Lecture XIV

THE GUILELESS SPIRIT, AMID ANTICHRISTIAN DEFECTIONS, ESTABLISHED BY A MESSIANIC UNCTION AND ILLUMINATION

“YE have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” This is represented as our security against such apostasy or desertion as John has occasion to lament. We live, he says, in perilous circumstances. What has been foretold as characteristic of the last time may be seen virtually realised in our own day. The warning against antichrist need not be put off to a distant date. Already, in too many instances, the spirit of antichrist is discovering itself. To all practical intents and purposes, it is even now the last time to us. It is proved to be so by the prevalence of the very sort of opposition to Christ which in some gigantic shape is to signalise that era. We need not be setting up the phantom or ideal of a coming antichrist that is to torment and try the church of the future. We have enough of antichrists around and beside us now. And they are very near and close;—almost of kin with us. But yesterday they were among us; one with ourselves in privilege, profession, and outward character. The keenest eye could not discriminate between us and them. True, their having gone out from us is a presumption, and indeed a proof, that they were not really of us. That very fact, however, making it plain that they who are still among us are not all of us, may not unnaturally cause uneasiness as to our own standing. But it need not. For there is a difference; “Ye have an unction from the Holy One,” which they have not, “and ye know all things.”

I do not at this stage inquire either into the nature and character of the coming antichrist, or into the common feature identifying all antichrists. I wish rather to dwell upon the ground of confidence here indicated, with special reference to trying times; and in that view I notice these four particulars: I. The anointing or unction; II. The knowledge connected with it; III. The nature of the connection; and IV. The security afforded by the unction and the knowledge against heresy and apostasy.

I. I begin with the anointing: “Ye have an unction,” or the unction, or generally, unction. The term may literally denote anointing oil; so that having unction may mean being anointed with oil. This anointing, or being anointed with oil, you have “from the Holy One;” from Christ Jesus our Lord. For it is he who is meant. The title indeed of “the Holy One” may with all propriety be applied to God absolutely;—to the undivided Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And if the persons are distinguished, it may be applied to the Father and the Holy Ghost as well as to the Son. But the sense of the passage, as well as the general usage of Scripture, points to the Son. In his humiliation, the devils acknowledged him as the Holy One (Mark 1:24). In his exaltation Peter preaches him as such (Acts 3:14). And indeed, before his incarnation, the people worshipped him in his divinity, and the prophets foretold him in his humanity, as the Holy One; the Holy One of God; the Holy One of Israel (Psalm 16:10, etc.) The same application of the term best suits the present text. The Holy One is Christ; the unction or anointing is from Christ, who is himself, as Christ, the anointed One.

There is great significancy in the unction thus viewed as coming from this Holy One. Antichrists are spoken of. These are antagonists to Christ; to the anointed One; to him who is anointed to be the Holy One. You, on the other hand, have anointing from him. The unction which he himself receives, he communicates to you; consecrating you to be holy ones, as he is the Holy One. Thus you are joint-christs with him, while they are antichrists. They are against the anointed Holy One: you share with him in his anointing as the Holy One. They set at nought the unction which he has as the Holy One: you have this very unction from him. Such really is the antithesis. They are antichrists, you are joint-christs; for you have an unction from him as the Holy One, making you “holy as he is holy.”

The holiness here meant is consecration. It is what the Lord indicates in his farewell prayer: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world; and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” This is the unction which you have from the Holy One; from him whom “the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world.”

The anointing is with the Holy Ghost. He is the anointing oil; the oil of gladness with which God has anointed Christ above his fellows; the precious ointment poured out upon him, as the head, that runs down over all his body, even to the skirts of his garments. The unction therefore which “you have from the Holy One” is his own unction; it is identically the same with what was his. He sheds forth upon you and in you the very same presence, power, and influence of the Holy Ghost that was shed forth upon and in himself, when he was about the business for which, as the Holy One, he was consecrated.

In his case that unction was real, sensible, manifest. If we have it from him, it must be so in ours also. It was in him and to him the seal of his acceptance, and the witness of his Sonship; for when the voice from heaven proclaimed him to be the Father’s beloved Son in whom he is well pleased, “the Spirit descended on him like a dove.” We have acceptance in him, and the adoption of sons. And the unction which we have from him is our being sealed, as justified ones, by “the Holy Ghost shedding abroad in our hearts the love of God;” and our receiving, as sons, “not the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,—the Spirit witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.”

