that sense we’re all “spiritual.” But when the Bible talks about being spiritual, it means having the Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity. A truly spiritual person has the real God: the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and God the Father.

Fake spirituality says, “I’m going to make you feel some really cool spiritual vibes, man.” But who cares about “vibes” if you’re not connected with Jesus of Nazareth or with the Father who created the world? That’s not spirituality; that’s empty sentiment. Fake spirituality lacks the real and living God. John says that’s death. It’s antichrist to buy into something without reality.

When you abide in the Father and the Son, this is what he’s promised: eternal life. Why? Because he is eternal life. Once he abides in you, you already have eternal life—even before you see him face to face, even before heaven comes to earth. You have eternal life because the Life lives in you by the Holy Spirit.

John says abiding in Christ also prepares you for Jesus’ return: “Continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming” (1 John 2:28). That’s the key to confidence when Christ comes again—to be abiding in him right now. Then he won’t come to you as a stranger but as the one whose face you’ve longed to see. Instead of saying, “Oh no!” you’ll say, “There he is—the one I’ve been longing for!”

So the Bible speaks of the anointing. This Pentecost, do you know that anointing? Are you living? Are you growing? Maybe you’re a baby Christian, maybe you’ve known the Lord a long time—God has encouraging words for every stage of development. He reminds us that there are far better things than the world to satisfy us.

If your soul is hungry, maybe it’s time to put down that rake. Stop trying to pile up sticks and dirt and pebbles, and look up. “Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). That’s what the Holy Spirit does. He takes what belongs to Christ and makes it known to you. That’s the Spirit’s whole mission. Jesus said, “He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears… He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine” (John 16:13–15).

So he’s making known to you wonderful things. We can resist the world and the antichrist. We can know reality—the truth—because the Truth lives in us. And we abide. We are drawn up to be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), drawn into the very life of the Trinity, where we live in God and God lives in us. There’s nothing less than that given to us in that anointing.

Prayer

Father, give us joy in the anointing. For all of us who know Christ as Savior, may we glory in Christ and in the salvation you’ve brought us. May we rejoice in all that you are and all that you’ve done for us. We thank you, blessed Holy Spirit, Spirit of truth, for coming to dwell in us and making known to us the reality of God and the mind of the Father. We thank you that we can call you Father. We pray, Lord, for strength that we may overcome the devil and the antichrist and the world and our own flesh, and triumph in you. May we abide always and delight in you, that we may not grieve or quench you, Holy Spirit, but that your will may forever be done in us. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

The Spirit’s Anointing (1 John 2:12-29)
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

Anointing

^2:20 You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth... ^2:27 The anointing you received from him remains in you… his anointing teaches you about all things…

What is anointing?

In Old Testament times, special oil was poured on someone’s head to set them apart and consecrate them for office: priest, king, or prophet.

 
Christ’s anointing

Messiah = Christ = anointed

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me. (Luke 4:18)

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. (Acts 10:38)

 
Christians’ anointing

God anointed us, put his seal on us and gave us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)

You have an anointing from the Holy One... The anointing you received from him remains in you. (1 John 2:20,27)

 

Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 12

Q. 31 Why is he called “Christ,” meaning “anointed”?

A. Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our deliverance; our only high priest who has delivered us by the one sacrifice of his body, and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards us and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us.
Christ: anointed prophet, priest, king

Q 32 But why are you called a Christian?

A. Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name [prophet], to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks [priest], to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity [king].

 

The Spirit’s Anointing

• You live and grow up.
• You resist the world.
• You reject antichrists.
• You know the truth.
• You abide in Son & Father.

 
Live and grow up
Stages of spiritual maturity

• Children: forgiven for Jesus’ sake, trust God as Father.
• Youth: strong in the Lord, defeat Satan with God’s Word within
• Fathers: know Jesus deeply, are eager to see his face

 

Resist the world

Three meanings of "world"

• Physical universe: enjoy and tend
• Human beings: honor and love
• Evil system: resist its pleasures and its pressures.

 Resist the world

• Lust of the flesh: inner urges without God
• Lust of the eyes: outer attractions without God
• Pride of life: success without God, living to impress others

He proffered to give him that crown for his muckrake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor. (Pilgrim’s Progress)

A Christian is like a scuba diver underwater. Living in a foreign element, we need a constant air supply, or our souls perish. We have our spiritual “air supply” when the Spirit keeps breathing the breath of heaven into us.

Reject antichrists

• Christ launched new covenant era, anointed believers with the Spirit.
• Christ will return, defeat Antichrist, end fallen world, and bring heaven to earth.
• Between Pentecost and Jesus’ return is “last hour,” “last days,” “last times.” Christians advance; antichrists attack.
• There are many antichrists, not just one.
• They seem Christian at first but abandon apostolic truth.
• They deny the real Jesus.
• They lose. Last, worst one will lose. So will all others.

Know the truth

^2:20 You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth... ^2:27 The anointing you received from him remains in you… his anointing teaches you about all things…

Abide in Son, Father

• Spirit, Son, and Father are one.
• Spirit is in you, and you in Him.
• Fake spirituality lacks real God.
• Abiding in God is eternal life.
• Abiding prepares for Jesus’ return.

The Spirit’s Anointing

• You live and grow up.
• You resist the world.
• You reject antichrists.
• You know the truth.
• You abide in Son & Father.