Oil of Gladness

He answered, "The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash'; so I went away and washed, and I received sight." (John 9:11)

I previously visited this concept of anointing that took place with this blind man. But I want to come back again and meditate on the whole concept of anointing and the real implications of what it means.

It is too easy to get trapped in the external hang-ups surrounding ordination, anointing etc. Traditions and assumptions can quickly take over the discussion while the spirit and truth can easily be pushed to the background. But I find that the issues of the heart are most important to focus on when it comes to the things of heaven if I want to better grasp what God has in mind for the various activities mentioned that are connected with the Christian life.

You love righteousness and hate wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions. (Psalms 45:7 NKJV)

God's anointing apparently has more to do with revitalizing the heart than with some external form of commission or permission to do some work in the church. In fact as I understand it, the church or the body of Christ is supposed to act more along the lines of simply acknowledging and affirming what God is calling someone to do in their life rather than setting up narrow restrictions around them or playing politics with predetermined church offices. We need to get back to living in synchronization with the Spirit rather than ignoring heart issues in favor of external trappings and artificial designations.

I heard an excellent explanation of the relationship between Paul and the church of Antioch that really helped to make sense of this issue of ordination or anointing. Rather than being the initiator of setting Paul and Barnabas apart for the ministry to spread the gospel to the world, this church simply recognized the compulsion of God upon these men and were in reality setting themselves apart as sponsors and support family to launch these men out to do what God had laid upon their hearts. The church was not only dedicating these men to a particular service but were also committing themselves to honor, support, encourage and cheer them on in every way possible. That gives a whole different spin to the idea of church offices or assignments.

How revolutionary it would be if we took seriously this way of living together in the body of Christ. What if we discarded the tradition of filling slots called church offices or positions and instead rather sought to discern how God may be calling and gifting someone to live passionately for Him and then seek to support them in that calling. I have heard a few instances of where a group of people chose to do this and the results were electrifying and exciting. Some very unusual gifts and callings emerged as people chose to allow God to define individual's roles in His family rather than trying to squeeze them into predetermined molds.

If we were to view people's function in the church – or the body of Christ as I prefer to think of it – from the angle of discerning God's impressions and urging in their lives that were unique for them and their personality, I believe we would see far more joy and effectiveness in people's service for God rather than the infighting and general malaise that is seen among us today. Rather than grasping for positions of power and influence in the corporate structure of church now modeled after the world's way of operating, we might see the life of Jesus being revealed in the lives of people motivated and captivated by His love and presence in their lives. The body of Christ would then be transformed from a stagnant, complacent club into a powerful magnet drawing millions to want to know Christ better for themselves.

Of course, not everyone is going to respond positively to the energized testimony of a person thus anointed. This story of the blind man who was anointed with joy to witness to the religious elite reveals he was not able to break through their hardened hearts and bring the gladness of heaven into their lives. But his testimony is not over and the effect of his brief appearance in the gospel continues on with great effectiveness. The passion of his testimony for Jesus still carries the ring of the joy one might expect in a man transformed in such a dramatic way after so many years of darkness.

According to the original language, this man was appointed as an apostle for Jesus to carry the good news about God to whomever would listen. This is really what every calling and gifting of God is all about. The true body of Christ is made up of many members with wide varieties of talents and gifts. But all of them are for the purpose of drawing others closer to Jesus, for changing and improving our pictures of God and for the purpose of increasing our love for Him and our maturity level. Anything other than this is a cheap imitation and falls into the category of counterfeit, external, empty religion.

Most of us have little appreciation for the intensity of the joy this man must have felt upon receiving his sight having never experienced vision before. Undoubtedly his life was filled with joy and gladness and he was unashamed to share the wonderful truth about Jesus even in the face of intense hostility and even abandonment by family and friends. That is the nature of a true calling on a person's life when God really gets hold of the heart. We become unafraid of the structures of men for they are only imitations and artificial fabrications compared to the realities of heaven we experience in our heart.

I want that kind of energizing, emboldening encounter with Jesus. I want my spiritual eyes to be opened and to come to see things I have never seen before and be filled with joy I have never dreamed possible before. I want my life to be so consumed with passion for speaking the truth about God and vindicating His reputation that no one or no threat will be able to intimidate or sway me from speaking the joyful truth about God to everyone. Of course there will inevitably arise intense resistance and repercussions from such testimony. But that is the natural outcome of the polarizing effect of the gospel. The lies of the enemy about God will never surrender to the truth about Him and each person must choose what they will believe in the end. But which witnesses they choose to believe will in turn shape their own testimony and becomes the factor that determines their own final destiny.