In Jesus this unction was, on the one hand, his having always the Holy Spirit helping, comforting, and strengthening him; imparting to him, amid all his toils and tears, such fresh communications out of his Father’s heart, such assurances of his Father’s love and his Father’s nearness to him, as never failed to nerve his soul for its utmost trial; to keep him trusting still in God; and to turn every prayer of nature’s prompting: “Father, if it be possible, let the cup pass,” into the resignation of filial obedience: “Nevertheless, Father, not my will but thine be done.” The unction which we have from him as the Holy One, is our being in the same way upheld by the Holy Spirit in all our goings; our being enabled therefore to show “the meekness and gentleness of Christ;” our making it thus manifest that “the same mind is in us that was also in him.”

Again, on the other hand, in Jesus the Holy One, this unction was his constant and abiding apprehension or realisation of the Spirit moving him to the work for which he was sent into the world. That work was to do the will of him that sent him; to preach glad tidings to the meek; to bind up the broken-hearted; to fulfil all righteousness; to suffer, the just for the unjust; to give his life a ransom for many. The unction which we have from him, that we may be consecrated to be holy ones as he is the Holy One, is our feeling and owning the inward call of the Holy Spirit, moving us in our sphere to give ourselves to the same life-work that always occupied him; to carry out the great design of his coming into the world; to be his wholly and unreservedly, as he was always and altogether the Father’s.

Thus, in all that it can be held to imply of consciously apprehended and sensibly enjoyed favour and fellowship with God, as well as of sacred destination and devotion to God, we share with Christ his own very unction. Whatever is implied in his being anointed with the Holy Ghost we are to realise in ourselves, as having “an unction from the Holy One.” Thus we are christs, as he is the Christ; anointed ones, as he is the Anointed One; the Lord’s anointed, the Lord’s christs, in somewhat of the same sense in which he is so. For we share his anointing; we “have unction from the Holy One.”

II. As thus anointed, we “know all things.” This is not of course omniscience; but full and complete knowledge of the matter in hand, as opposed to knowledge that is fragmentary and partial. The question is between Christ and antichrist; between the truth of Christ and the lie of antichrist. That lie is a denial of Jesus as the Christ; and therefore a denial of him as the Son, involving necessarily a denial of the Father also (ver. 22, 23). But we know the truth; we “know all things” about it. The whole truth concerning Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Father, in all its relations to the divine character and counsels as well as to human experience and hope, we know. We have mastered it, not piecemeal, but entire; or it has thus mastered us. Not a corner of the field, but the field itself, is ours. We know Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, in all the rich and ample significancy of these titles or designations. So we know all things; all things concerning the truth that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

This, in one view, may not be knowing much; but it is knowing what we do know well and thoroughly. And much depends on our knowledge being of that sort; not universal in its range; but, be its range ever so limited, universal in its kind, so far as it goes; universal —full-orbed, as it were, and all round,—as opposed to what is one-sided. The anointing of Jesus, his being the Christ,—what it is, and what it means; his consecration as the Holy One; his oneness as the Son with the Father; all that we know. And we know it, not by catching at some one aspect of the mighty plan,—the great “mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,”—that may happen to suit our convenience, or to strike our fancy, but by a calm, clear, and comprehensive insight into all that it unfolds of the highest glory of God, and all that it contemplates of highest good to man. We look at this great theme, or rather this great fact, in all its bearings; as it vindicates the righteous sovereignty of the Lord of all, while it secures full and free salvation to the worst and guiltiest of his creatures, if they will but own that sovereignty and submit to it.

Hence it is a knowledge having eyes, as it were, on all sides, all round; open to what touches the prerogatives and rights of heaven, no less than to what concerns the interests of earth; full of thoughtfulness about God and what is due to God, as well as about sinful man and what sinful man requires; well balanced, therefore, and guarded against both extremes, the extreme of mere arbitrary rule, or a sort of fatalism, ascribed to God, on the one hand, and that of accommodation and compromise, assumed to meet man’s case, on the other.

We know all things; all the principles of God’s government, all the attributes of his nature, all the features of his character: as well as all the miseries and necessities of man’s lost and guilty state; so as to take them all into account in forming our conception of the plan of mercy, the reign of grace, the method of redemption and salvation. Hence our conception of that economy of righteous love, however far from being perfect, is yet, to the extent to which it carries us, consistent, and, from its consistency, sure and satisfying. We know indeed only in part after all. All the things that we know, we know only dimly and faintly. We know none of them fully, or as we hope to know them one day, when we shall know even as you are known. But still we know them all. For, as Paul testifies (1 Cor. 2:9–12), although “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,” yet “God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God.” And “we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” We thus know them all, the deep things of God, the things freely given to us of God, in virtue of the unction which we have from the Holy One.

