God's Healing Word Today

Why Essential Oils Are Blessed For Healing

by Jim Lynn, Copyrighted 2006

Many people familiar with essential oils know they were used to anoint both the Tent of Meeting in Old Testament Scripture (1), and Jesus Christ (2). But few people are aware of the implications of those events as they relate to the role of essential oils in healing today.

Historically, the Christian Church is known as the Body of Christ (3), and Christians within His Body as His physical members (4). The Tent of Meeting in Old Testament Scripture served as a type, a pattern or as a shadow of the real Church to come (5).

So when God gave instruction for anointing the Tent of Meeting with essential oil, He was in effect giving instruction to anoint the Body of Christ. When Mary anointed Jesus years later, she physically anointed the real thing, what Old Testament priests could only symbolically anoint...The forerunner of Christ's Body.

Under Old Testament law, no layperson could touch the oil used for anointing the Tent of Meeting, for it was sacred. Yet here is Mary, a layperson, anointing Jesus with a whole jar of precious oil and wiping His oil soaked feet with her hair. It was her way of honoring or blessing Him for raising her dead brother from the grave, but God saw her act differently (6).

What Mary did she did for herself, but God used the occasion to enjoin (bless) man's flesh with the flesh of His own Son: Something that had not happened previously. Mary's anointing of Jesus bonds all of humanity to the ultimate sacrifice Jesus Christ paid for our physical and spiritual healing (7).

God stipulated healing oils be used in the Tent of Meeting because He ordained them (8) to be the natural counterpoint of Christ's healing ministry (9). Israel (Jacob) called them some of the "best products of the land" (10). When Jesus Christ, centuries later, accepted Mary's anointing of healing oil, He confirmed the sacred, healing role essential oils hold for us today.

Whether people accept or reject the above accounts and their meaning is unimportant to this report. What is important is for people who use essential oils to understand why they were acknowledged in Holy Scripture, and set apart for use in the Disciples ministry of healing the sick (11). God has blessed essential oils and their use for healing, because they symbolically and physically bond mortal, corruptible human flesh to incorruptible, divine, eternal flesh in Jesus Christ. They serve as a reminder that it is God who is our Healer (12).

Remember this knowledge and share it the next time you anoint a loved one with oils. People need to hear this story for edification and to understand why it is essential oils are blessed of God for healing.

References:

1) Exodus 30:22-ff

2) John 12:1-8

3) Ephesians 5:29-30

4) Corinthians 6:15

5) Hebrews 10:1

6) John 12:7

7) Isaiah 53:4-5

8) Exodus 30:25

9) Acts 10:38

10) Genesis 43:11

11) Mark 6:13; James 5:14

12) Exodus 15:26

Jim Lynn is author of "The Miracle of Healing In Your Church Today," (Trafford Publishing, http://www.trafford.com/robots/02-0019.html), and publisher of God's Healing Word Today, http://godshealingword.org