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.

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