III. For the unction which we have from the Holy One, and our knowing all things, are intimately connected.

One might imagine perhaps, that the knowledge which I have been describing as so comprehensive and complete, must be the fruit of leisurely and learned study; of academic training and scholarly research. But it is really not so. If it were, it would be but little trustworthy, especially in any advent or development of the last time, in which antichrist may be coming, or there may be already many antichrists. All experience proves, that of our own day as well as of older ecclesiastical history, that the knowledge of the schools, even when it seems almost to be, humanly speaking, omniscience, is no security for those who have it continuing with us, as John puts it, in our genuine apostolic fellowship. Much study may be a weariness of the flesh, without being either strength or stedfastness to the spirit. The knowledge which alone can be relied on, must be not only the knowledge of all things; but such a knowledge of all things as only unction from the Holy One can give.

In fact, we cannot have true knowledge of any of these things unless we have it by unction from the Holy One. For “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them; because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:13). It is only “he who is spiritual” who “judgeth all things,” who can know them so as to judge them. For he alone is in a position and has the capacity to form a fair estimate or judgment of the relations among the things of God. And it is by their mutual relations that things are really known and judged.

This is a maxim true in all sciences; and not least manifestly so in the science of divinity. If, in the science of astronomy, we would know all its things, all its truths, to any satisfactory end, theoretical or practical; we must get, not the eye of a clown or vulgar stargazer, nor that of Chaldean sage or poetic dreamer, nor that of one to whom the clear calm midnight sky is a confused galaxy of bright gems, a brilliant shower of diamonds shed in rich disorder on the dark brow of nature’s sleeping beauty, but the eye of Newton’s scholar and Laplace’s, who has learned of them to calculate planetary magnitudes and distances and forces, and to bring the whole splendid chaos under the sway of the one simple law that reigns supreme throughout all space. So, in the region of what is spiritual and divine, the faculty of seeing things in their true relations is not elsewhere or otherwise to be acquired, than in the school and under the teaching of the Holy Ghost. It is his anointing of the eye with eye-salve that gives spiritual discernment, not only to understand separately, as distinct objects of contemplation and thought, many of the truths proclaimed and the objects exhibited in revelation, but to perceive how, under the leading and guiding principle of the free, full, and sovereign grace of the glorious gospel, they all assume their fitting places and proportions, and form together one consistent whole. Mere human study might master all that has been ever said or written about God and his works and ways. But still knowledge thus got always runs the risk of being prejudiced and partial. All the articles of all the creeds may be thoroughly sifted, in all their doctrinal, controversial, and historical bearings. The all-knowing theologian may be able to discuss them all, and all about them. But left to himself, and without “unction from the Holy One,” how apt is he to let some peculiar leaning, some personal bias or idiosyncrasy of his own, prevail; exaggerating some one portion, or aspect, or feature of the divine plan, and raising many a cloud of lettered dust, such as may cause endless perplexity and doubt, and sadly mar “the simplicity which is in Christ.” It is not, therefore, any such knowledge of all things that is here commended. Rather, it is that of which our Lord himself speaks when he says: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt. 11:25, 26).

For how does that Holy One, the Son, reveal to these babes the Father, and “all things delivered unto him of his Father?” How but by imparting to them that anointing which he has himself? It is as the Holy One, the Christ, the Anointed, that the Son has all things delivered unto him of his Father, and knows the Father so as to reveal him to us. And it is by making us partakers with himself in his own anointing; by making us christs, the Lord’s anointed, as he himself is the Christ, the Lord’s anointed; by causing us to have the same unction with himself;—that he reveals to us the Father.

How wonderfully, in this view of it, does this unction which we have from the Holy One unite and identify us with the Holy One himself, in respect of our knowing all things! It is indeed a marvellous way of grace and condescension in which the great Teacher teaches us. He does not stand on an elevated platform apart handing down to us the lessons we have to learn, and reporting, as it were, the observations and discoveries he makes. He lifts us up to be beside himself. He puts his own glass into our hand: he puts his own eye into our head: he puts his own intensity of loving gaze into our heart; and bids us look for ourselves; and see the Father as he sees him, and know all things as he knows them; “all things delivered to him of his Father.” Well might Paul say of the spiritual man, thus—by such a spiritual discernment as this—judging all things; himself judged of none: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” For the unction of the Spirit which we thus share with him,—or rather he with us,—gives us the same knowledge of the Father—of all things—that Christ the Son had when he himself received the unction of the Spirit; the same, I mean, in kind, not in degree;—not yet the same in measure, though gradually coming more and more nearly to be so; meanwhile, the same in manner.