Father, I long to have this kind of encounter with You. I am tired of living in so much darkness with light all around me. Send Your Holy Spirit to bring healing to my heart, to enlighten my eyes, to energize my heart and life to empower me to fulfill the calling and destiny You have intended for me in Your family here on earth. Do this for Your name's sake, to enhance Your reputation and to bring honor and glory to You.

Customized Healing

When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes. (John 9:6)

What was going through this man's thoughts and emotions on his way to the pool? Whatever it was I strongly suspect that it resonated with the attitudes and disposition that had been growing inside of him, ripening for this very moment when he would encounter Jesus in his own fullness of time.

What were others saying to him on the way to the pool? Remember, he couldn't see anything and now his eyes additionally had mud plastered all over them which made his blindness even more obvious to anyone looking at him. Some may have laughed, some jeered after asking why his face was so dirty, some may have even scolded him and tried to discourage him from believing in such 'magic'. But deep inside the heart of this blind man was stirring a hope that he would not allow anyone to steal from him and whatever the obstacles or no matter how long it took, he was going to press through to the pool and do what Jesus had asked him to do in hope that the impossible would actually become a reality.

I can imagine the adrenaline pumping through his veins as he hurried faster than maybe what was safe for a blind man toward a pool of water. How far away was the pool? We don't know, but it was far enough away that he became separated from Jesus and didn't reconnect with him until Jesus looked him up some time later to encourage him. It is difficult to grasp or appreciate the emotional perspective of a person born blind, never having seen anything in their whole life and relying on others to describe things that have no internal point of reference about things outside the grasp of the other senses. Suddenly a man comes along who not only challenges accepted paradigms about God and how He feels about you in a most radical way, but offers to bring about a healing miracle of God for you that has never been heard of from the beginning of history. Talk about stretching the belief envelope, this man was being asked to act on an offer that had been assumed by everyone in the world to be absolutely impossible and out of the question. How would he respond?

On his way to the pool did he begin to wonder about the 'what ifs'? Or did he dismiss them firmly in favor of choosing to believe in the impossible? Maybe he had spent all of his previous years sorting through all the 'what ifs' and was finished with them. Maybe his heart had already been questioning the prevailing assumptions about God and how God felt about people like him and he was ready to part ways with the mainstream beliefs of those around him. Based on his ensuing testimony that is as radical as his healing, it seems to me that this man was not your typical conformist and was finished with being trapped in a victim mentality. He was already thinking outside the box and was not afraid to stand up openly to the religious assumptions and intimidations that were so effective in keeping everyone else firmly under the control of the established system.

But why did Jesus use such a unique way of healing this man that was so different than how he healed other blind people or even other maladies for that matter? Usually Jesus touched people or just spoke a word of healing into their lives. However, there is a very interesting story of Jesus custom healing a blind man in Mark 8:22-26 that has similarities to this one and also with very interesting differences. It might be instructive to compare these two stories to see what might be learned from looking at them in parallel.

What seems to emerge for me is that Jesus related to each person in such as way as to bring about the greatest resonance with the condition of their own heart. Many people He healed instantly, some He challenged to expose some level of unbelief before they were healed and some He never even attempted to heal because of their level of unbelief. But in instances like these two, it is fascinating to see how Jesus customized His approach to them to not only relate uniquely to them as a person but also to create a vital spiritual lesson for others to observe.

Why did Jesus sometimes involve a person and solicit their 'assistance' in their healing process while many others He apparently did all the work Himself? I don't have a complete answer for that but I think it is an excellent question to raise as a means of learning more about God. If this man had insisted that Jesus heal him with a Word instead of leaving Jesus to wash the mess off his face and hope for something strange and spectacular to happen to him, he would likely have not had the same outcome – or maybe something else would have transpired. But like Naaman in the Old Testament, taking an alternative route to healing would likely not have been a good idea. When God makes an offer with unique conditions for us to participate, it is very likely that these conditions will be tailor designed to address our unique perspective and possibly some deep issues that we need to face in order to bring about a more complete effect in the healing God desires for us.

It is so easy to get hung up on a formula, to try to figure out the details of how God relates to people and think that if we can just get the same details to all line up that the same results might happen for us. But this kind of thinking is really along the lines of magic, and it also fails to take into account that God relates to the heart primarily, and because each person's heart is different then God's way of relating to that person may take on a different form externally. And while there may be similarities between the way God relates to different people with similar problems it is not a given that He is going to relate to everyone in that same way.

