Where Has the Unction Gone? On Dead Preaching in American Pulpits

Is it the fault of Hyper-Cessationism? Or is it something else?

A few weeks ago, I gave a poll from my X account. The poll asked that Calvinists only complete it. I asked this for two reasons. The first is that I didn’t want weirdo charismatics to mess up the poll, and they are almost always non-Calvinists. The second is my hunch is that Hyper-Cessationism is growing among Calvinists and I wanted to see the extent of damage it had already done.

My poll had two parts. The first was asking whether or not respondents believed that a supernatural anointing or ‘unction’ existed in the act of preaching. And second asked whether or not the respondents (who answered in the affirmative) regularly perceived it in sermons they listen to locally (for example, in their own church).

The result of the first poll wasn’t exactly as I expected. Nearly 63% of respondents who self-identified as Calvinists believed that unction does indeed exist today, despite the church being well outside the Apostolic age. I expected the number to be far lower, fearing that most Calvinists have resigned themselves to pulpits without the special work of the Holy Ghost, and preachers who are carried along by nothing but doctrine.

On the second poll, the results were less surprising. Only 41% believed that they regularly observe such anointing or unction in sermons they hear in person. This means that of 100% of those who believe a supernatural unction exists, only four in ten regularly get to witness it.

What this would lead one to believe, even despite further study, is that a great many Christians in America are missing out on what they believe they should have. They know that unction exists, but they’re not getting it. And I don’t know about you, but when I want something that I can’t get, I get hungry for it.

I suspect that many evangelicals in the United States, and probably the world, feel as though they’re being shortchanged by what’s being delivered in the pulpit. There’s more out there, and they are eager to receive it. And lest they be lectured about spiritual contentment, I’ll preemptively point out that the vast majority of this wilting Christians are faithful and regular attenders of their local church. They’re not perpetual church shoppers, bouncing from one congregation to another. They give faithfully of their time and resources. They just want to feel the Word of God delivered, with unction, and not walk away on Sunday morning as though their pastor just gave a review of what the commentaries told him this week.

We’ve all experienced, if we’ve been born-again, what if feels like to have the Scripture cut you to the bone. We know what it’s like to have the Bible pierce you, to cut you, to make your heart bleed. We know what it’s like to have the Holy Ghost raise up the hairs on the back of our neck. We know what it’s like to feel the Third Person stomp on our toes. We know that feeling, when the Scripture is preached a certain way with a certain authority, to feel that burning tingle in our nose and tears well up behind our eyes as though someone had poked us with a pin.

I suppose some could insert at this point a lecture about the heart being deceptive, or the devil manipulating emotion, or being careful to be led by your feelings. All of this, of course, is valid. But none of this undoes the reality that for the Christian, we know when the sermon is delivered with supernatural unction and when it isn’t. And we know some men with the gift of unction, and those who clearly don’t.

At this point, if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, phase out. I’m sure tomorrow there will be another article at Insight to Incite, probably about Nephilim masquerading as aliens or why Joyce Meyer wears so much make-up, or possibly about a church drumming up an audience by shooting transgender midgets out of canons.

But if you can clearly understand the difference between a really good message preached by a really good orator, with a really fine grasp of English, almost perfectly delivered with all the right punchlines but with nothing supernatural about it, and a sermon preached in the power of God the Holy Ghost that reaches into your chest and grabs your heart with a squeeze, keep listening.

WHAT IS UNCTION?

An “unction” and an “anointing” is like an “ordinance” and a “sacrament,” or a “pastor” and “bishop.” These are the same things - synonyms, your English teacher called them - but different words are used by different faith traditions because they don’t like the connotations of the other faith tradition that uses the other word. For the purpose of this article, we’ll use the word “unction” because I’m a Baptist and Baptists don’t like charismatics because they’re categorically insane and they use the word “anointing.” So let’s be difficult, as Baptists are prone to be.

The word “unction” is used by Catholics to describe the last rites they administer to the dying, called “extreme unction.” But I’m not talking about Priestcraft or ooga booga vodou practices by occultists in clerical garb. I’m talking about the Holy Ghost providing divine presence and effectual power in the words preached by men.

