This anointing teaches us concerning all things pertaining to the Person of Christ related to the divine Trinity. The anointing teaches us that Jesus is Christ, that Christ is the Son, and that the Son is with the Father. If you have these four, Jesus, Christ, the Son, and the Father, you have eternal life. We all should declare, “Hallelujah! I have the eternal life!” Because the Christians have the eternal life, nothing can stop them. The Roman empire did their best to kill all the Christians, but they failed. This shows that the more the opposers try to “bury” the Christians, who are the many grains of wheat, the more these grains flourish and produce many more grains. The blood of the martyrs grows and produces. According to history, any government that persecutes Christians is unwise.
We must realize that the more we prosper outwardly, the less we grow. In this sense, sufferings are lovable and dear. None of us, however, likes to suffer. If all of our children were “straight A” students and grew up to be lawyers and doctors, would this help our growth in life? On the other hand, what if our children were naughty and not so bright? You might kneel down to pray, “Lord, have mercy upon me.” When you pray in this way the Lord as the divine breath gets into you. The breath is this wonderful One. When you pray in this way you may not understand what you are praying, but as long as you pray the breath gets into you.
We all need the deep breathing of this wonderful One into our being. If a father’s son graduated to be a medical doctor, he might not pray that much. He may only pray, “Lord, how good You are. Thank You for my son who is a medical doctor.” He may pray this prayer without really breathing the Lord deeply into his being. If his son, however, got sick and was sent to the hospital, he probably would cry out to the Lord, “O Lord Jesus! I don’t understand this situation. Have mercy upon me, Lord.” This cry to the Lord is the deep breathing. This kind of desperate prayer affords the Lord a way to dispense Himself as the eternal life into our being. All the sufferings and persecution are an aid to this dispensing.
We should abide in the Lord according to the anointing Spirit who is the wonderful One as the compound, processed, aggregate, all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling Spirit. Then in the fact that God has given us of His Spirit, we know that we abide in Him and He in us (1 John 4:13; 3:24). This indwelling Spirit then becomes a reality to us, a testimony. The Spirit being the truth, the reality, testifies that Jesus is the Son of God, in whom is the eternal life (1 John 5:5-12). First John 5:7-8 tells us that there are three who testify—the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Jesus, the man of Nazareth, was testified to be the Son of God by the water He went through in His baptism (Matt. 3:16-17; John 1:31-34), by the blood He shed on the cross (John 19:31-35; Matt. 27:50-54), and also by the Spirit He gave not by measure (John 1:32-34; 3:34). By these three, God has testified that Jesus is His Son given to us (1 John 5:7-10), that in Him we may receive His eternal life by believing in His name (1 John 5:11-13; John 3:16, 36; 20:31). By thus testifying, He imparts the Son of God into us to be our life (Col. 3:4). First John 5:12 tells us that if we have the Son, we have the eternal life, and if we do not have the Son, we do not have the eternal life. We all need to praise the Lord that we have the Son and thus we have the eternal life. This eternal life, this wonderful Person, is our capital, our profit, our victory, and everything to us as Christians.
Jude 20-21 instructs us to pray in the Holy Spirit, that we may be preserved in the Triune God. We should keep ourselves in the love of God by building up ourselves in our holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit (v. 20); thus, we await and look for the mercy of our Lord that we may not only enjoy eternal life in this age, but inherit it for eternity (Matt. 19:29). The entire blessed divine Trinity is employed and enjoyed by the believers in their praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping themselves in the love of God, and awaiting the mercy of our Lord unto eternal life. The enjoyment and inheritance of eternal life, the life of God, is the goal of our spiritual seeking. Because we aim at this goal, we want to be kept in the love of God and await the mercy of our Lord.
Our God, our Savior, and our Redeemer is such a wonderful Person. He is the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, mingled with man. This Triune God-man died an all-inclusive death on the cross and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is compounded with divinity, humanity, human living, the all-inclusive death, and the marvelous resurrection. This is the wonderful One as the compounded Spirit indwelling us to move and to act within us. This moving and acting within us is the anointing to anoint the Triune God with His uplifted humanity, His human living, His all-inclusive death, and His wonderful, excellent resurrection into our being. We are receiving coating upon coating of this compound ointment. The more coating we receive, the more we grow in life. This is not merely a teaching, but a ministering of the wonderful One into all of us.