Our experience of Christ is a mystery, for God, Christ, and the church are a mystery, so we ourselves are a mystery; our Christian living is a mystery, and it should be normal for us to magnify Christ, that is, express Him without limitation.
We are now starting a new topic in our morning revival entitled, The Experience of Christ, and this week in particular we focus on, The Intrinsic Significance of the Experience of Christ.
It is not that we go back to a basic experience in our Christian life, but that we need to be fully refreshed and have a renewed hunger and pursuing spirit to experience Christ in our daily life.
We need to have the experience of Christ in our daily living, otherwise our church life will be empty.
It is possible for us to have some knowledge of the truth, some wonderful and biblical practices in our daily life and church life, and we may even be zealous for the gospel and the increase of the church, but we may be fundamentally empty if we are Christ-less in our experience.
We need to forget everything that is behind, both the good and the bad, and not allow ourselves to be distracted from the one thing – the experience of Christ. We need to be single-hearted, pure and simple to pursue Christ so that we may experience Him.
The book of Philippians is a great book on the matter of the experience of Christ. This book is located between the book of Ephesians (Covering the church as the Body of Christ) and Colossians (covering the Head of the Body, the church), indicating somewhat that, for us to go from the Body to the head and even into the Head, we need to pass through the experiences in Philippians.
We grow in the divine life by our experiences of Christ.
What really renders us the genuine growth in the divine life is nothing else but our experience of Christ; if we don’t experience Christ, we can’t grow. But if we experience Christ, if we have deeper experiences of Christ, if our experience of Christ is broader, we will grow in life.
There’s only one metric to measure the growth in life: the experience of Christ; therefore, we all need to desperately pursue this experience.
The more we experience the Lord in little things, big things, and all things, the more there’s growth into the Head, Christ, and out of Him there will be the building up of the Body. Our church life, the Body life, and the building up of the Body occurs only when we experience Christ.
The Experience of Christ is a Mystery, and the Church is Mystery within a Mystery
Our experience of Christ is mysterious thing; how can we as human beings experience Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God?
It is one thing to read the Bible and know about God, but for us as human beings actually experience Christ it is something mysterious. All our experiences of Christ are mysterious in the mystical realm.
However, the human, natural, and religious tendency is to take the mystery out of our experience of Christ and out of our Christian life, to make it un-mysterious, to make it something more tangible, visible, something outward for the human senses to understand.
But actually, the experiences of Christ occur in the divine and mystical realm, and they are mysterious, because God, Christ, and the church are all mysterious; we believers in Christ are a bunch of mysterious people.
A Christian is a mysterious person, and all his experiences are totally mysterious. Sometimes when people ask us, What are you doing in your Christian life, and why do you go here and there to meet with other Christians? – we can’t really explain, because what we do and what we experience is very mysterious.
Even in our making decisions, many times we don’t know whether we’re right or wrong, whether we make the right decisions as we follow the inner sense from the Lord… – it is so mysterious.
So in our Christian life we should not look for something outward, we should not go for the miraculous and supernatural, but go for the inward experience of Christ, which is a mystery.
We need to know Christ as the mystery of God, pursue this mystery, and look to experience this mystery. God is a mystery, Christ is the mystery of God (Col. 2:2), and the church is the mystery of Christ (Eph. 3:4); we as the church, therefore, are a mystery within a mystery.
The universe itself is a mystery, man is a mystery, God is a mystery, Christ is the mystery of God, the church is the mystery of Christ, so we are a mystery within a mystery within a mystery.
Our hearts need to be comforted, being knit together in love, so that we may have the full assurance of understanding unto the full knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ.
We are happy to know this Christ; Paul knew Him, he experienced Him, and he lived Him, and he said, you can perceive – by my writing – my knowledge of the mystery of Christ.
We can also know Christ; we can experience Christ, and we can experience Him in a subjective way, not merely in an objective way outside of us. May we not be tempted to focus on outward things or on miraculous things but rather focus on Christ, the mystery of God, and seek to experience Him.
Hallelujah, we as human beings can experience Christ, who is the mystery of God, so that we may become the church, the mystery of Christ. Amen, Lord, thank You for making us mysterious people, those who know and experience Christ in our daily life. May we focus on nothing else but on Christ so that we may enjoy Him, know Him, and experience Him for the church life. Oh, what a marvelous thing that we as human beings can experience Christ and become the church, the mystery of Christ!
Our Christian Living is a Mystery, for we can Magnify Christ to Express Him without Limitation
The fact that our experience of Christ is a mystery means that our Christian living is a mystery; for example, although our human love is limited, the proper love lived out by a Christian is unlimited.
