We have an anointing from the Holy One, and we know all things. (I John 2:20)
If you’re like me, you’re confronted with your ignorance every day. Sometimes I feel like I’m standing in front of a blackboard filled with mumbo jumbo, trying to determine my next step. Am I doing this right? Am I moving in the right direction? Am I doing a good job? I loved watching movies like Goodwill Hunting and A Beautiful Mind, because I have always secretly wanted to be a genius. Ignorance is my greatest enemy, and knowledge is my dearest friend.
But John says that we have an anointing from the Holy One that causes us to know all things. This is such a strange verse of Scripture because it is obviously not true. Most of us have moments in which we fail to demonstrate the possession of even basic common sense! I am far from omniscient!
Omniscience. This is one of the traditional attributes of God, and I think its a good one. God knows all things. But is John saying that we believers are omniscient as well? Is the anointing of the Spirit a deposit of God’s omniscience in the believer so that, like God, we know all things? The past, present and future? The beginning, middle and end? The deep and hidden things that are hidden from the eyes of men? Do we really know all that?
Well, yes and no. In ourselves we know little to nothing. Modern philosophy has demonstrated that we can’t know much of anything, and that so much of what we perceive to be real in the external world, is more real in our perceiving than in its reality. Kant determined that space and time (in the sense of the way we quantify distances and periods of time) exists not in the world, but in the mind. Space and time are a grid that our minds lay over the material world in order to enable us to operate within it. But its easy for us to think that the things that our minds project upon the world are actually present within it. There is a real sense in which we know little to nothing, and life – as Shakespeare so aptly put it – is a tale told by an idiot.
However, the truth of this verse is found in its relational character. We know all things in one sense: the One who knows all things resides within us. The anointing that we have received from the Holy One is the abiding presence of the Spirit of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Because I am indwelt by the One who knows all things, I am indwelt by the knowledge of all things.
Because of the anointing of the Spirit of God, we are never ignorant, never left in the dark, never without the truth. He reveals to us what we need to know, when we need to know it, so that if we abide in him as he abides in us, he teaches us about all things.
Left to myself, I tend to see my ignorance everyday. But when I keep in step with the Spirit, I am shocked to discover how much I know . . . how much he reveals . . . how much he knows. After all, he searches all things – even the deep things – and reveals them to us.
