Tag Archives: anointing

A Permanent Anointing

Bible Study, , , ,

A PERMANENT ANOINTING

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you will also remain in the Son and in the Father.  And this is what He promised – eternal life.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you have 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. (1 John 2: 24-27)  

We must never think that the early church was in any way idyllic. Satan had his emissaries everywhere, just as he has today. False teachers abounded and false teaching was rife. The same spirit that hounded Jesus to death through Jewish prejudice was at work, undermining the truth of the gospel, especially among those who came out of paganism as well as new Jewish believers.

A group of false teachers called Judaizers went about undermining the work of the apostles by teaching Gentile believers that people converting from paganism to Christianity had to be initiated into Judaism first through circumcision. Paul responded to this error very vehemently in his letter to the Galatian church. He insisted that to go back to the law was to nullify the grace of God.

Another subtle teaching arose out of Greek philosophy, called Gnosticism – that there was a body of secret knowledge only accessible to a select group of people.

“Gnosticism was perhaps the most dangerous heresy that threatened the early church during the first three centuries. Influenced by such philosophers as Plato, Gnosticism is based on two false premises. First, it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter. Gnostics assert that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. As a result of this presupposition, Gnostics believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only.

Second, Gnostics claim to possess an elevated knowledge, a “higher truth” known only to a certain few. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means “to know.” Gnostics claim to possess a higher knowledge, not from the Bible but acquired on some mystical higher plain of existence. Gnostics see themselves as a privileged class elevated above everybody else by their higher, deeper knowledge of God . . .

“Gnosticism is based on a mystical, intuitive, subjective, inward, emotional approach to truth which is not new at all. It is very old, going back in some form to the Garden of Eden, where Satan questioned God and the words He spoke and convinced Adam and Eve to reject them and accept a lie. He does the same thing today as he “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He still calls God and the Bible into question and catches in his web those who are either naïve and scripturally uninformed or who are seeking some personal revelation to make them feel special, unique, and superior to others.”

http://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-gnosticism.html (retrieved November 2015)

The “spirit” of these false teachings is still very much alive today. Legalism insists that we adhere to certain rules in order to find favour with God; rules like food taboos and Sabbath adherence, for example. To follow these teachings is to move from grace to law – and once again to fall under the penalty of the broken law. If Christ is not sufficient for our complete salvation, He is not sufficient at all.

The other subtle error is to believe the lie that there is a select group of believers – the so-called “born-again-and-Spirit-filled-and-tongues-speaking” group who have attained something that others lack. There is no such category taught in the Bible. People are either followers of Jesus or they are not followers of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is given in full measure to all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord.

It is more important that we know the truth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ than that we understand all the ins and outs of these false teachings. John took his readers back to what they had heard from the beginning. By that, he meant that they were to stick to what they had been taught by those who were with Jesus from the beginning.

What was their source of knowledge? Jesus had promised His first followers that He would send the Holy Spirit from the Father and that, when He came, He would lead them into all truth. He would take the truth about Jesus and reveal it to them. Unlike certain people in the Old Testament era who only temporarily experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, He would be poured out on “all flesh” – so said the prophet Joel – and for all time.

Believers could rely on the Holy Spirit to teach them because He remained in them. They in turn could be sure of the truth if they remained in Jesus – held to what He had taught and not followed the false teachers whose intention was to draw them away from their confidence in and allegiance to Jesus as their Lord.

Beware, dear readers, of those who insist that they alone know the truth and who gather followers after themselves. Exclusivity is a sure sign of error. Jesus called people to follow Him. Every teacher or preacher who connects people to Jesus and not to themselves is worthy of trust. In the long run, however, we can rely on the Holy Spirit, the anointing who is on us forever, to teach us the truth if we hold to Jesus’ teaching and not fall for the errors of those who insist that they alone are right.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

A Reliable Anointing

Bible Study, , , ,

A RELIABLE ANOINTING

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth but because you do know it and because He comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist – denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Father has the Son; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2: 20-23)

How much is packed into these few lines! Just by reading them, one can see that John has spent much time with Jesus.

Who or what was the “anointing”? Jesus spoke in detail about the Holy Spirit before His death. His own title – the Christ – was not His last name but it referred to His office as Messiah, the Anointed One. He promised His disciples that they would receive the same anointing He carried to do the work He did, the Holy Spirit who would come upon them and be in them after He had returned to the Father.

Jesus had and conveyed great confidence in the Holy Spirit to lead His fledgling disciples into the truth. At that point they had their Tanakh – their sacred writings which told the story of the origins of the world, the birth and call of their nation, its history and the writings of the prophets whom God raised up to call His people back to Himself and to interpret their history in the light of God’s dealings with them.

Their Scriptures had many fingerprints of the promised Messiah. From their understanding of the Old Testament, Jesus gave His appointed servants the apostles, through the Holy Spirit, the authority to interpret and apply His yoke as they invaded the Roman world with the good news of the kingdom of God.

John had heard the words of Jesus, over and over again as He explained His role as the Son of God, sent from the Father and in union with the Father. His words echoed the words of Jesus:

Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him. (John 5: 23b)

So close was the union between the Father and the Son that they worked together as a unit, Jesus on earth in the flesh as the perfect mirror image of the Father, carrying out His will even to death. To deny Jesus in any way, who He was, what He taught and what He did was to nullify any connection with God. Jesus insisted that there was only one way to the Father, the only true God, and that He was the way.

No matter who or what declares that there are many roads to God, Jesus claimed to be the only way. Either Jesus was a liar or those who make the claim are liars. They cannot both be telling the truth.

Whose word do we believe? The word of the proponents of their own religious beliefs or Jesus? What proof do we have that one is a liar and the other telling the truth? Is there any other person who ever lived who had the audacity to claim that he would be killed and then come back to life again? Jesus is the only man who ever did, and He pulled it off. And no one has ever been able to discredit the truth of the resurrection, not even the greatest of legal minds.

And, said John, since the Father and the Son are one, to discredit the one is to discredit the other. To deny the Son is to deny the Father. This is what antichrist is all about. Anyone who rejects anything Jesus taught about Himself and His relationship with the Father – His deity, His humanity, His anointing with the Holy Spirit, His death and resurrection, His union with the Father and His work as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world, can be put into the category of “antichrist”. That includes any false religion which elevates its gods above Jesus, or any cult that undermines, alters or rejects the full revelation of Jesus given to us in the Bible.

This is not about a future anti-God political leader who claims the right to rule the world. This is about any mind-set or attitude in any person or group of people who elevate anybody or anything above Jesus.

Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2: 5b-11)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?