He Never Left - Part Two
By John Gavazzoni

In this installment of our series, I have chosen - much to even my own surprise - to probe the meaning of anointing, the anointing, and the Anointed One, and their relationship to the truth that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ ( The Anointed One) the Son of the Living God never departed from this earth following His death and resurrection, and thus, were it not for the all-encompassing sovereignty of God that makes all things serve the divine purpose - even the most flagrant of human folly - , all the hullabaloo about Jesus' return to earth would be a classic case of a stupendous waste of religious time.

To ascertain the unfolding, emerging, ever-with-us presence of our Lord, we must take a probing look at "the anointing which we have all received from the Father." During the Old Covenant economy, kings and priests, particularly, were anointed with oil to signify their election to fill a capacity and carry out a function in that economy. Being anointed, included being equipped by the Spirit of God to carry out one's election and commission.

The officially prescribed substance of/for the anointing was oil, though as an extension of that prescription, an ointment or salve of precious aromatic quality might also be used which, I'm sure, would be essentially a derivative of some kind of, or combination of oils.

The oil of choice, because of its prevalence in the area of the Holy Land, and because of the spiritual benefits implied by its health-inducing qualities, was, of course, the oil of the olive. Being of Italian extraction, the superiority of olive oil, over any other kind (and certainly over most present forms of commercially-processed oils today) was something I, and others of Mediterranean descent, from our childhood, assumed, and quite correctly so.

The thing about oil that ought to inform us in our study, is that, as few other substances, it is the extracted essence of its source. The oil of the whatever contains the essence of that whatever. For years, in my health-supplement regimen, I have ingested oil of (botanically-genuine) oregano as a natural, fierce fighter against infections of all kinds.

I could take Mediterranean-grown, genuine oregano in its dried and chopped-up form in a capsule, but the oil form is much more effective, and immediately so, because, as explained above, it contains, most purely, the essential benefits of the oregano.

With all the religious, carnival-atmosphere hustling going on today about "the anointing," this fundamental truth has been lost: That when God anoints one, He imparts the essence of Himself to that one in/by/as the Holy Spirit. As in the case of the anointing of Aaron as High Priest, we see the beautiful picture of the anointing being poured upon the head/Head and flowing to the whole body from there/Him. Think, of course, Christ, the Head, and His body, the church.

The essence of the administration of God is the impartation from within of the essence of God Himself in the Person of His Son, THE anointed One, and though the liturgical picture was of an external application, it was meant to be understood as a application into (life-giving) the whole, and upon (empowering) the whole man from within the Holy of Holies, which is the renewed human spirit. This began in eternity by the eternal birthing of the Son.

He received the anointing in eternity by virtue of His eternal birth. When one is born, they have passed on to them the essence of the parents. When Jesus was anointed during His time on earth, that anointing came from within Him, and from there, upon Him, for His eternal identity was within Him. That most essential "thing" which was in heaven, had come to earth.

The Primal Anointed One, the eternally-begotten Son of God, has been present since Adam stepped upon the scene of creation, and actually before that (but that will require later investigation in our series). Adam's humanness (what made him what he was) was derived from within the Divine Nature, and was/is the essence of the Divine Nature of the eternal Son of God.

Adam, and we all, - as extensions of that fountainhead of humanity, as it were - are the pure, extracted essence of divinity, though, for a time, subjected to all that He, and we in Him, are not. That is the nature of the futility Paul wrote of in Romans Chapter Eight: To be made to be existentially what we are not, in contradistinction to what we eternally and truly are.

The Anointed One has been mostly concealed within the Adamic race since its beginning. He has always been present with us, in us, as the essence of what we truly are. Where did you think you came from? From nothing, as conventional theology teaches? Did Jesus die for creatures constituted by nothing? Did God breathe the breath of life into something created our of nothing? That, it seems to me, to be the definition of worthlessness.

Anything not having its source, and given its essence from the Spirit-substance of God, is not real. God cannot fellowship with that which is not "bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh." When the Son of God came in the Person of Jesus Christ, He did not come from a distant some place beyond the stars, He came from within the humanity of Mary traced back to Adam, who derived His humanity from the eternal Son of God.

What a mystery! Tracing Mary's humanity back to it's Source, we come to the eternally-begotten Son of God, but when the fulness of the times had come for the as-yet mostly concealed Son to be manifested, He was given His humanity through Mary. Never has there been such an individual manifestation as was seen in Jesus of Nazareth, the singular Son of God - AND there NEVER WILL BE another such SINGULAR manifestation - but all creation awaits His final manifestation in the many sons of God THROUGH Him, PARTAKING TOGETHER of His only/unique/single-begotten sonship. Our Lord is not simply someone more sensitized to His sonship, He is the one through whom all sonship proceeds. That is the divine procession:

The Godhead giving birth to the only-begotten of the Father, and then through Him, out of His loins, just like His Father, He gives birth to many sons in conjugal union with His bride, but since it all started from the loins of His Father, the many sons begotten of the Son are also His brethren. Those are the children God gave Him according to the Book of Hebrews.

The fulness of the Godhead can only be found in the eternal Son, but the fulness of the Son is to be found in His brethren as proceeding from His Father's loins through His loins. This explains why Paul defined the church as the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. The depths of all that is God in Christ unfolds in the sanctity of the humanness of Christ which He shares with us.

As I have so often gone on to explain, the church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, is not some small minority of humanity. The church (not the institutional perversion), finally understood, is the whole of humanity, presently represented by the first-fruits believing community.

The Gentiles (all the tribes/nations/ethnic groups), are members of the same body, they are just ignorant of their corporate identity, an ignorance that goes to the very core of our lostness. This has been a mystery, but by definition, meant to be unveiled, and many of the Lord's ministers can attest to the curtain being pulled aside in countless hearts in our day.

As soon as any group of men and women experience election, left to themselves, without a further infusion of grace-imparted understanding, they will come in time to infer that their election qualifies them as spiritually superior to the great spiritually un-washed masses, and they block off the street of their chosenness to have an elitist block party. They may allow you in, but only as you fit their qualifications.

How are we to be a peculiar and separated people? Why, isn't it obvious! We are to be peculiarly devoid of such pathetic religious ostentation. We are to be separated from that abominably unclean thing. Jesus became flesh - the flesh of us all. yet the flesh that we received from Him in/through Adam. The eternal Son, the Christ, did not become Emmanuel, God with us, at Jesus' birth in the manger in Bethlehem. He became Emmanuel, God with us, in Adam, and has been with us all the way since then.

As Adam, He experienced creature-hood; as Jesus, He experienced creature-hood and Deity perfectly joined together by birth. Adam was not born, he was created. Jesus was born, and His birth had as its source His eternal begottenness, as the womb of Mary was supernally raised to participate in the eternal conception of birthing of the Son of God. That is the meaning of being "born from above." All earthly birth is an aionian manifestation of heavenly birth. That's why Jesus said to Nicodemus, "If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things."

Nicodemus struggled to understand being "born from above," much less having Jesus going on to explain that that which the Spirit births on earth, has been that which has been birthed in heaven. Nicodemus was not prepared to have his identity traced to eternity. Do you recall Jesus saying - as commonly translated - "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven?"

No! No! A very misleading and clumsy translation. It is rather: "Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, is that which is (already) bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth, is that which is (already) loosed in heaven." Whatever is not already in heaven, can never be made to be on earth.

Go to this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three or Part Four, Part Five