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Scripture Reading: Exo. 30:25-31; Psa. 133; 1 Pet. 2:5; 1 John 2:18-20, 22-24, 27
The revelation in the Bible is one. No book ever written is more consistent, even though it is composed of sixty-six books that superficially are quite different from each other. The central thought of the Bible is that God desires to mingle Himself with humanity in order that man may become His dwelling place and that He may become a dwelling place to man. God will be the abode of man, and man will be the abode of God. When Moses said in Psalm 90:1, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations,” he was declaring that the highest experience we as human beings can have is to experience God as our dwelling place.
Many of us do not have the thought that we can dwell in God. God is our Redeemer, Savior, and life, but He also wants to be our dwelling place. Our home is where we are most comfortable. It is arranged the way we like it, and we have what we need there. Over the years I have had to stay in many different places. My hosts have generally been most kind and thoughtful, yet even in the places where I received the most gracious hospitality, I usually felt the lack of something that was readily available at home. In our dwelling place we have our food, our clothing, our loved ones, and many little things that are special to us; in short, we have everything. To experience God as our dwelling place means to have everything in Him, or to have Him as everything to us. Have we ever praised God for being our dwelling place?
We also must be a dwelling place to Him. “Abide in Me and I in you” (John 15:4) covers both these aspects. “O Lord Jesus! We praise You that You are our abode. We can and we do abide in You. Even the more, we praise You that we are Your abode. You can and You must abide in us! If You don’t abide in us, where else can You abide? Heaven is only Your throne, and the earth Your footstool. Without us, You have no place to dwell.”
Most Christians think of the heavens as the place where God dwells. But Isaiah 66:1 tells us, “Thus says Jehovah, / Heaven is My throne, / And the earth the footstool for My feet. / Where then is the house that you will build for Me, / And where is the place of My rest?” Heaven is God’s throne, not His dwelling place. Without us, the redeemed human beings, God has no rest. What a wonder that we can be God’s resting place!
The temple in the Old Testament is called the house of God. If you read the Old Testament carefully, however, you will see that the psalmists and priests of old also considered the house of God their dwelling place. David said, “One thing I have asked from Jehovah; / That do I seek: / To dwell in the house of Jehovah / All the days of my life, / To behold the beauty of Jehovah, / And to inquire in His temple” (Psa. 27:4). David’s only desire was to dwell in the Lord’s house and to behold His beauty. He brought out the same thought in Psalm 23. At the beginning of the psalm he was enjoying the green pastures. We may appreciate the riches of the pasture, but to be there is like being in elementary school. If we go on to graduate school, we shall say, “I will dwell in the house of Jehovah / For the length of my days” (v. 6)! The nourishment in the house is richer than that found in the pasture. “They are saturated with the fatness of Your house, / And You cause them to drink of the river of Your pleasures” (36:8). In God’s house we enjoy the fatness. The temple, then, was a dwelling place not only to God but also to all those who loved and served Him.
Once again I would call to your attention that the central thought of the divine revelation in the Bible is not that we be good or even that we be holy. Rather, it is that we abide in God and let Him abide in us. What a wonder it is that man can be thus mingled with God! Here we are, occupying a very little space, yet God would take us as His dwelling place and would say to us, “Man, come into Me and live in Me! Take Me as your abiding place!” This will be for eternity. We shall enjoy Him, and He will enjoy us. He will also express Himself through us.
How could this Divine Being, who is pure, holy, and righteous, be one with us? We are fallen, sinful, corrupted, and condemned. Between the first two chapters of Genesis and the last two chapters of Revelation, there is a long record. During this interval in time, God passed through a process.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God by partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were in fear of the judgment to which God would sentence them. When God came seeking Adam, however, His way was to ask Adam, and then Eve, some questions. Rather than take direct responsibility for his wrongdoing, Adam passed the blame on to Eve and also on God. If God had not given him that woman, Adam implied, this problem would not have arisen. It was the woman who had given him the fruit to eat. Yes, he had eaten it, and that was wrong, no doubt; but the source of his disobedience, Adam maintained, was first God and then his wife. Without rebuking, God then turned to Eve and asked, “What is this that you have done?” (Gen. 3:13). Eve followed Adam’s tactic and passed the blame on to the serpent. By inference, she was also blaming God, who had created the serpent. Without arguing or condemning, God turned to the serpent, who was given no opportunity to explain. He was cursed and told, “I will put enmity / Between you and the woman / And between your seed and her seed; / He will bruise you on the head, / But you will bruise him on the heel” (v. 15). As the man and his wife stood there trembling, expecting to hear themselves sentenced to death, they heard God say that the woman’s seed would bruise the serpent’s head. Eve would live! Adam believed the gospel and therefore “called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (v. 20). Instead of death, there would be seed of this woman, which would bruise the serpent’s head. This is the gospel, which Adam heard from the mouth of God and believed.
The record continues, covering many years of history, until we come to Isaiah, where we have another reference to the seed of the woman: “Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel” (7:14). The seed would be a son, yet he would be called “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). Isaiah further describes Him in 9:6, where he tells us that the child born is the mighty God and the son given is the eternal Father. What wonderful person can this be? Some seven hundred years later, Mary, a virgin, conceived a child of the Holy Spirit, thus fulfilling these prophecies in Genesis and Isaiah. This wonderful One is Jesus, Jehovah the Savior, God with us!
