Can we still talk about anointing without falling into manipulation

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Faced with the manipulation we observe in charismatic churches (or revival churches) around the word "anointing," we must ask what it truly means, from a biblical standpoint, to be anointed, and whether one can still be anointed today.

A reality for all Christians, not an elite

Scripture teaches you that if you are a Christian, you are anointed. If you have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God, you are anointed. This is not a feeling, it is not an emotion, it is not an experience to be felt. It is an objective reality, tied to your position in Christ and not to what you experience.

1 John 2:20 says: "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge."

Look closely at this word "all." The apostle John is addressing the whole body of believers, not a particular category. This is reserved for no chosen few. There are no Christians who would possess a super-special anointing that the rest, the "ordinary" Christians, would not have. That would amount to dividing Christians into classes, those who have and those who don't, as if to say "he is anointed, he has a great anointing." This would then lead to a spiritual hierarchy, with an elite of "anointed ones" at the very top and a mass of mere believers below, exactly the opposite of what the New Testament teaches.

No, if you are in Christ, you are anointed. There is no class division in Christianity. We are one in Christ, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

A notion distorted for manipulation

This is therefore a false understanding of a biblical reality, and it is used to manipulate people. It also serves to elevate this or that false prophet or false apostle, to raise him to a status above everyone else, as if he had a different source of authority, a unique access to God, divine revelation and knowledge received directly from the Holy Spirit, from Christ himself.

This supposed channel from heaven to various false teachers becomes their means of isolating themselves from any critical examination:

"You don't find that in the Bible? Don't worry, I have the anointing."

So if you don't find it in Scripture, don't worry, he possesses this privileged access to God, and we, mere listeners, cannot touch him or criticize him, because one must not "touch the Lord's anointed."

The distortion of "Touch not mine anointed"

This verse, moreover, "Touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm" (Psalm 105:15; see also 1 Chronicles 16:22), is systematically twisted from its meaning. In its context, it concerns the protection God granted to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they were strangers and vulnerable among the nations. It is in no way an immunity clause forbidding the evaluation of a contemporary teacher's doctrine. This text is brandished to cut short any legitimate question, presenting criticism, even when grounded in Scripture, as a spiritual assault, or even an offense against God himself.

The biblical call to examination

Yet it is precisely the opposite that the New Testament recommends:

• The Bereans are commended because they "examined the Scriptures daily to see if what they were told was true" (Acts 17:11).
• Paul commands: "Test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
• John commands us to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1).

A teacher's authority therefore never rests on an unverifiable anointing he claims for himself, but on the faithfulness of his teaching to the written Word, the only measure to which every believer, precisely because he too is anointed, has the right and the duty to submit it.

The anointing as illumination by the Holy Spirit

I believe we must first understand the anointing as the promise of an illumination by the Holy Spirit to understand the Word, and you too have received it. We possess not merely the teaching, but the very Author of the Word, that is what the anointing is. This is why we do not need human teachers, and that is precisely what the rest of the verse says.

1 John 2:27 continues: "But the anointing that 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, just as it has taught you, abide in him."

John obviously does not mean that pastors and teachers are useless, the same New Testament presents them as gifts from Christ to his Church (Ephesians 4:11), but that we do not depend on a caste of initiates who alone would hold the key to truth. You do not need to be taught according to human wisdom.

The anointing you carry is the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, which leads you to a true understanding of Scripture. Every believer possesses it, it comes with the presence of the Holy Spirit who dwells in him. You could not live the Christian life if you could not understand the Bible. And we know that "the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him" (1 Corinthians 2:14), but you have the mind of Christ.

Why do you have the mind of Christ? Because, according to 1 Corinthians 2:16, the Spirit teaches the deep things of God, even the "depths of God" that only his Spirit searches (1 Corinthians 2:10). This is what the anointing is, not a mystical aura reserved for a few, but the ability, given to every child of God, to receive and discern his revealed truth.

