Aaron's Oil and Christian Unity

Something is afoot in current Evangelicalism that is quite disturbing. In the name of unity, Christians are muting doctrine and blaring social cohesiveness. The so-called "missional" strategy to adapt the Gospel to postmodern (Western) culture has successfully championed Christian community and togetherness, but it has gone awry because it has been led by theologians (e.g. from Princeton) who are too full of what Martin Luther called "Natural Reason" (that is, human reason that refuses to be governed by the Scriptures, themselves). Building their reasoning upon the logic of the social sciences and the hubris of the modern university and seminary, rather than building their reasoning upon the Word of Christ, these theologians have sold us their liberal doctrines by wrapping them in the rough, familiar packaging paper of "missiology" (the study of global evangelization) that Evangelicals have used for centuries. The frightening result is that we now have many Evangelicals who, despite being as evangelistic as ever, nevertheless have lost the very doctrine that, in former ages, composed the heart of the Evangelical message.

Thus in Evangelicalism the modish way to read Psalm 133 is to see in it a mandate for the setting aside of doctrinal debate in order to promote (an artificial) unity amongst professing Christians:

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of [Mount] Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing--life evermore."

One might read in this Psalm about the "oil of unity" and interpret it as a mere metaphor for wellness, peace, pleasantness, and blessing. In that case, one could argue for a generic kind of Christian unity that produces this generic kind of blessing.

However, in the Psalm, this "oil" is no ordinary oil. It is Aaron's oil. It runs down the beard of Aaron, and runs down the edge of his garments. That is, this is priestly oil. To be more specific, it is high-priestly oil:

"And you shall take some of the blood that is on the altar, and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and on his garments, on his sons and on the garments of his sons with him; and he and his garments shall be hallowed, and his sons and his sons' garments with him." (Exodus 29:21)

And,

"Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood which was on the altar, and sprinkled it on Aaron, and on his garments..." (Leviticus 8:30)

The oil of Aaron, then, is a symbol for the blessing of God on the people of God that comes through the office of the high priest. If the high priest is faithful to God in making atonement for sins and in calling the people to the righteousness of God (a righteousness that always comes by faith), and if the people are faithful in seeking God with all of their hearts and all of their souls, then the blessing of God will be upon the people. A high priest who is faithful to God, followed by a people who are faithful to Him, produces the fragrant oil of blessing, or, as the Psalm also puts it, the lovely dew of blessing.

Yet in history both the high priest and the people of Israel failed in this kind of unity. When they were unfaithful to God, their unity amongst each other was broken. When they pursued idolatry, they forfeited Aaron's oil of blessing. For example, their strong, national unity that was built around Aaron's golden calf (see Exodus 32) was an aberrant unity, not the Psalm 133-kind of unity.

Thus, as always, we, who believe, have only one hope. We, who constantly break Christian unity on account of all of our deviations from the truths of Scriptures and all of our perversions of Christian conduct, can only find the "oil of unity" in the high-priesthood of Christ Jesus. There, and only there, is blood mixed with oil in such a way that we can be unified in Him:

"You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions." (Hebrews 1:9)

And,

"For the law appoints as high priests men who have weaknesses, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever." (Hebrews 7:28)

It is Jesus, and only Jesus, who can pray, "...that they all may be one" (John 17:21). He, alone, has the oil (of the high-priesthood) and the blood (of the cross) that can make us one. Only Christ can make us one, and our unity can only come by way of His Word of truth: "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth...that they also may be sanctified by the truth" (vv. 17, 19b). Biblical unity only comes by way of the high-priesthood of Christ, and it demands an adherence to all of the truths of His Word.

This leaves us, then, longing for the blessing of Aaron's oil, as fulfilled in Christ, but also treasuring and guarding Christian doctrine more than ever before. If Christian doctrine (that is, our understanding of the Word of Christ) is what unifies us, then the more we embrace aberrant forms of Christian doctrine, the less unity we actually have. Therefore, the current rallying cry for unity in the church (which, when prompted by the Holy Spirit, is a natural impulse for all of the children of God and is, in the abstract, a good rallying cry) must be reformed along several important lines of thought:

1. We must expunge the phrase "doctrine divides, but love unifies" from our library of church cliches. It is attractive, but deceptive. The phrase, itself, is divisive because it twists the sayings of our Lord and pits doctrine against love, when in Scripture the two are actually inseparable (see, for example, 1 Timothy 1:3-5a).

2.We must use that old saying, "Unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and in all things charity" with much, much more caution than we have in recent decades. By and large, in recent times it has been grossly misused in order to allow aberrant teachings to set up residence in the church. Non-historic-Christian teachings, such as universalism (the belief that no one will spend eternity in Hell), egalitarianism (the belief that male headship and female submission are no longer prescribed by God for believers today), and old-earth creationism (the belief that God used geological evolution and billions of years to form the earth into what it is today) have entered our Evangelical seminaries, colleges, and churches through the gateway of this mantra. We need more discerning gatekeepers posted at the gates of Christ's temple.

3. We must not allow, in the name of Christian unity, the cohabitation of historic Christian doctrine with novel, dangerous teachings. Some argue that one's view of whether or not a novel teaching is a dangerous one is, itself, hopelessly subjective. Therefore, in their argument, many novel teachings should be allowed to cohabit with historic ones, for the sake of Christian unity. However, this is not biblical unity. It is not Aaron's oil. Following Luther, novel teachings are always dangerous ones. Therefore, this kind of cohabitation is nothing less than spiritual adultery.

4. We must stop truncating our local-church documents of doctrinal affirmation. Far too many local churches in the Western world have taken the reckless scissors of "extreme doctrinal broadness" to the pages of their doctrinal affirmations. Seeking numeric church growth above fidelity to Christ, many church leaders have taken down the very doctrinal fences that were once erected by wiser men to protect their flocks from lions and wolves. These new church leaders have, to be sure, successfully brought other sheep from other flocks into their folds (and thus turned their own folds into mega-folds), but in the process they have left their sheep vulnerable to predators. It is, then, high time for us to revisit and re-read the lengthy, detailed, Spirit-filled creeds of old (e.g. the Nicene Creed, but also the creeds of the Reformers). Furthermore, we need to do the hard work of producing current creeds that address, in specific, the theological crises of our day.

5. We must continue to zealously pursue Christian unity, longing for Aaron's oil in the church, but only by the one true path to unity: the knowledge of Christ. He is our great high-priest. His blood and oil, alone, can unify the church. Therefore, rather than liberalizing Christian unity into humanistic, or at least human-centered versions of unity, we must be patient and persevering in the pursuit of biblical unity, which is unity lived under the infallible teachings (all of them) and the sovereign authority of Christ Jesus. In such a biblical unity, we find true blessing and authentic brotherly love.

May God, our Father in Heaven, grant unity to His people through the grace and knowledge of His Son!

Soli Deo Gloria. Glory to God, alone.

-TLF

Copyright Timothy L. Fan 2012. All Rights Reserved.

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