Jesus anointed of the Spirit

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We should particularly remember that anointing is likened to perfume. Psalm 45:8 is often quoted to refer to Christ: “All your garments are scented with myrrh and aloes and cassia.” Cassia came from the distant Far East. Israel probably obtained it in the wilderness from passing traders. It provided a distinctive fragrance associated only with the dwelling place of God and its priests—it evoked thoughts of God.

Scripture calls Jesus “the anointed One”: “Peter answered and said ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” (Matt. 16:16). Jesus is the Christ, the anointed One. He is as exclusively anointed as He was exclusively the Son of God. Christ is from the Greek word christos, which has the same meaning as the Hebrew word for Messiah.

Everything denoted by the anointing of the tabernacle, priests, and kings is fulfilled in Jesus. Christ is our Priest-King. “Your robes are fragrant …” (Ps. 45:8, NIV). He carried the purity and odour of heaven, that evocative and subtle beauty of spirit that makes Him the anointed One, distinguished from all others. 

He drew people, not merely by power or “charisma” in the popular sense, but by love, moving in the atmosphere of His own holiness, which people had never breathed before. If we can put it this way, Jesus was God’s alabaster box, broken for us on the Cross and now filling the world with His fragrance.

Personal beauty is never condemned in Scripture. Pride, lack of modesty, provocative dress, and flirtation certainly are. God makes people beautiful and does not expect us to belong to the cult of ugliness and make the worst of ourselves. 

The “saints” of the early centuries boasted of the lice population in their hair and beards. Nuns were proud that water never touched their feet except when they crossed a river. God does not take special delight in the quaint, dowdy, or drab. He creates what will delight us, from the glory of the dawn to the majesty of sunset and the spangled velvet of the night sky. 

His dwelling is the light of setting suns. Our very means and genius to create beauty come from Him. Scripture says He “has made everything beautiful in its time” (Eccles. 3:11). “Let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us” (Ps. 90:17). That is what the anointing is.

“The beauty of holiness” forbids pride. Pride is the “dead flies,” which “putrefy the perfumer’s ointment, and cause it to give off a foul odour” (Eccles. 10:1). Our proud efforts at “holiness” are described in Isaiah 64:6: “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” That is because they produce a censorious and condemnatory attitude against those whom we suppose to have lower standards; it’s an unattractive, narrow, and negative correctness while putting on spiritual airs and graces. In a legalistic life, there is no more soil for true fruit of the Spirit than for orchids on Arctic ice.


 

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