That the anointing was an essential ritual act of worship in ancient times, and it also has important meaning in worship todays. So it is significant to search the internal meaning of it.
“Moses anointed the Habitation and all that was therein; and he sprinkled of the oil upon the altar and all its vessels, and the laver and its base, to sanctify them (Lev. 8:10-12; Num. 7:1)
“Jehovah said unto Elijah, Anoint Hazael to be king over the Syrians; and anoint Jehu to be king over Israel; and anoint Elisha to be prophet in thy room” (1 Kings 19:15, 16).
“Thy throne, O God, is for an age and for eternity; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom; thou hast loved righteousness and hated evil; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of joy above thy fellows, with myrrh, aloes, and cassia, all thy garments. Kings’ daughters are among thy precious ones” (Ps. 45:2-9).
The kings were called “the anointed of Jehovah,” and it was sacrilegious to injure them, because by “the anointed of Jehovah” is meant the glorification of the Lord’s Human body. It is the glorification process by which Jesus made His body itself divine – a work only God could do. This is the most holy of all things that bears the highest transformative power in Man. The kings and stones were anointed with oil because this represented Holy worship, it represents approaching the holiness of the Lord which takes place by opening and humbling our soul to his. The kings and stones are not necessarily good, but they represent these holy things. This is how correspondences in the Word work. The words of the Bible are containers of truths.
The human of Jesus is most Holy because He glorified it by unspeakably rigorous works of love and wisdom during His life, works of overcoming all temptation, of defeating all the forces of evil by himself; of exercising the astounding wisdom of fulfilling all prophecy from his might alone. In the process of glorifying His body He utterly transformed the world, saving all of mankind from eminent darkness and destruction. In Him is the Holy Marriage of His divine human and divine soul. He is God and sustains all life. So, to be anointed is to perceive, love, and honor what Jesus did for us, and in so doing to have our soul transform – for the Lord’s divine process of glorification corresponds to our human process of regeneration and salvation.
Swedenborg writes:
“For when the Lord was in the world, He was, in respect to the Human, the Divine truth itself; and in respect to the very being of His life, He was the Divine good itself, which with man is called the soul from the father; for He was conceived from Jehovah, and in the Word “Jehovah” denotes the Divine good of the Divine love, which is the being of the life of all. From this it is that the Lord alone was “the Anointed of Jehovah” in very essence and in very performance, because the Divine good was in Him; and the Divine truth proceeding from this good was in His Human while He was in the world (see the places cited in n. 9194, 9315). The kings of the earth, however, were not “the Anointed of Jehovah,” but they represented the Lord, who alone is “the Anointed of Jehovah;” and therefore on account of this anointing it was sacrilegious to injure the kings of the earth”.
The anointing of the kings of the earth was done with oil, while the anointing of the Lord as to the Divine Human was done by the Divine good and Divine love itself – these gave Him the power within Himself to glorify His body . Because of this He was called “the Messiah,” and “the Christ,” “Messiah” in the Hebrew tongue meaning “the Anointed,” and “Christ” in the Greek tongue meaning the anointed (John 1:41; 4:25). He is called this because He is the ONE who fulfilled all prophecy.
Jesus glorified Himself by a two-fold process. As the Messiah He fulfilled all prophecy from the Old testament. Prophecy is divine truth from the will of God that foresaw all things and was recorded in the Holy Word. In accomplishing each and every prophecy, one by one, He gradually merged the whole Kliedascope of truth into himself, and thus embodied all divine truth. At the same time, He overcome all temptation put upon Him throughout his life, and by doing so He removed all hereditary evil from His body, making His body pure and perfect from the might of His divine soul. In the passion on the cross he said, ‘It is finished’, because He both fulfilled the final prophecy and he overcame the last temptation, achieved the resurrection.
Now we can see what is meant in the Word by “the anointed of Jehovah”. In Isaiah scripture reads:
“The Spirit of the Lord Jehovih is upon Me; therefore Jehovah hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the poor; He hath sent Me to bind up the broken hearted, to preach liberty to the captives” (Isa. 61:1).
That the Lord as to the Divine Human is the one whom Jehovah anointed is evident in Luke, where the Lord openly says so in these passages:
“There was delivered to Jesus the book of the prophet Isaiah. And He unrolled the book, and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; wherefore He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to preach release to the bound, and sight to the blind, to send away the wounded with deliverance, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Afterward, rolling up the book, He gave it to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears (Luke 4:17-21).
The glorification is the ultimate birthing process. The Lord birthed His human body into His divine body above heaven, a work only God could do. The Lord became one with Jehovah, and thus the Father to each and all of us. It is extremely important to understand that in doing this He ‘drew all things unto himself’, meaning He paved the way for all of us to have the light and liberty in our soul to be saved. He made the light and love available to Man exponentially brighter. This is why the Holy Spirit become present to Man after the resurrection. The Holy spirit is the presence of the Lord. They who receive it from the Lord are “sons of God.”
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