I’ll repeat that; divine unction is the Holy Ghost providing divine presence and effectual power in the words preached by men.

Both the Papists and the Lutherans speak of ‘divine presence’ in the ordinance of Communion (or Eucharist, as the Romanists call it). They do so because the Catholics believe in transubstantiation, and the Lutherans believe in consubstantiation, and both require believing that the bread and wine is something more than bread and wine. The Baptists don’t believe there’s a ‘divine presence’ in the bread and wine (or crackers and grape juice) because that would require Jesus Christ being off his throne and his human nature (which is not omnipresent, as his divine nature is), to be dished out by priests and pastors in ten thousand different locations on any given Sunday.

But in a similar vein, Christians (including and especially Calvinists) have almost always believed in a ‘divine presence’ - at least on certain occasions and at sundry times - in the preached word. It’s not exclusive to the preaching done to the gathered assembly on the Lord’s Day, and can be used by the Holy Ghost any time he wants. But it does seem as though He limits His unction to those hearing the Word in person.

And this is where we start to make the Hyper-Cessationists feel uncomfortable (who are as led by their feelings as anyone). We admit, as Supernaturalists, that God does something meaningful and powerful when the Word of God is heard preached in person, that he does not do over the airwaves, satellites, or ethernet. I lamented publicly during the Covid lockdowns that those who insisted church could be had over the Internet must not believe in unction at all. There is something divinely and supernaturally special about gathering and hearing the Word of God preached, that is not communicable from a computer or smartphone screen.

Some might balk at this, but I assure you it’s true.

Yesterday at Insight to Incite I told the tale of my ministry assistant, Jon Kim, from South Korea, who had bribed the boarding house men to listen to the Shocking Youth Message sermon from Paul Washer (for the record, if you’ve not watched it, you should). He called me down because, expecting them all to be saved, they remained indifferent. I shared the gospel passionately for only a few minutes, at which point the man I told you about stood up, said, “that’s it…I don’t need to hear anything else” went to his room, and slammed the door.

When I went to his room to inquire, I was surprised to find out that his words, “that’s it…I don’t need to hear anything else” that he meant that he had enough of my dumb words. It turns out that what he meant, is that the Holy Ghost saved him on the spot. He had a grasp of the Bible already, so no further explanation or pleading was needed. The spiritual lightbulb went off over his head (the Puritans called this “divine illumination”) and God flipped the switch of his heart to the saved position.

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He was baptized, and within several months moved away. But while I was preaching and lecturing on Marxism years later in South Dakota, he had stumbled into church, having lived nearby and seen advertisements that I would be there. He had walked with God every day since, and was a committed and devoted Christian believer. The “salvation stuck,” as we say (tongue-in-cheek).

What did I say in my yammerings, that Paul Washer did not already say more fluently? The Holy Ghost was apparently waiting to move in the room through the Word preached in person. There’s something divinely supernatural about this, and if Cessationists are uneasy about it, I’d question why the Holy Ghost frightens them so much. God does supernatural things, because God is a supernatural God.

UNCTION EXPLAINED

Martin Lloyd-Jones, the hero of the faith for the twentieth century if ever the was won, had a doctrinal pedigree that couldn’t be questioned. He was as solid as the day is long, and bravely opposed Billy Graham’s false revivals in Europe, presenting instead, a Biblical gospel proclaimed through Biblical means. I’d recommend into reading the work of Lloyd-Jones if you haven’t already.

Speaking of Lloyd-Jones’ preaching, Iain Murray (the greatest historian of the church, possibly ever, who you should also read), wrote…

Preaching under the annointing of the Holy Spirit is preaching which brings with it a consciousness of God. It produces an impression upon the hearer that is altogether stronger than anything belonging to the circumstances of the occasion. Visible things fall into the background; the surroundings, the fellow worshippers, even the speaker himself, all become secondary to an awareness of God himself. Instead of witnessing a public gathering, the hearer receives the conviction that he is being addressed personally, and with an authority greater than that of a human messenger.

