The Anointing, the Abiding, the Additions

Before we can receive God’s indwelling Spirit, we must understand three crucial concepts found in scripture: the anointing, the additions, and the abiding.

We learned earlier that Christ has given us several new commandments regarding what we need to do. One of these is to “purge out the old leaven.” Christ warns us five times to beware of the old leaven, which represents the sins, falsehoods, untruths, and errors in the teachings of old man Adam.

Old leaven symbolizes mankind’s sinful nature and the misleading concepts that lead to spiritual death. Understanding sin and its removal through Christ’s crucifixion is essential. Dying with Christ and believing in His resurrection allows us to live anew in Him. When we believe that He rose from the dead after three days and three nights, we also believe that we have risen with Him. His faith becomes our faith in Him.

The abiding of us in His Spirit and His Spirit in us happens through our reckoning it so (Rom. 6:11). The abiding is Christ’s life “made manifest in our mortal flesh.” By faith in His word and His promises, we acknowledge it to be as He says. We may count it done because He has decreed it accomplished.

Christ instructs us to purge out the old leaven to receive God’s anointing, as His word is truth. After our spiritual death and resurrection with Him (Romans 6:1-12), we still carry faults and errors—seeds of old leaven. As we begin, through His strength, to eliminate these false teachings, Christ starts to anoint us. This spiritual anointing is truth (I John 2:27). Christ’s Spirit takes up residence in us gradually—not all at once—as we get rid of erroneous concepts and abide in Him.

The Anointing:

God anoints prepared vessels who have purged out the old leaven, which symbolizes falsehoods. When we purge the old leaven teachings, God will anoint us with more truth. By us eliminating falsehoods, God reveals more and more truths to us. We must remember that it’s the “unsearchable riches of Christ.”

Christ’s words are truth. He said, “Thy word is truth…I am the way, the truth and the life.” And this word (Logos) is the precept of Oneness. We heard it at the beginning, before anything else existed; we dwelled in Him and He in us. It’s “the word which ye have heard from the beginning.” That word is the Oneness of Agape Love—us in Him and He in us all.

It is the oneness of the Father in the Son, and this truth abides in us; we are members of the Son’s body. The anointing = the truth = the Holy Spirit of Truth = God. The additions to the faith are seven facets of God’s divine nature to be added to the Son’s faith that we now have (II Peter 1:1-12).

All of the above are the steps He has laid out to fulfill His purpose: To reproduce Himself—in us.