You know that the word 'anointed' is a translation of the Hebrew word
'Messiah,' or of the Greek word 'Christ.' The meaning of the symbolic
'anointing' was simply consecration to office by the divine will, and
endowment with the capacity for that office by the divine gift. In the
ancient system it was mainly employed--though not, perhaps,
exclusively--as a means of designating, and when received in humble
dependence on God, of fitting, a man for the two great offices of king
and priest.
Oil was an appropriate symbol. Its gentle flow, its soothing, suppling
effect, and in another aspect, its value as a means of invigoration and
sustenance, and in yet another, as a source of light, peculiarly adapted
it to be an emblem of the bestowment on a patient and trustful and
submissive heart that was saying, 'Lord, take me, and use me as Thou
wilt,' of that divine Spirit by whose silent, sweet, soft-flowing,
strong influences men were prepared for God's service.
Jesus was the Christ, the Messias, because that Divine Spirit dwelt in
Him without measure. If we are Christians in the real sense of the word,
then, however imperfectly, yet really, and by God's grace increasingly,
there is such a union between us and our Saviour as that into us there
does flow the anointing of His Spirit. There being a community of life
derived from the Source of Life, it is no presumption to say that every
Christian man is a Christ.
The word has been used of late with unwise significations, but the truth
that has been inadequately expressed by such uses is the great truth of
Scripture; 'He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit,' and there does
flow the anointing oil from the head of the High Priest to the skirts of
the garments. Every man and woman who has any hold of Jesus Christ at
all, in the measure of his or her hold, is drawing from Him this
'unction of the Holy One.' So, brethren, rise to the solemnity, the
awfulness, the joyfulness of your true position, and understand that
you, too, are anointed, though not for the same purposes (and in humbler
and derived fashion), for which the Spirit dwelt without measure upon
'the First-born among many brethren.'
Kings were anointed; and when that divine gift comes into a man's heart,
it, and as I believe, only it, makes him lord of himself, of
circumstances, of time, and of the world. 'All things are yours, and ye
are Christ's.' There is one real royalty--the royalty of the man who
rules because he submits. Every Christian soul may be described as
Gideon's brethren were described, 'As thou art, so were they: each one
resembled the children of a king,' for if Christ's Spirit is in the
Christian's spirit, the disciple will grow like his Master, and it will
be growingly true of us, that 'as He is, so are we in this world.'
Priests were anointed. And we, if we are Christian people, have the
prerogative of direct access to the Divine Presence, and need neither
Church nor sacraments to intervene or mediate between us and Him. The
true democracy of Christianity lies in that word 'Mine anointed.'