What was his manner of knowing the Father and all things about the Father’s will and purpose, when he was here, as the Holy One anointed by the Spirit? Ah! how practical it was! how experimental! how thoroughly a learning of it all by obedience; by suffering; by unreserved submission and acquiescence; by patience; by waiting; by faith, and love, and hope! Therefore, and only therefore, it was in his case a knowledge thoroughly simple, and in its simplicity thoroughly complete. “Little children,” let it be so in our case too. Let us remember his own saying: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.” It was as a doer of God’s will that he, in his human experience, having the Spirit’s unction, knew all things. Let it be as doers of God’s will that we learn to know them too.

And let us remember, “This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom he has sent.” Believing in Jesus we attain to his clear knowledge of the Father and of all things. Clouds of guilt and wrath, of misconception and suspicion, of doubt and fear, are driven away before the rising of the Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings. We walk no more benighted and befooled; stumbling in the dark, amid unseen stones and pitfalls, and dire visionary phantoms. We walk safely and at liberty, knowing all things, seeing all things in the light of God; in the light of his reconciled countenance; in the light of that love wherewith he “loveth us even as he loveth Christ.” It is by the love with which the Father loves him that the Son knows the Father, and all things which the Father has, and which also are his. It is by the love with which the Father loves us as he loves him, that we, having unction from him who is the Holy One, know all things; “the love with which the Father hath loved him being in us, and he in us” (John 17:17–26).

IV. The security which our “having an unction from the Holy One and knowing all things” affords, in trying times, must now surely be seen to be very ample and firm. Others may “go out from us;” it being thus “made manifest that they were not of us;” and may become antichrists, or the prey of antichrist. But “will ye also go away?”—ye who share the very unction and the very knowledge which the Holy One himself has? Is not this your preservative against all error and apostasy? Is it not a sufficient preservative? “To whom will ye go? He has the words of eternal life; and you believe and are sure that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And you are joint-christs with him; and joint-sons with him; and joint-heirs with him. What have you to do any more with idols?—or with the husks of the swine-trough, to which citizens of the far country may be for sending you?—or with seducing lies and doctrines of devils to which you may be tempted to give heed?—or, in a word, with any of the modifications of the way of grace and salvation,—any of the readjustments of the terms of acceptance,—any of the devices for pacifying conscience,—any of the new lights, mystical or rationalistic, sacramental or sentimental,—by which men would fain seek to be wiser than God, and even holier than God, and better than God? Ye who have found Christ, or whom Christ has found; ye who have the same anointing that Christ had; ye who taste and see how good his Father and yours is,—loving you even as he loveth him,—“will ye also go away?”

And be sure that this is the only preservative; the one specific. Much learning, great enlightenment, the intelligence of an age of progress in all that relates to high mental culture and social improvement; intense earnestness, profound study, patient inquiry; anxious searching of the heart and of all that has been proposed for meeting the heart’s wants; devotional feeling; self-renouncing and self-sacrificing humility;—these, and other equally promising means and tokens of good, are found to be no effectual safeguards. Nay, at any season when men’s minds are stirred, their consciences moved, and their souls melted; when the deadness of an age of formalism is giving place to a time of inquiry, of awakening, of thought and sensibility, of speculation and discourse, on things spiritual and divine; the very shaking of the dry bones caused by the wind of heaven may only make you more susceptible of influences, and more open to suggestions, carrying you away from the old paths and the footsteps of the flock, into wanderings in search of rest or of revival, —of peace or of perfection,—that may issue in your being fain at last to believe any prophet and follow any guide, even if he lead you into the arms of an infallible church, or down the steep bank that ends in the dreary void of scepticism and unbelief.

At such an era;—when “it is now the last time, of which ye have heard that antichrist shall come; when even now already there are many antichrists; whereby ye may know that it is the last time;” when, on all hands, too many who seemed to be of us—as serious and as safe as ourselves—are going out from us; “Little children,” see that ye have indeed “unction from the Holy One and know all things.” Be very sure that no ignorance, no emptiness, no vacancy; no unhealed sore and unanointed eye; no halting or hesitating belief; no “vague and doubtsome faith;” will stand in the midst of such peril. Nothing will stand but what is real, positive, satisfying, in your personal acquaintance with God, and your saving knowledge of the things of God; nothing but your having yourselves found the Messiah, the Christ, and your bringing others to find him: that they and you may really become partakers with him in all that he is to the Father as his Holy One, and all that as his beloved Son he knows of the things of the Father delivered to him for us.