Anointed By The Spirit

Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice in the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coast lands wait for his law.
Thus says God, the Lord
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread forth the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it.
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light in the nations,
to open eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
--Isaiah 42:1-7

In this passage, the purpose and the meaning of the anointing of the Holy Spirit is related to a threefold repetition of establishing justice in the nations. In other words, its message is that the coming of the Spirit always has to do with God's purposes of justice, liberation and reconciliation in the world--not just within the believing community but in the world.

I especially like the phrase, "I have called you with a righteous purpose and taken you by the hand." We have been called to this righteous purpose of making justice shine in the nations, but we have not been sent off alone to serve those purposes. Rather, we have been taken by the hand and drawn into a relationship to the One whose purposes we serve in the world. There is an intimacy in this passage, a warmth, and an invitation to a personal relationship with the Lord, that is seen as the beginning and the foundation of establishing justice in the nations.

Those concerned with justice must be concerned with how real, personal and intimate is their relationship to the Lord. And the familiar evangelical concern about our relationship to the Lord, when exposed to the light of this passage, is hollow and empty if that relationship does not have a vital connection with the establishing of justice in the earth. To establish justice is to be a servant of the Lord and to be a servant of the Lord is to establish justice. The anointing for bringing forth justice doesn't take place outside this relationship. The Spirit is given to us in order to sustain us, to uphold us, as the passage says, to provide us with the knowledge of this relationship in order to fulfill God's righteous purposes.

The coming of the Spirit, then, is always related to those purposes. It is not something merely intended for our private edification or ecstatic experience. The coming of the Spirit is to draw us into vital relationship with the Lord whose purposes we serve in the world. The way we in the churches have often so disastrously separated our own relationship to God from his purposes of justice in history is rendered unbiblical and impossible by the passage. Only as the people of God are called into a very primary relationship to their Lord and to each other are they able to participate in God's purposes of establishing justice in the nations.

Suffice it to say that to talk of the Spirit is to talk of justice, and to talk of justice is to talk about being invited into this relationship with the Lord where we feel ourselves to be taken by the hand; we become not just emissaries, but partners and sharers in God's purposes in history.

We read in Isaiah how the anointing of the Spirit would come through a suffering servant who would lay his life down so that justice may shine on the nations. Luke 4:14-21, the first sermon that Jesus preached in his ministry, tells us that this anointing came upon him.

And there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he hath anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives.
And recovering of sight to the blind
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord."

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Jesus makes the bold claim that he is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke. He goes on to say what his distinctive anointing by God's Spirit means concretely in terms of establishing God's justice in the world.

There is much confusion about the question of personal relationship to Christ. According to the scriptures, one cannot conceive of the possibility of relating to the Lord without relating to the purposes of the Lord. And conversely, to try and relate to the purposes of the Lord without relating to the Lord is also misguided and futile. The connection is clear between the personal character of one's relationship to Christ and the purpose of justice for which that relationship is given.

Laying down our lives for justice, for reconciliation, for liberation, and for healing among the nations is not merely an implication of the gospel; it is the gospel. And that is inseparable from being personally related to Jesus Christ; it is the purpose of that relationship. It seems to me that the connection between the anointing of the Spirit and radical participation in God's purposes is key to understanding our mission and identity as Christians. Anything less than that begins to do fundamental damage to the scriptures.

Consider Acts 2:42-47:

And they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the Apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

The suffering servant who would be the vehicle or the means of God's purposes in history was embodied in Jesus. In his own person he fulfilled that prophetic meaning of being God's servant. The Christian community is the gathering of those who, as followers of Jesus, now together bear that same anointing.

The beginning of their anointing is recorded in Acts where on the day of Pentecost, they were all in one place, waiting for God's Spirit to come upon them. They had no idea what their future held in store. They were told to go to the upper room and to wait, and they did. In doing so, they were trusting God fully for some kind of revelation to them about who and what they should be about. Then the account says, "Suddenly there came a sound like a strong and driving wind, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit."

Here were those who had been defeated, scattered, confused; the Spirit came upon them and there was a mighty, bold, confident proclamation of the gospel, repentance on the part of many who saw and heard, and then the establishment of a common life among the believers.

The anointing of the church at Pentecost has the same purpose as the anointing spoken of in Isaiah and then again in Luke 4. The church functions simply as a continuation of the vocation of that servant who lays his life down in history; the servant here is that gathered, corporate body.

The body of Christ has been anointed by the Spirit for the purposes of justice and reconciliation in history. As we lay down our lives for one another, our life corporately then is laid down for the sake of the world. The servant posture that we saw in Isaiah and then in Christ is also the posture meant to characterize the believing community.

In the Acts 2 passage we see clearly how the people of God from the beginning, from the establishment of the church, were totally dependent upon the outpouring of God's Spirit and power in their lives. They weren't going to do anything until they waited and prepared themselves for the coming of the Spirit. Here was a body of people whose confidence and whose power grew out of the relationship to God by the Spirit. Just as the baptism of Jesus identified him as the one with whom God was pleased and the one who would bear this anointing, so this baptism of the Spirit at Pentecost identifies this gathered body as that corporate reality created by God's Spirit for these same purposes.

Such a life means that somehow our lives are intertwined and as never before, recognizing that the posture of servant, the vocation of God's suffering servant, was perfectly embodied only once in one man, but can be embodied in the same way and with the same authority in the gathered community as its members corporately experience God's Spirit.

Clearly then, the vocation and the very identity of the Christian community is to lay down its life for the sake of bringing forth the purposes of God's justice in the world. When the church serves only itself, meeting only the needs of its own members, it has failed in its primary calling, which is to exist for the sake of the world. An exclusive, internal focus on its own life is nothing less than a betrayal of the identity and mission of the body of Christ.

The function of the Christian community is never a withdrawal or a flight from the world. Rather, the question always before the anointed community is where and how to give its life in service of a broken world.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.