What Is the Anointing?

1 John 2:27: What Is the Anointing?

 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

What type of anointing is it that 1 John 2:27 claims the Christian receives? Is it anything like what was received in the Old Testament? Why does John then say that this means that "you do not need anyone to teach you"? How does an anointing teach us something? Can we now dispense with human teachers altogether?
This verse is a continuation of a thought first introduced in 1 John 2:20, "You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth." References to both anointing and knowing the truth appear in each of the two verses. In the Old Testament the anointing given kings and priests was with oil to consecrate them to ministry. There is clearly a consecration or initiation going on in this passage as well, but there is no mention of oil. By the time of Tertullian ( A.D. 200) anointing with oil was practiced in the context of baptism, but there is no evidence that such a practice occurred as early as the New Testament period. In the New Testament oil is only connected with anointing the sick for healing (Mk 6:13; Jas 5:14-15). Yet the practice of the later church does give us a clue to the meaning here, for the oil meant the reception of the Spirit. Even in the Old Testament the anointing of kings (1 Sam 16:13) and prophets (Is 61:1) is connected with the Spirit coming upon them. Jesus at his baptism is said to be anointed with the Spirit (Acts 10:37-38; compare Acts 4:27; Heb 1:9), and in Luke 4:18 Jesus quotes, "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the Lord has anointed me" (Is 61:1), which was the theme of his ministry. Jesus was never anointed with oil (other than perhaps the perfume poured over him at the end of his ministry in Bethany), but he was anointed with the Spirit, which came upon him at his baptism. It is quite appropriate (and probably a deliberate play on words) that Christians, who are followers of the Christ (which means Messiah, or "anointed one") should bear that same anointing (the root of "Christ" and "anointing" are the same in Greek).
Paul indicates that Christians have been anointed with the Spirit when he says, "He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come" (2 Cor 1:21-22; the grammar indicates that this is one event, not several). The experience of the Spirit was a normative part of early Christian initiation. Paul explicitly denies the modern idea that one is not supposed to experience or feel anything at conversion when he argues that one knows if one is a Christian because of the presence of the Spirit within (Rom 8:9; see 1 Jn 3:24; 4:13). Acts also connects the reception of the Spirit to Christian initiation (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:15-17; 10:44-48; 19:5-6).
In the New Testament, then, baptism is normally associated with the experience of the Spirit, as are repentance from "dead works" and commitment to Christ. The four form a complex, but they are not interchangeable with each other. All need to be present for the complete initiatory experience. The data of Acts shows that at times the order of the events is different, and in some cases the various parts are separated by some time. But the assumption of the New Testament writers is that all four are present. Thus in 1 John 2:27 the anointing is something that has been received at a past point in time, the point of Christian initiation. However, John is not discussing baptism here, and therefore does not identify the anointing he is talking about with baptism.
John also does not identify the anointing with the Word, although he does not place Word and Spirit over against one another. In 1 John 2:24 we read, "See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father." The "what you have heard from the beginning" is the apostolic witness to Christ (1 Jn 1:1-3), which in the Gospel of John became Scripture. Those anointed are not the false teachers who have rejected this apostolic witness and left the orthodox Christian community, but precisely those who have accepted the witness, in which it remains. We see a similar continuity between the Spirit and Christ in John 14:26 and John 15:26. There is no conflict between the Spirit and the gospel tradition. Yet the two are not the same. The anointing is not "that which you have heard," but a complement to it, the Spirit within.
Those who have the Spirit (in whom it "remains," a continuing action), then, "do not need anyone to teach" them. This again parallels what we read in John 14:26 and John 15:26, not to mention the ongoing revelation of John 16:12-15. John has at least three reasons for writing this. First, the false teachers were probably claiming to have some secret knowledge into which they had been initiated and which the orthodox Christians did not have. Nonsense, says John, you yourself have the real, not the counterfeit. Unlike them you have Truth himself within.
Second, these people already have received the apostolic witness and remain in it, the anointing of the Spirit showing them that it is indeed true. There is no need for supplementary teaching, for they already have what is true. Third, the Spirit within will guide them into truth. While teachers may be helpful and an exhortation or teaching like 1 John useful, John trusts that the Spirit himself will be the real teacher, showing them the true and exposing the false, just as Paul trusts that the Spirit will lead Christians into righteous living (Gal 5:16, 18, 22-26) and James expects the "wisdom that comes from heaven" to bear the proper fruit (Jas 3:13-18). Christians who are listening to the Spirit should "smell a rat" when they see false versions of the faith or outright evil, and they should recognize the family likeness in that which is of God.
Unfortunately, Christians often do not listen to the Spirit, and when they do their perceptions can be warped, so the external guidelines of Scripture are always necessary. Furthermore, in the process of conversion the human teacher also instructs students in the truth, the apostolic witness, which they must accept and remain in to receive this anointing. Again John does not separate Word from Spirit or substitute one for the other, but he does recognize that the Spirit should be giving true discernment to the believer. Since he still has a place for the Word, John also has a place for human teachers, yet he recognizes that they may fall into error and it may be hard for Christians to sort out the true teacher from the impostor. It is the discernment taught by the Spirit that John believes will enable the believer who is committed to Christ to see correctly in this situation. The human remains important, but the divine Guide is the one in whom John places his ultimate confidence.
This passage is difficult, then, in two ways. First, it relies on our understanding the Jewish background of anointing so that we will connect it with the Spirit and Christian initiation. Second, it expects our experience of the Spirit to be real enough that we will understand that the Spirit himself does indeed teach us and lead us into truth. The challenge of the verse is to live in this experience, not in rejecting the role of the Word, for John never does that and in fact easily slips back and forth from Spirit to Word, but in so walking in obedience to the words of Christ in Scripture and the inner voice of the Spirit that we recognize immediately when the world tries to seduce us through that which claims to be Christian but is tainted in some way.