“But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him” (1 John 2:20,27 NKJV).
The Holy Spirit is God’s permanent antidote to spiritual ignorance among believers. Part of His ministry towards believers is to lead them into all truths. Our Lord had identified the inability of His early disciples to understand some of the things He would have loved to teach them and promised that the Holy Spirit would fill in the gap saying, “I have a lot more to tell you, but that would be too much for you now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into the full truth. He won’t speak on his own. He will speak what he hears and will tell you about things to come” (John 16:12-13 God’s Word). There are truths about God and our redemption that only a redeemed mind can grasp. The fundamental reason for that was that they had not been born again as that time. New birth could not be possible until the sinless Blood of the Lamb of God was shed on Calvary to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29). Hence, the Bible declares that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin” (Hebrews 9:22 NKJV). The redemptive sacrifice of Christ repositioned the believers in a most fundamental way that lends strong credence to the confidence our Lord expressed on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in us. The first is that it enables believers to become regenerated –“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6 NKJV). Being born of the Spirit qualifies the believer as spiritual who can appreciate the things of the Spirit. “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:13-14, NKJV). Believers have the Spirit-imparted capacity to discern and understand the things of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is the teacher-in-residence in every believer in Christ.
Holy Spirit teaches believers all truth, antidote to ignorance. Anointing guides, gives mind of Christ. Trust Him, abide in Jesus.
The spiritually regenerated person has the capacity to receive knowledge directly from the Holy Spirit, because, as Paul explained, “…he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV). Being one spirit with Christ further explains what Paul means when he argued, “For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16 NKJV). Since the Spirit of Jesus is indwelling believers, it is easy to appreciate the assertion that they have the mind of Christ. Thus, having the mind of Christ provides the background for us to understand John when he declared in our text “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” Believers have received the anointing from the Holy Spirit to know every truth requisite for salvation and for victorious Christian living on earth. We now know that we can only gain salvation through the grace of God by faith in Christ alone. Besides, we know that Christ, through His death and resurrection, had destroyed the power of sin, liberated us from its bondage, and empowered us to live above its menacing influence. We now know that the Blood of Jesus has unleashed the supernatural power of God to overcome the devil and his demons and thus checkmate their despoiling activities in our lives. We now know that we are temples of the Holy Spirit and that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. We now know that in Christ we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. We now know that all believers died with Christ and have been raised with Him and are now seated in the heavenly places in Christ. We have the clear knowledge that nothing again can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord and so on.
Indeed, the abiding anointing, our divine teacher-in-residence, which we have received from Christ “teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” We need to cultivate trust in the Holy Spirit so as to receive and believe what He teaches us about the mystery of our redemption in relation to our lives on earth. We must recognise and accept the Holy Spirit, more than anybody else, as our primary teacher. He teaches us all things and can never deceive us. The goal of His teaching ministry in us is to glorify Jesus. Therefore, any doctrine that does not glorify Jesus, by helping us to love God and our fellow human beings should be treated as a suspect because such could not have come from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will never teach us anything contrary to the truth of the Word of God, because God will never contradict Himself. The church has no greater need today than to cultivate intimacy with the Holy Spirit and let Him teach us again about the love that binds us together as one. May the Spirit find you teachable in Jesus name.
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