God's heart and primary desire toward us is that we be healed and be drawn into a trusting, responding, loving relationship with Him – that is His ultimate purpose and goal. He is eager to sweep away all the obstacles in our hearts and minds that block us from fully trusting Him – and there are many. But because love can only exist in total freedom of our will, He must wait until we are ready to let go of our false ideas about Him, our unfounded fears, our misconceptions that keep us mired in unbelief. But when we are ready on any point to move another step closer to His heart He will be there showing us how to cooperate with Him through our own experience of customized healing.

My healing may look rather strange to someone else and may break the paradigms we have about what healing should look like. Or maybe my healing might look like a rubber stamp of someone else's experience, but from my perspective it will still be uniquely designed to meet the distinct longing of my own soul. Jesus put clay made from dust mingled with His own spit on this man's eyes. The other blind man mentioned above had Jesus spitting right on his eyes and then Jesus' hands placed on them. Even then the initial results were almost bizarre – seeing men looking like trees walking around. (I've always wondered how this blind man knew what trees looked like to start with if he had never seen them before.) Did Jesus fumble this healing? Did He make an 'oops' and have to try again? Or was something else much deeper going on here that addressed some hidden issues in this man's heart as well as providing a pointed lesson for the Jews who also had confused notions about reality?

The good news in both of these stories is that these men were once blind but now they could see wonderfully clear. And clearly in both of these instances Jesus intended to make a spiritual point about the blindness that all of us need to be healed from. I know I want that healing and I crave it deeply. Sometimes I get glimpses of what I think is intense light and begin to see things so different in the other reality that I long to just jump into that realm of living and leave this world behind. But Jesus is customizing my healing journey and asks me to participate in some way with my own healing as He draws me closer to His heart and teaches me His ways.

Jesus, please keep healing me.

Dramatic Identity Shift

[Jesus] said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent [Apostle]). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, "Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?" (John 9:7-8)

My perception and heart-level belief about my real identity is maybe the thing that I struggle with the most in life. As I read this story about a man born blind that is suddenly and radically transformed in a few minutes in the presence of Jesus and then thrust into the position of dueling with not only his family and acquaintances but with the highest authorities of the country almost immediately, I can't help but wonder in amazement at what God might do next. And the more that I meditate on this story the more convinced I am that I too am born blind and am in desperate need of healing and a new sense of identity as well.

These two verses jump out at me as being all about perception of identity and the value associated with that identity. This man had spent his whole life being labeled and classified by his handicap and disability. And this particular classification of blindness seems to have carried with it an even greater stigma and cultural shame as is discussed later in the story than just incidental blindness. A person who was born blind was considered to be under a specific curse of God because of some great sin, even if it was not openly apparent what that sin may have been. The spiritual dishonor associated with blindness from this cause was very intense for such a person and consequently their concept of God would have been strongly influenced by such a belief accepted by nearly everyone around them all of their life.

This man therefore, was not just physically blind but was very likely spiritually affected because of the way he was viewed by his society. But in a strange sort of way his spiritual blindness was much easier to heal by Jesus than the self-induced and reinforced blindness of the leaders who seemed to have a vested interest in keeping society locked firmly under the influence of the distortions of God that the leaders perpetuated. They had so shaped religion to serve their own interests at the expense of others that they believed they were serving God while all the time they were terribly misrepresenting Him, even suppressing and opposing the very Son of God who had come to correct people's dark views of God.

As Jesus had evidently just been run out of the temple area for irritating these Jews too much, He came across this man who was living under the dark influence of these very leaders and who's sense of identity had been almost entirely shaped by their mistaken views of how God feels about people. His sense of value and identity as referenced in the following verses was strongly influenced by those who all his life had viewed him as a beggar, one who was generally worthless, one who could not do anything useful but could only sit and beg hoping to gain sustenance from the occasional mercies of passersby. It says here that they previously saw him as a beggar, the one who used to sit and beg.

But when Jesus came by, He did not look at this man as someone hopeless, someone cursed by God as even His own disciples had assumed. Imagine what must have gone on in this man's mind as he overheard the conversation between Jesus and His disciples standing there discussing him and the surprise and hope that must have sprung up in his heart as he heard comments about himself that Jesus made. This was likely the first time in his life he had ever heard such affirming words, words that refuted unequivocally the shameful assumptions about his identity that he had lived under all of his life. For the first time he heard someone challenge his demeaned status in society and his heart must have leapt with hope as he wondered what this unusual person might say next.

