EXPERIENCE is inward conscious knowledge. It is gained in passing through circumstances in which the particular knowledge was obtained. Much is made of experience in matters of everyday life: the person of experience has been in difficulties, and knows the way through them. When we come to the matter of the soul’s interests we find the importance of experience, and according to the measure of experience so is the truth really known in the soul. Faith believes God without any questions, and experience follows. Faith grows, as fed by the word of God, and experience grows in the same proportion. Take the Lord’s words (Matt. 11:28), “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Who in this world labor and are heavy laden? They who have never experienced any soul-burden could not find any meaning in those words, but the one who has had the burden of sins and has made fruitless efforts after deliverance could reply, “He calls me.”
When that one has come to Christ and obtained rest—that is, when the burden has gone—there is the most blessed experience of relief. This being known, the soul can be led on to the reception of other truths of the gospel, each of which produces its corresponding experience. Christ goes on to say, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” This is another kind of rest, and only found when under His yoke; that is, it is again a matter of experience. Faith brings one under the yoke, and then comes the blessed experience of the second rest.
The third rest we must wait for. (Heb. 4:9). There can be no experience of that till we enter on it. The departed saints have entered on it, and experience as much of its blessedness as is possible for them while in the separate state.
The fullness of it will only be theirs when the body shall be raised at the first resurrection. Then will they fully experience that rest which remaineth for the people of God.
Experience is practical, and in these days of theory we need to be more than ever practical.
Faith looks without, while experience is a result within. There is no such thing as beginning with experience, but neither can you go on without it. Every truth produces experience when it is learned, and the experience can only be in proportion as we have learned it. If the truth be a blessed truth it produces a blessed experience, if it be a solemn truth it produces a solemn experience, and if an awful truth an awful experience.
THE BELIEVER’S EXPERIENCE IN THIS WORLD.
“Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” (Rom. 5:1). When faith lays hold of this we experience “peace with God.” Some persons may lay hold of it much more firmly than others, and will have a proportionate experience, but all who do lay hold of it have peace.
Again, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1). Mark the word therefore. This is the conclusion arrived at through the truths of chapters 5:12 to 7:25, where we are shown how before God our position is entirely changed, from association with the first Adam and condemnation, to association with the last Adam (who is Christ risen from the dead) and no condemnation. Now this truth is not so easy to learn as the justification of Rom. 5:1; and while many believers experience peace with God, few, perhaps, experience the truth of “No condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 6 and 7. are largely taken up with experience of the utter ruin of the first man. “He that is dead is freed from sin.” (6:7). “Being then made free from sin.” (6:18). This freedom from the power of indwelling sin is through death. I learn that I have died with Christ from my responsible association with a ruined Adam, and now I am associated with Christ as the Head of a new race, and this Scripture calls, “in Christ,” in contrast to where I was before “in Adam.” Rom. 6 looks at a man under sin, Rom. 7 at one under law. Death frees us from both, we are dead to that wherein we were held. The truth of the death and resurrection of Christ, and the believer’s association with Him, sets the heart free from the bondage of both sin and law. This is blessed experience, even if only a little known, and gives the desire to know more and more.
THE UNBELIEVER’S EXPERIENCE IN THE NEXT WORLD. “Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.” (Matt. 7:13). “It is better... to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:43, 44). “And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever.” (Rev. 14:10, 11). What an awful experience!
When those Scriptures shall have their fulfillment, what will the lost think of those professing Christians who deceived them by telling them the devil’s lie, that there is no eternal punishment? Oh that the people of God might yet wake up, and not continue to be tools of the enemy in deceiving the unconverted! The judgment of God upon sinners and their sins is all that God’s Word says it is. The Saviour’s agony in the garden was in anticipation of drinking the cup of divine wrath, and He prayed three times that it might pass from Him; but how could it pass if sinners were to be saved? So He went on to the cross, there to be forsaken. There He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” God’s judgment on the sins then laid on the Sin-bearer was there expressed, and there could be no relief till he could say, “It is finished.” When God gives the unrepentant sinner the cup of judgment which his sins deserve, can that sinner ever say “It is finished”?
Never, never. Could God release him before it is finished? He could not in righteousness release His Son when He was the bearer of sins not His own. How could He then release the one who has committed them? No, no, He could not; therefore the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever. What an experience! Oh, that God’s people might know “the terror of the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:11), and persuade men to be reconciled.
G. W. GY.