Dear Michele:
but I guess I am still intersted in what the oil represents.
Anyway, any thoughts?
Excellent question, my sister.
Oil has various uses and significations as some have already alluded to in posts or links, but to me the most obvious and significant is it's symbolic use as representative of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, whom to blaspheme, or literally "speak against", is the unpardonable sin.
What a blessing that we are privileged to have a relationship with Him through the operations of the "Comforter", "Sanctifier", "Illuminator". In his recent work on the assurance of salvation, J. R. Beeke quoted Thomas Goodwin as follows with respect to the work of the Holy Spirit (shedding that light you saw figuratively used in the Temple) in revealing a persons salvation to him:
There is, first, an assurance by sense, by conditional promises, whereby a man, seeing the image of God upon his heart, to which promises are made, cometh comfortably to believer that he is in the estate of grace. But then, secondly, there is an immediate assurance of the Holy Ghost, by a Heavenly and divine light, of a divine authority, which the Holy Ghost sheddeth in a man's heart...whereby he sealeth him up to the day of redemption...The one way is dicoursive, a man gathereth that God loveth him from the effects as we gather there is fire because there is smoke, But the other is intuitive, as the angels are said to know things... There is light the cometh and overpowereth a man's soul, and assureth him that God is his, and he is God's...and the other which comes from an immediate light of the Spirit's sealing up that light, and the taste of it, and revealing God's heart and mind in itself towards us. This is so transcendent, as it works joy unspeakable and glorious; it is intuitive, not so the other. The Quest for Full Assurance, J. R. Beeke, pg 259 & 264.
As literal oil gives both light and heat, so figuratively the Holy Spirit in his precious operations on the soul of the elect gives light, or understanding, of the glory of God and the Gospel of Christ, and in that which naturally follows, having seen and tasted that glory and the elect childs interest, particularly, in it and Christ's saving work in his behalf, those same operations do give off heat or warmth in the form of intense love to the Savior, and the peace that passeth all understanding for His having covered our sins and adopted us into His Family, forever.
While there are, I think, many other applications, and I think differences between OT and NT functionn of the HS in believers, that's what oil, in both the Old and New Testament, preeminently, means to me.
In Him,
Gerry
