The Unction of the Holy One

Question 4128

The unction of the Holy One is the phrase the older English translations use in 1 John 2:20, where John tells believers, you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things. The word unction simply renders the Greek chrisma, which means an anointing, and the more recent translations read, you have been anointed by the Holy One. So the unction is the anointing, and the anointing is the Holy Spirit himself, given to every believer and abiding in them. John raises it here for a particular and comforting purpose, to reassure a troubled church that they already possess what they need to stand firm against the lies that were threatening them.

To understand the unction of the Holy One we have to read it in its setting, because John is not making an abstract point about the Spirit but addressing a real crisis in the life of his readers. False teachers had arisen and then departed from the fellowship, and the people left behind were shaken, wondering whether they too lacked some secret knowledge that these confident teachers claimed to hold.

The setting of the unction of the Holy One

In the verses just before, John writes of antichrists who had gone out from the church, people who had been among them but were never truly of them (1 John 2:18 to 19). These were early forms of the error that would later be called gnostic, teachers who claimed a higher, hidden knowledge available only to an inner circle and who denied the truth about the Lord Jesus. Their appeal lay precisely in the suggestion that the ordinary believer was missing something, that real understanding belonged to the initiated few. Into that anxiety John speaks his word of assurance, you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things.

The force of it is that the humblest believer in the congregation already possesses, in the indwelling Spirit, everything needed to recognise the truth and reject the lie. There is no secret tier of knowledge reserved for the spiritual elite. The unction of the Holy One belongs to all who are in Christ, and it is enough. This is why John can say in the next breath that he writes to them not because they do not know the truth, but because they do know it, and that no lie is of the truth (1 John 2:21).

Who is the Holy One

The Holy One from whom the unction comes is the Lord himself. The title is used of God in the Old Testament again and again, the Holy One of Israel, and it is applied to Jesus in the New Testament, where even the demons confess him as the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24). The anointing that believers receive flows from him, for it was the risen and ascended Lord who poured out the Spirit on his people. So the unction is no impersonal force but the gift of the Holy One to those who belong to him, the Spirit sent from the Father through the Son to indwell the church. The deity of this Spirit who anoints is taken up in our study of whether the Holy Spirit is fully God.

It matters that the gift is personal, because John is not promising his readers a technique or a deposit of information but the abiding presence of God own Spirit. The unction teaches because the Teacher dwells within. This is the same Spirit whose work of opening the Scriptures to the believer we describe in our answer on the illuminating work of the Spirit.

What the unction does

John tells us plainly what the unction is for. The anointing 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, abide in him (1 John 2:27). The unction teaches. It does not deliver new revelations apart from the word of God, but it opens the mind and heart of the believer to recognise and embrace the truth that God has already given, and it guards him against the plausible falsehoods of the antichrists. The indwelling Spirit authenticates the truth to the soul, so that the believer knows the voice of his Shepherd and will not follow a stranger.

We should not press John words to mean that Christians need no human teachers at all, for John is himself teaching them in the very letter, and the Lord gives teachers to his church as a gift. The point is narrower and sweeter than that. No false teacher can deceive the believer who has the unction, because the Spirit within bears witness to the truth and exposes the lie. The believer is not at the mercy of every confident voice that claims special insight, for he carries the Teacher with him. This is closely bound to the wider question of how the Spirit anoints, which we treat in our answer on the anointing of the Spirit and the filling.

The unction and assurance

The pastoral weight of this verse falls on assurance. A believer unsettled by clever teaching, or made to feel that he is a second-class Christian for lacking some experience the confident few profess, can rest in the truth that he has the unction of the Holy One and knows the truth. The same Spirit who anointed him is the guarantee that he belongs to God and will be kept to the end. The teaching is not a call to spiritual pride, as though the believer needed no growth, but a call to abide, to remain in the truth he has received and in the Lord who gave it.

This is why John couples the unction with the command to abide. The remedy for the unsettling pull of false teaching is not to go searching for a higher knowledge but to remain in what is already possessed, the truth confessed from the beginning and the Spirit who confirms it. The believer who abides will not be moved.

Secret knowledge then and now

The error John confronted has never really gone away. In every generation there are teachers who hint that the ordinary believer is missing something, that true spirituality belongs to those who have received a special experience, a deeper revelation or a hidden key that the rank and file lack. The packaging changes but the appeal is the same, the suggestion that you remain a second-class Christian until you have what the confident few are offering. The answer of John still holds. You have the unction of the Holy One, and you know the truth, and you are not at the mercy of those who trade in secret knowledge.

This does not mean that every claim to fresh insight is false, nor that believers should stop learning from the teachers God provides. It means the test of any teaching is whether it agrees with the truth confessed from the beginning, the apostolic word about the person and work of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit who anoints will never lead a believer away from that word, only deeper into it. When a teaching pulls you away from the plain gospel toward some higher mystery that only the initiated possess, the unction within is meant to sound the alarm, and the believer who heeds it will not be carried off.

It helps to remember that the unction is given for abiding, not for boasting. John never points the believer to his own superiority but to the Lord in whom he is to remain. The knowledge the anointing brings is not a trophy to be displayed over others but a settled grasp of the truth that keeps the soul anchored when the winds of false teaching blow. The proud claim to special insight is the very thing the unction exposes, for the Spirit magnifies the Lord Jesus and not the one who carries him.

So, now what?

If you have ever felt that the real Christians know something you do not, that there is an inner circle with deeper secrets, let this verse settle you. The unction of the Holy One is yours if you are in Christ, and it is enough. You have the Spirit who teaches, and you are not dependent on any self-appointed authority who claims a knowledge above the plain word of God.

Use the unction as John intends, to test what you are taught against the truth you have received, and to reject what fails the test no matter how confidently it is pressed. The same Spirit who anoints you will keep you, if you abide in him and in the word, from being carried off by error.

Do not chase secret knowledge, and do not despise the teachers God has given. Abide in the truth, lean on the Spirit who authenticates it, and you will find the unction doing in you exactly what John promised, holding you fast in the Lord Jesus.

“But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” 1 John 2:20