I hope you take time to read that twice, and soak it in. It is, as Murray said, preaching that brings a consciousness of God. His realness is thrust upon you when a sermon is preached with unction. God, and his doctrines, are no longer objective facts. They are objective realities. It is the difference between knowing a bear can eat you, and staring a bear in the face.

It is, as Murray said, giving an impression that is stronger than it should, given the circumstances. This is how you know it’s supernatural. There’s no reason for someone, for example, in an air-conditioned room upon a padded pew to feel the fire of hell singe their neck and smell the burning sulfur in their nostrils. But when Jonathan Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (which he did without theatrics, and read his manuscript monotone), the crowd became so overcome with the sense of urgency they stopped his sermon with their screaming and begged him to get to the part where he tells them how to escape hell’s flames. That’s unction.

Unction is when the listener forgets for a moment what time it is, where he or she is, what’s for lunch, or who’s around them. They are caught up in what the old-time enthusiasts used to call “rapture” (not the escatological event, but the feeling up being caught up or caught away momentarily to another place). When a sermon is preached with unction, the listener feels as though nothing but he or she and God is in the room.

And as Murray points out, the listener feels as though the sermon is being delivered to them personally. Most of us are familiar with this concept. Every preacher can attest that people believe - sometimes angrily - that “you were looking at me the entire time.” That’s either the Holy Ghost dealing with the person, or the pastor is indeed looking at them the whole time, and probably shouldn’t do that.

If this all seems too woo-woo for you, or smacks of charismaticism, I’ll remind you that Ian Murray was used by God to spark the great Reformed Resurgence at the turn of this century, through his republishing of Puritan and Reformed brochures and literature. He is the midwife of the Reformed Resurgence. There’s nothing charismatic about him.

Because unction is of the Holy Ghost, I cannot say that it is a gift belonging to certain men. But I think we all recognize the preachers who rarely exhibit unction. And we all recognize the preachers (like Paul Washer) who exhibit unction far more often. So can unction be learned? Can it be fostered?

Spurgeon explained…

Let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie a-soak in my text. I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me. It softens me, or hardens me, or does whatever it ought to do to me, and then I can talk about it. You need not be very particular about the words and phrases if the spirit of the text has filled you; thoughts will leap out, and find raiment for themselves. Become saturated with spices, and you will smell of them; a sweet perfume will distill from you, and spread itself in every direction; — we call it unction.

There are men, when they preach, whose congregations know that they are bursting at the guts to spill whatever it is they’ve been holding in. They are not preaching, so much as vomiting - gloriously, so much as vomiting can be done gloriously - everything that they’ve consumed of God and his Word during the week. They are pregnant with the Word. I use that analogy, as odd as it seems, because I once heard an old-time preacher say that getting sermon out was as close to giving birth that a man could ever know.

I concur, and there were many times that I left the pulpit absolutely depleted of any and all strength, and took a day or more to recover. It’s not only spiritual, but in an odd way, physical.

As Spurgeon reminds us, the preacher filled with unction has been hardened and softened by God throughout his week, probably many times over, and broken into the shape that God would desire him to be. It’s a rough process. A sermon preached with unction often comes from very, very tortured men. There is little light about it. As Richard Baxter, the Puritan, said, “I preach as though a dying man to dying men.” The sermon preached with unction leaves nothing on the table. And this doesn’t require screaming or carrying on; it only requires the entire pouring out of oneself, until nothing remains. This is done by the power of each preached word, no matter the volume at which it’s delivered.

Men who regularly preach with unction feel the gravity of it. I one time witnessed a prayer before a missionary to Peru preached, in which he asked, “If I do not preach well, oh Lord, please strike me dead and preach through my corpse.”

That went hard. But that’s a man who’s praying for unction.

And let me tell you, the prayer of contrition, “God, please forgive me. I’ve failed you so much today,” was one I often prayed.

So where is this unction? How can we get it back?

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