Jesus not only challenges the status of this man in the eyes of society but refutes the assumptions about him and about how God viewed his situation. In a few short words Jesus undoes all that society and his parents had done to suppress his heart and stifle his spirit. Jesus brings freedom, hope and love into a heart that had known precious little of any of these things most of his life. Then Jesus demonstrates how God felt about him by going through a most unusual routine by which he solicits the man's assistance in his own healing. John, the apostle who is writing this story, carefully makes sure the reader does not miss the point that Jesus in essence commissioned this man as another apostle, implied in the meaning of the name of the pool where Jesus sent him to wash his eyes.

The method that Jesus used to heal this man's blindness was a very unusual and unique way that never was used on anyone else. Jesus reaches back to the very dawn of creation when He himself had knelt down and done something similar in the forming of Adam from the clay of the earth. Only this time instead of forming the whole man He only addresses the malfunctioning part and re-forms this man's eyes bringing life out of the clay by mixing into the dirt the very saliva of the great Creator. Then the stirring sentence emerges that summarizes the dramatic change in this man's sense of value and identity and that transforms his life forever. So he went away and washed, and came back seeing. This is in stark contrast to the identity those around him still tried to label him with in the face of clear evidence of his new condition.

Plan B

Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. (John 8:59 – 9:1)

The context here is that Jesus had just finished speaking at length with religious leaders who were so stubbornly blind in their hearts and minds that it was impossible for Jesus to get their attention on heavenly things as Jesus understood them. Although Jesus had the truth about reality clearly about Him and repeatedly expressed it in various ways to anyone willing to listen, it was rare that many were willing to open their minds enough to receive much of what He was offering.

Yet the purpose of Jesus coming to this earth was not to show us how stubborn and sinful we are but to reveal to us how good and gracious and caring God is. This is why Jesus never gave up trying to reach people who resisted His appeals and loving advances and entreaties. Although the religious people were the most hostile against what Jesus had to say about God, He refused to give up His purpose to do everything possible to win them over to God. But at times He had to change His methods when people made it absolutely clear that they would no longer allow Him to speak to them. God is very keen on the issue of freedom, even for those who don't even believe in it themselves. So when the religious leaders picked up stones threatening to kill Him for saying things they didn't like, Jesus obliged and left their presence and the temple they so insisted on controlling and running their way.

But this did not mean that Jesus had given up trying to reach their hearts. Rather than feeling resentful or bitter about the treatment He received from them, He rested in the care and guidance of His Father. Possibly on the way out of the temple He felt impressed by the Spirit that this blind man had been strategically placed there as the next best option to try to reach the hardened hearts of those He longed to save. Although they had pushed Jesus out of their presence, Jesus knew that this blind man would be able to say and do things on His behalf that could initially get past the resistance these leaders had formed against Jesus Himself. The actions and words of this blind man once healed would act as an overwhelming testimony to convey the very message that Jesus was trying to convey about God that they would no longer allow Him to deliver personally.

Jesus says as much in verse 3 when He answers His disciple's question about the blind man by stating that this man had been foreordained to be there and available for Jesus for this very moment. Since the Jews had refused to believe Jesus or to allow Him to display the works of God among them, Jesus turned to this blind man to display the works of God for the same purpose. Even though He was willing to respect the prejudiced hostility against Him by the Jews, He was ready to use the service of another person who did not yet have such prejudice blocking his access into their midst.

In verse 4 Jesus tells His disciples that we must work the works of Him who sent Jesus into the world. The works of God are to reveal in every way possible the truth about what God is really like and how He really feels toward His children despite all the lies circulating about Him. God is seeking anyone and everyone to work His works in order to reach as many as possible in every way possible to reconcile them back into a trusting fellowship with Him.

If we refuse and resist the works of God from one direction, God is ready to come at us from another direction through another venue or person until we either give in to His loving entreaties and let go of our confused resistance to His love, or we so steel our hearts against Him that we destroy all capacity to receive and return love forever. But it is never God who runs out of patience and suddenly turns into a vindictive judge out to punish evil-doers, it is our own sin and hardness of heart that brings on the ultimate sad fate of the lost upon their own lives. God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are ever and will always be in the business of reconciliation and redemption. But they also believe in freedom as the only atmosphere in which true love can thrive so they do everything possible to bring us into that relationship of love unless we make it impossible for them to do any more, or we surrender and are drawn fully into that love. The choice is always ours.