Is there such a thing as divine unction or a special anointing of the Spirit when it comes to preaching? Not according to Richard Bargas in his carefully researched paper “The Holy Spirit in the Pulpit,” delivered at the 2013 annual meeting of the Evangelical Homiletics Society.
Bargas neither denies the Holy Spirit gives the message of the cross its power, nor does he dispute the anointing and sealing of all believers with the Spirit to set them apart as God’s own to carry out His work in the world and enable them to understand the Bible (1 Cor. 12:13; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 1 John 2:20).
Setting the filling of the Spirit aside as a separate matter, Bargas simply sees no exegetical basis for the existence of a New Testament gift of unction. Says Bargas, “The idea of anointing as a special empowerment by God is not directly connected (in Scripture) with the word anoint.” Later, “Nowhere does the Bible command ministers to seek God’s unction for empowering the preaching of the Word.” Finally, he observes, “When Christ is exalted and the message of the cross is declared from the pulpit with prayer, passion and precision, there is power.”
As much as it pains me to admit it, and contrary to what I’ve written, argued and taught elsewhere, I find Bargas’ argument compelling. Yet…
Experiencing Unction
There is the fascinating story of Welsh pastor David Morgan, as related by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his book Preaching and Preachers. For two years, Morgan purportedly preached under an unusual anointing, sensing the Spirit’s powerful presence during his sermons and enjoying extraordinary results. Before and after those two brief years, it was a ministry Lloyd-Jones characterized as “most ordinary.”
In Morgan’s own words: “I went to bed one night still feeling like a lion, filled with this strange power I had enjoyed for the two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I had become David Morgan once more.”
John Bunyan in his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners testified to feeling in his preaching ministry sometimes “as if an angel of God had stood by at my back to encourage me.” At other times, though, after starting out well enough, such a stifling spirit set upon him that by his sermon’s end he admitted to feeling “as if my head had been in a bag all the time.”