Our entire Christian living is simply a mystery, for in our living we express the Christian virtues, and these virtues are the virtues of this mystery, Christ.
In society today among the human beings there are many human virtues such as love, endurance, patience, forgiveness, wisdom, etc, but they are not mysterious; they run out, and they are tainted.
But the Christian love, patience, endurance, and forgiveness are something deeper than that – they are mysterious, for they are unlimited. Human love, human patience, and human endurance run out; we may love someone for now, but it is not easy to love that person for an extended period of time.
But as Christians who experience Christ, our human virtues are different, for Christ lives in us, and His virtues being expressed through us are unlimited.
This is how we should be; we should be mysterious people, those whom others can see but cannot understand how we can still love, bear, forgive, and have patience.
If we feel like we can’t bear it anymore, if we feel we can’t love this person anymore, and we can’t have patience with our spouse…then we do not experience Christ.
If our patience can be exhausted, this shows that we do not experience or express the patience of Christ. Our patience as Christians is unlimited; the more our circumstances exhaust our patience, the more patient we are, for our patience is inexhaustible.
Our Christian virtues are unlimited, immeasurable, and endless, for they are not ours but Christ’s, and He lives in us as we experience Him.
Like Paul, we need to magnify Christ, that is, to express Him without limitation (Phil. 1:20). To magnify Christ is to show the whole universe that the very Christ by whom we live is unlimited.
In Philippians we see Paul, a prisoner in a Roman prison, most likely in dungeon, not knowing what will happen next. Yet this one said, even now, in this prison and in this dire situation, Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death.
Christ is great and unlimited, but in the eyes of men He is limited and many times non-existent; however, as we experience Christ and magnify Him, we magnify Him.
Christ is great: He fills the whole universe, and He is so many things, but this great Christ needs to be further magnified by a man, by a human being, by one of His children, so that He would be expressed without limitation.
This is the experience of Christ; even in our sufferings, in our limitations, in our problems, we can express Christ, magnify Him, show Him as being without limitation; we can be without shame, filled with hope and expectation that Christ will be magnified in our body!
Paul’s experience of Christ as his unlimited endurance was the magnification of the unlimited Christ; any attribute we have through living Christ by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ will be unlimited and thus mysterious (see Phil. 1:19-21).
Christ is unlimited, and we – as a magnifying glass – magnify this unlimited Christ in our daily life.
What is the secret to this? In Paul’s case, he said that this situation he was in will turn out to salvation through the petition of the saints and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
In other words, the way we can magnify Christ is through the supply of the Body in prayer and by receiving and enjoying the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
The Christ whom we experience cannot be exhausted; if we live by Him, He will be magnified in us in His exhaustlessness.
Whether through life or through death, whether we suffer or we do not suffer, when we experience Christ and enjoy the supply oft he Body and of the Spirit, we magnify this boundless and inexhaustible One.
Our love and endurance as husbands, wives, parents, employees, employers, students, etc runs out, but when we experience Christ, our virtues cannot be exhausted, for we magnify Christ, and this One is inexhaustible! Hallelujah!
Lord, we give ourselves to experience Christ in our daily life so that Christ may be magnified in us. Oh Lord, our virtues run out, and in ourselves we are limited and easily bothered. We want to experience You, Lord, and we want to live because of You. May the whole universe see Christ magnified in His saints as they experience Christ and live by Christ. Amen, may all believers in Christ become a magnifying glass for Christ to be expressed and shown forth in His exhaustlessness! Oh Lord, whether through life or through death, may Christ be magnified in us, shown forth in us, and expressed through us!
This article can also be read in the Romanian language / Citiți acest articol în limba română vizitând următorul link, Experimentarea lui Cristos de către noi este un mister: Îl mărim pe Cristos pentru a-L exprima fără limitare.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, The Experience of Christ, chs. 1, 11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Experience of Christ (2019 Memorial Day Conference), week 1, The Intrinsic Significance of the Experience of Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Oh, what a thought! Oh, what a boast! / Christ shall in me be magnified. / In nothing shall I be ashamed, / For He in all shall be applied. / In woe or blessing, death or life, / Through me shall Christ be testified. (Hymns #499)
# Live through me, Lord; let self no longer bind Thee; / Remove all traces of its hold on me. / Be magnified in every word and action; / In me, Thy living manifested be. (Song on, Live Through Me, Lord)
# Lord, we’re expecting that we’ll be given / Boldness with every breath. / Christ must be magnified in our body / Whether by life or death. / We hope in nothing to be ashamed, / For us to live is Christ— / He is the Person in all our living, / Our everything, our life. (Hymns #1295)
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