Why Essential Oils Are Blessed by God For Healing

Many Christians familiar with essential oils (known also as healing oils) know they were used to anoint both the Tent of Meeting in Old Testament Scripture (Exodus 30:22-ff), and Jesus Christ (John 12:1-8). However, few Christians are aware of the implications of those two events as they relate to:

1. James' exhortation to anoint the sick with oil (James 5:14).
2. The role of essential oils in the healing ministry today.

The Christian Church is the Body of Christ (Ephesians 5:29-30). Individual Christians within the Church are physical members of Christ's Body (I Corinthians 6:15).

Historically, the Tent of Meeting of the Old Testament served as a type, a pattern or as a shadow of the real Church to come (Hebrews 10:1). So when God gave instructions to anoint 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 Mary's way of honoring or blessing Jesus for raising her dead brother from the grave. However, in God's eye's, there is much more to Mary's act than what many Christians realize (John 12:7).

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 (Isaiah 53:4-5).

God stipulated healing oils be used in the Tent of Meeting because they are ordained (Exodus 30:25) to be the natural counterpoint of Christ's divine healing ministry (Acts 10:38).

Israel (Jacob) called essential oils as some of the "best products of the land" (Genesis 43:11). And rightfully so. For they were valued for their natural healing qualities.

When Jesus, centuries later, received Mary's anointing of healing oil, He confirmed the sacred healing role essential oils hold for us today (John 12:7). This is why Essential oils are the ordained (blessed) physical counterpart of Christ's healing Body.

Whether people accept or reject the above account 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 (Mark 6:13; James 5:14).

God blessed essential oils and their use for healing, because these plant oils spiritually and physically bond mortal, corruptible human flesh to incorruptible, divine, eternal flesh in Jesus Christ. Essential oils serve as a reminder that it is God who is our Healer (Exodus 15:26).

Remember this truth 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 anointing with essential oil is blessed of God for healing.

As always, please feel free to leave a comment.

- - -

Jim Lynn is author of "The Miracle of Healing In Your Church Today,"
Trafford Publishing, ISBN 1-55369-206-3, Available in paper back at: http://www.trafford.com
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com,
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com
or as an ebook from God's Healing Word Ministry
http://godshealingword.org