God was now in human form. He was dwelling with man. At this point, however, God could not yet abide in man. Immanuel had to take another step. This He did by passing through death and entering into resurrection. At this juncture He changed from the flesh to the Spirit. “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).
Consider what has been added to God by this process through which He passed. Besides His divinity He has now been compounded with humanity, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Years ago I saw this. Then one day, while I was reading Exodus 30, the Lord enlightened me that the anointing ointment precisely portrays this now-compounded Spirit. Olive oil, which is commonly recognized as being a type of the Holy Spirit, is not the only ingredient of the anointing ointment. Four spices are compounded with it. The anointing ointment is made up of olive oil, myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia. This is the Old Testament picture of the processed and compounded God.
Not much more is said about the anointing until we come to 1 John 2. This passage clearly refers to Exodus 30. Biblical scholars have not been all that clear about the significance of this compound ointment.
As I did in the previous chapter, I would like to speak further on the numbers given us in relation to the ointment. Four, the number of spices, stands for the creature, while three, the number of times that five hundred occurs, speaks of the Trinity. The number four speaks of Christ’s humanity, without which He could not have entered into death. He was crucified in the flesh and thus destroyed the devil who has the might of death (Heb. 2:14).
When we put four and three together, we get either seven or twelve, depending on whether we add or multiply. At the beginning of Revelation there are the seven churches. At the end there is the New Jerusalem, whose characteristic number is twelve. There are twelve foundations, twelve gates, and twelve apostles (21:12, 14), for example. The city has four sides with three gates on each side. When we are first saved, our number is four plus three, or seven. Eventually, the numbers will be multiplied instead of added, and our new number will be twelve.
These four spices are blended with a hin of olive oil (Exo. 30:23-25). Four plus one speaks of responsibility. Four represents the creature, while one reminds us of God the Creator. Thus, God and man are brought together, like the four fingers of our hand and our one thumb.
I trust that we can see how full and rich a picture is given us in the anointing ointment. All we need is included in this processed, compounded God. To stay in Romans 6 and reckon ourselves dead with Christ is not effective. According to our experience, such reckoning is vain. Brother Nee once said that Romans 6 can only be realized and experienced in Romans 8. What is found in Romans 8? It is the all-inclusive Spirit—the Spirit of life, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, His Spirit who indwells us, the Spirit Himself. If we walk according to this indwelling Spirit, who is the compounded God, and have our mind set upon Him, we shall enjoy life, peace, victory, and holiness. All that this compound Spirit contains—divinity, the proper humanity, the death of Christ, and His resurrection—will be our portion.
No doubt many of you have to some extent experienced this, even though you may not have identified it as such. Before vitamins were discovered, people still got the benefit of them by eating the proper foods, even though they did not know what it was in the food that kept them healthy. Similarly, when we take in this Spirit by setting our mind upon Him, by walking according to Him, and by staying attached to Him, we experience His salvation. God’s central thought in His economy is to work Himself into us. This He is doing, first by having been processed and second by anointing us with Himself, the anointed One.
What God is doing is not mainly for you individually. After the anointing ointment was compounded, Moses was told to anoint the tabernacle with its vessels and Aaron and his sons for the priesthood (Exo. 30:26-30). In the Old Testament the tabernacle and the priesthood were two different matters. In the New Testament, however, these two are one. “You yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5). The spiritual house and the priesthood are the same. It is upon this that the anointing comes, rather than being for the individual.
Psalm 133 gives us a beautiful picture of this: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is / For brothers to dwell in unity! / It is like the fine oil upon the head / That ran down upon the beard, / Upon Aaron’s beard, / That ran down upon the hem of his garments” (vv. 1-2). Aaron was a type of Christ; his body was a type of the Body of Christ, the church. The ointment running down from the head over the whole body right down to the hem of his garments depicts the brothers dwelling together in unity.
The anointing, then, is for the Body. If you notice the context of the verses on the anointing in 1 John 2, you will see that such is the case here as well as in Psalm 133. The anointing in the church life made a distinction between those who were true believers and those who were of antichrist.
If you have ever been out of the church life for a while, you may recall that during that time you experienced very little, if any, of the anointing. Yes, you still had the Spirit, but you lacked the ointment running down. On the other hand, as you sit in a meeting, you often have the sense of something running down through you. The message may not be eloquent. The meeting may not seem exciting. The sharing may be weak. You may not understand what is being said. You may even be annoyed with the way the meeting is going. Nonetheless, the ointment is running down over you. Time after time, as you attend the meetings, you will experience this anointing. The result will be a gradual change in you. Some of the divine essence is being added to you. Be sure you come to the meetings! God will be wrought into you! Even if you sit there sullenly disagreeing, the anointing will reach you and work a change in your being. Such is the wonderful anointing upon the Body that you experience in the church life.
You may hear a marvelous speaker and greatly enjoy his eloquence. After the meeting is over, however, your inner sense is that you have not received anything. In a church meeting, in contrast, those who share may be slow and grammatically incorrect. You may tire of hearing the same thing repeated over and over. You may think the meeting lasts too long. In spite of all this, the compound Spirit is being added into your being! Praise the Lord for His anointing in the church life!