The distortion of the Old Testament meaning

But you are right, they use this word in an Old Testament sense, as if it designated a prophet, priest, or king anointed during an official ceremony, such as Aaron consecrated with holy oil (Exodus 30:30) or David anointed by Samuel (1 Samuel 16:13). They use it to place themselves above ordinary mortals, so elevated that they would escape all criticism.

"I have God's anointing." Yet this ritual anointing belonged to an old order, that of shadow and figure, now fulfilled in Christ, the only true Anointed One, the Messiah (literally "the Anointed"), priest, prophet, and king all at once. To claim such a status for oneself is to usurp what belongs to him alone.

I believe we must add that this kind of activity has nothing to do with Christianity, it is paganism. It follows the same logic as the priests and magicians of ancient religions, who claimed to hold exclusive knowledge hidden away in order to better dominate the crowds. This is, frankly, a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, for it attributes to a man, for his own prestige, what is the common and gracious work of the Spirit in the hearts of all the redeemed.

The manifestations linked to the laying on of hands by the one who claims to be anointed

In these circles, the claimed anointing is often accompanied by spectacular physical manifestations supposed to prove its reality. You see people falling backward, seized with trembling, overcome with uncontrollable laughter or convulsive weeping, as soon as the "anointed one" touches their forehead or blows on them. These phenomena are presented as visible proof of a transfer of divine power, an "anointing" that would pass from the man to the believer through the channel of his hands.

Yet Scripture never connects the laying on of hands to this type of demonstration. In the New Testament, this gesture serves to commission servants for a task (Acts 6:6; 13:3), to convey a gift related to prophecy (1 Timothy 4:14), or to accompany a real and verifiable healing (Acts 28:8), never to provoke an emotional spectacle set up as proof of spirituality. Nothing in these texts suggests that a man can make spiritual power circulate through mere contact, as one would transmit an electrical current.

You must also remember that comparable physical manifestations, trances, falls, bodily convulsions, cries, exist in many pagan religions and occult movements, with no connection whatsoever to the Spirit of God. The spectacular nature of a phenomenon therefore proves nothing about its origin, it can just as well stem from collective suggestion, from psychological expectation sustained by the atmosphere, or even from a deceptive spiritual influence. The true criterion always remains the same, conformity to the Word and the lasting fruit of holiness it produces, not the intensity of the emotion felt in the moment.

Freeing yourself from this dangerous, cult-like manipulation

How can you escape this hold once you have been subjected to it? The first step consists in recovering the Berean reflex, bringing everything back to Scripture. No teacher, however charismatic, should be believed on his word alone. If what he asserts cannot be verified in the biblical text, read in its context, then it must be set aside, whatever anointing he claims for himself.

Next, you must expose the mechanism of fear. Manipulative systems function by presenting doubt as rebellion, questioning as sin, leaving as a betrayal that would draw down God's judgment. Sometimes there are open threats, leaving the group would mean "touching the anointed one," exposing oneself to a curse. But the Gospel is never a prison, Christ sets free, he does not bind, "For freedom Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). Where spiritual intimidation reigns, the Spirit of God, for his part, produces "love, joy, peace" (Galatians 5:22), not terror.

It is also essential to break isolation. Cult-like manipulation thrives behind closed doors, where the believer is cut off from any outside voice, from his family, from other Christians, from any healthy church capable of taking a clear-eyed look. Reconnecting with a balanced community, founded on the Word and not on the cult of a man, where the leaders themselves submit to the scrutiny of all, is often the path to deliverance.

Finally, you must relearn to whom the anointing truly belongs. Whoever has understood that the Spirit dwells within him, that he himself possesses the mind of Christ and direct access to the Father, ceases to need an intermediary who would claim to hold divine favor alone. The best protection against false anointed ones remains the certainty of being anointed oneself, not to dominate others, but to discern the truth and remain in Christ. It is this assurance, not fearful submission, that definitively frees us from such a hold.