What Is the Use of Anointing Oil in the New Testament Church?
1) Direct answer
Anointing oil in the New Testament Church is used as a simple, God-given ordinance for the sick. It is a sign of consecration, pointing to the Holy Spirit, while the healing itself comes through faith in the Name of the Lord Jesus and the prayer of faith.
2) Scriptural explanation
- The Bible says, “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the Name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:14–15).
- When the disciples were sent out, “they anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (Mark 6:13).
- The real anointing is the Spirit: “You have an unction from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20) and “the anointing…abides in you” (1 John 2:27). Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me” (Luke 4:18).
3) Simple clarifying logic
- Now notice, the oil itself has no healing virtue. The Scripture puts the emphasis here: “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” The oil is a token of obedience and a sign that this person is set apart to God for His intervention.
- You see, God uses simple tokens—water in baptism, bread and cup in communion, oil in prayer for the sick—to point to the unseen reality, which is the Holy Spirit working through the Word.
- James directs the sick to call for the elders. They anoint in the Name of the Lord, pray the prayer of faith, and the Lord performs what He promised. That keeps the glory with God, not with the ritual.
- This does not make oil a charm. Without faith and the Name of the Lord, oil is just oil. Nor should we throw it away as “just a custom,” because the command is given to the Church in the Epistle.
- For ordaining workers, the New Testament shows laying on of hands (Acts 13:3; 1 Timothy 4:14). For healing the sick, it shows anointing with oil and prayer. We keep each ordinance in its place.
4) Short reinforcing statement
Use it the Bible way: the sick call, the elders come, anoint with oil in the Name of the Lord Jesus, confess faults, pray the prayer of faith, and expect the Lord to raise them up. The oil is the sign; the Holy Spirit is the Anointer; the Word is the ground of our confidence.
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What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Faith
61-0813 §20
Now the pastor's got a good message for us, I'm sure, this morning. One thing I'd like to comment on just a moment was a Catholic girl standing there along the altar. A few days ago she was at my house, her and her husband. And I just knowed her husband for some time. And there was something about while we were sitting on a private interview... (That's where we have the visions. That's where we... I used to have it here in the church, but just taken up the morning and so forth.) And, so, it was in... I never said n...
A Missionary Talk
58-0330A §14
So they went and got the pastor and brought him up. He anointed the woman in oil, and read James 5:14. And anointed her with oil, and then he got through reading the Scripture of the anointing, he turned back to Mark 16, where I just read. And he read that to her, "These signs shall follow them that believe, if they lay their hands on the sick; they shall recover." And that faithful, little mission preacher laid his hands upon the woman, and commanded the disease to leave her body, because that God had give the com...
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 1:E-89
There'll be weeping and wailing. The sleeping virgins will be wailing. They represent the church that refused to get oil (symbol of the Holy Spirit) in their lamps (symbol of the body or holder of the oil) until it was too late. It wasn't that they were not good people. They were virgins and that signifies a high moral order. But they didn't have oil in their lamps so they were cast out where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Trying to do God a service without it being God's will
65-1127B §73
So you see, David, being inspired... Now, you remember I said the anointing, the false anointing? Remember the Holy Spirit can come and anoint a person, and still it's out of the will of God? Here, it proves it right here. We have to go through God's way of doing it. Not our ways, God's way of doing it. Because David, being a king, anointed, anointed with the Spirit of God upon him (a type of Jesus Christ), but that wasn't God's channel. When all the congregation, "it pleased them," the Bible said. Notice. Captains...
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 7:E-15
Now Martin Luther, himself, was a sensitive Spirit-filled Christian. He was definitely a man of the Word for he not only had a profound passion to study it but to make it available to all in order that all might live by it. He translated the New Testament and gave it to the people. This laborious work he did himself, correcting a passage as much as twenty times. He gathered around him a group of Hebrew scholars amongst whom were Jews and translated the Old Testament.