Acts 10:38 says God anointed Jesus to go about doing good. That same anointing, Paul says, has come upon us.
Acts 10:38 is one of those verses a lot of believers have memorized without fully unpacking it. "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him." Most people read it and push the two halves together, assuming the "good" Jesus did was the healing. That reading isn't wrong, but it misses something significant sitting in the Greek.
The word translated "doing good" there is euergeteo, a word used only once in the entire New Testament. It doesn't just mean being kind or helpful. It means functioning as a benefactor, a philanthropist. Someone who, by virtue of what they carry, goes about pouring blessing onto people around them. Jesus wasn't just healing the sick on the side. He was anointed to be a walking source of good to everyone in his path.
And then Paul, in 2 Corinthians 1:21, uses the same Greek word for anointing: "He which establishes us with you is Christ, and has anointed us is God." Same word. Same anointing. What God put on Jesus is available to us.
One of the most important theological anchors in understanding the anointing is this: Jesus, while on earth, was not operating as the Son of God. He was operating as a man anointed by God. Every miracle, every sign, every act of compassion — it all flowed through the anointing of the Holy Spirit on a human being. That matters because it means what he did wasn't reserved for divinity. It was made available to humanity.
The word "anoint" itself, chrio in Greek, means to rub, to paint, to smear. The image is tactile and total — something that gets all over you, covers you, marks you as belonging to something larger than yourself. Like an old fence that's still standing but weathered and faded: the structure is there, but it needs a fresh coat. Some believers have been through so much that you can barely see the anointing anymore. The invitation is always back to that fresh painting.
The anointing is what produces the results.
The right posture toward the anointing is to function as a vessel, not a performer. When God moves through someone and something supernatural happens, the praise doesn't belong to the person it flowed through. A coffee mug doesn't affect the flavor of what's poured into it — at least, it shouldn't. When God chooses to pour through you, your job is to be clean and available, not to absorb the credit.
This is where motive becomes everything. When the woman in Mark 14 broke the alabaster box and poured expensive spikenard over Jesus, she did it without an audience in mind. The criticism came immediately, led by Judas, and the others joined in. Three hundred pence, wasted. Jesus shut it down: "Let her alone. She has wrought a good work on me." The word he used for "good" there is kalos, meaning wonderful, excellent, magnificent. And he made a declaration that still stands: wherever the gospel is preached throughout the whole world, what she did would be remembered.
She did it out of love, and it was noticed precisely because she didn't do it to be noticed.
She had no platform. No one would have known her name. But Jesus said, I'll make sure the whole world knows.
The contrast Jesus draws in that story is pointed. You can always find people to help. The poor are always with you, and you can do good to them whenever you want. But there are particular moments of offering, particular seasons of pouring out, that carry a different weight entirely. The greatest thing, he says, is to pour it out on him first — in worship, in giving, in consecration. That's the highest form of good.
Your prayers and your offerings are visible in heaven, even when no one sees them down here.
Jesus' first miracle at the wedding in Cana is often treated as a warm-up story, a proof of power before the real ministry begins. But it's worth seeing it for what it actually was: the anointing to do good, in the most practical and generous sense imaginable. He didn't start by raising the dead. He started by making sure a wedding didn't run out of wine.
The governor of the feast tasted it and said, "Every man at the beginning sets forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, that which is worse. But you have kept the good wine until now." Nobody had ever seen this before because nobody had ever seen the anointing at work like this. And it came because Jesus was invited. When he shows up, he brings blessing. He gets involved in big ways.
The feeding of the five thousand follows the same logic at a larger scale. Five loaves, two fish, possibly twenty to twenty-five thousand people when you count the women and children. The disciples' math said send them home. Jesus said give them to me. He blessed it, broke it, and gave it — and the miracle happened in the breaking and the giving. There's an anointing for increase, and it activates when you yield what you have rather than calculating whether it's enough.
"Blessed, broken, and given. And the miracle took place because there was an anointing for increase."
Long before full-time ministry, there was a season of simply making a lot of money and looking for ways to give it away. No theology behind it, no elaborate framework. Just a posture: I have more than I need, so who can I bless? Couples on the edge financially, young families barely making it — sending them on cruises, all expenses paid, airline tickets included, just because the opportunity was there and the impulse was generosity.
Then came a season of need. Marriage, family, the natural reduction in capacity that comes with those changes. And God sent someone who said, "I can't do what you do, but I can help you do what you do." That man attached himself to the family for years, looking for every opportunity to be a blessing. When he died, he had two full shipping containers of top-of-the-line goods to give away. People called him a hoarder. But after he was gone, the blessing kept flowing.
That's what the anointing to do good actually looks like lived out over a lifetime. Not a single dramatic act. A posture. A consistent yieldedness. An ongoing willingness to be used as a conduit rather than a reservoir.
The prayer that shaped it all: Lord, if you would just allow me to be a Holy Ghost philanthropist. That was it. No platform ambitions. No ministry fame. Just to be the person God poured through to fund vision, to bless families, to send people into nations with the gospel.
Scripture is plain that our works will be tested by fire. 1 Corinthians 3:13 says the fire will "test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done." What survives gets rewarded. What doesn't, doesn't. The question isn't whether you did something — it's why, and with what motive, and for whose benefit.
This is the earthly mammon test. Jesus asked it plainly: if you can't be trusted with what is lesser, how can you be trusted with what is greater? God tests stewardship in the natural before he releases the supernatural. He looks for people who aren't blocked by pride, ambition, or the need to be seen — people who can carry resources without being corrupted by them and can release credit without holding on to it.
There was a moment, early in ministry, when hundreds of millions of dollars was within reach. Verified, legitimate, from one of the wealthiest people in America at the time. When Jim Walton flew in to discuss it, his first question was: how much do you want personally? The answer: none of it. It all goes to the ministry, to preaching the gospel, to going into the nations. Walton pushed back. Eventually the deal fell apart with a phone call — he was walking into the president's office, and the details were never shared.
God hasn't forgotten that. The test wasn't the money. The test was what you did with the motive when the money was on the table.
The anointing isn't passive. It requires yieldedness — an ongoing, active decision to not block what God wants to move through you. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He can do anything, but he doesn't override you. If you live a life that's open, set apart, free of the things that block his presence, you'll find yourself moving from one moment of being used by God into the next, almost without noticing.
Those that are led by the Spirit of God are like the wind — they go wherever God sends them.
2 Corinthians 9:8 closes the loop on all of it: "God is able to make all grace, every favor, and earthly blessing come to you in abundance, so that you may always and under all circumstances and whatever the need be self-sufficient, possessing enough to require no aid or support, and furnished in abundance for every good work and charitable donation." The word there is agathos — useful, joyful, excellent, honorable. God's vision for the anointed life isn't that you pick and choose between the needs in front of you. It's that you abound toward every one of them.
The anointing to do good isn't a specialized calling for a few. It's the same anointing Jesus carried, now available through the Holy Spirit to anyone willing to be a vessel. Start with what's in front of you. Run an errand for someone who can't. Feed a family. Send someone on a trip. Buy a Bible college student's rent for a month. Pass along the good clothes, not the ones with holes. Ask God for creative ways to step into something that was always available.
Pass the test. Lose the need to be seen. And let it flow.
