Our experience of Christ is our fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel until the Lord comes back (Phil. 1:3-6); the more we have fellowship unto the gospel, the more we experience Christ.
We have seen that our experience of Christ is something very mysterious yet very necessary, for the church life is the sum total of our Christian living.
We may say we are in the church life and we enjoy the church life, but how much do we experience Christ not only in the meetings but also at home, by ourselves, at work, and with our family?
We need to have a renewed vision of the church life, realising that it is not the Christian practices or the church practices that make up the church life but it is our experience of Christ.
In other words, when I live Christ and you live Christ, when I live Christ both at home and in the meeting, both in my bedroom and in the meeting hall, both in front of people and when people can’t see me, that living and experience of Christ is part of the church life.
And speaking of the fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel, some Christians may want to attract the millennials, those in Gen Z, and they may use “new ways” to attract them and keep them, using the technology to do this and that…is this the real church life?
This is not the way of the Lord’s recovery; in the church life in the Lord’s recovery for us to live is Christ, and Christ is our life.
We may think that this is “spiritual talk” and we have no regard for the practical side, but according to the Bible – the word of God – and the ministry we have received, we need to know how to conduct ourselves in the house of God, the church of the living God.
How do we conduct ourselves as believers? We need to live as God does, we need to experience Christ and live Christ, so that the church may become the great mystery of godliness – God manifested in the flesh.
The church is something very mysterious; it is not the outward deeds, practices, and activities that define what the church is, but the living of Christ and the experience of Christ by all the believers.
When we experience Christ and live Christ, we together become the mystery of godliness, the mystery of God-likeness, for God is expressed in the flesh. Hallelujah!
We shouldn’t look at ourselves and try to introspect or self-analyze how much we experienced Christ – we should simply love the Lord, pursue Him, enjoy Him in His word, and the experiences of Christ will come!
The Experience of Christ is our Fellowship unto the Furtherance of the Gospel until the Lord Returns
The first chapter of Philippians, a book on the experience of Christ, is on the matter of the gospel, especially the furtherance of the gospel (see Phil. 1:3-6).
Philippians unveils that the experience of Christ is actually our fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel until the Lord comes back.
We may not see any connection between preaching the gospel and the experience of Christ; we may even think that the gospel and the experience of Christ are two different things.
But this made-up difference between the gospel and the experience of Christ needs to be exposed and discarded, for our gospel preaching life is not something different or besides our experience of Christ, and the fellowship unto the gospel does not contradict or exclude our experience of Christ.
It’s not that I am a gospel-preaching Christian and you are a spiritual Christ-pursuing Christian; rather, we are both such things, for these two are inseparable.
Paul commended the Philippians from the very beginning of his epistle for their fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel, and he was assured that the Lord, the One who started in them this good work, will also complete it until the day of the Lord’s return. Hallelujah!
From the time that we are saved until the time that the Lord Jesus comes back, our Christian life needs to be a gospel-preaching life.
We are not here to have a good job, the best education, and the most lovely family life, neither are we are here to earn a lot of money or gain a reputation or position. We are here on earth to live a gospel-preaching life, that is, we are here to live a life that expresses Christ, preaches Christ, and lives Christ.
Our living of Christ is our preaching of the gospel; our living should be our preaching, and our profession is preaching the gospel.
Whether we speak or we are silent, whether we are in a meeting or at work, whether we are with believers or unbelievers, we need to experience Christ by having fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel until the Lord returns.
In the church life we should live a gospel-preaching life, and our Christian life should be a gospel-preaching Christian life.
Preaching the gospel and having fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel should not be just some kind of activity, something we do from time to time, a movement or a campaign, but it should be our living. It shouldn’t just be only our commission, but also our life.
Lord Jesus, we want to experience Christ by having fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel. May our Christian life be a gospel-preaching life, and may our church life be filled with fellowship unto the gospel. Save us from merely having an outward activity of preaching the gospel, and bring us into a gospel-preaching life. Lord, may You who started this good work in us also complete it until the Lord returns, and may we be faithful to fulfill such a good work, the fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel!
The more we have Fellowship unto the Gospel Corporately, the more we Experience Christ
When we experience and enjoy Christ, we have fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel and we live a gospel-preaching life; such a life is not individualistic but corporate.
The more fellowship we have in the furtherance of the gospel, the more Christ we enjoy and experience (on the positive side) and the more our self, ambition, preference, and choice are killed (on the negative side).
A life of experiencing Christ is actually a life that furthers the fellowship unto the gospel; it puts us in the fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel.
Chapter 1 of Philippians – a book on the experience of Christ – mentions the gospel many times; the Philippians had fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel, there was the defense and confirmation of the gospel, the advancement of the gospel, and the faith of the gospel.
For us to have a genuine gospel-preaching life we need to have a Christ-experiencing life. Our preaching of the gospel should not be individualistic.
In Christianity today the more someone is involved in the preaching of the gospel and is manifested to be an evangelist, the more individualistic and independent he becomes. But in the gospel we need to have fellowship, communication, mutual interchange.
The more we have fellowship unto the gospel, the more we experience of Christ.
Clearing the past, consecrating ourselves to the Lord, and following the inner anointing are good, but when we do these things, we may still not have that much experience of Christ as when we preach the gospel in a corporate way.
Regarding the preaching of the gospel, we may be zealous to preach the gospel on the college campuses or to our neighbors, by door-knocking or visiting the new ones; however, do we have fellowship unto the gospel, or do we just do it out of our zeal for the Lord?
If we don’t have fellowship unto the gospel, we do not have much experience of Christ.
The experience of Christ is not mainly in our preaching of the gospel but in our fellowship unto the gospel, our fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel.
When we come together and enjoy the Lord, sing, pray, coordinate, and fellowship unto the gospel, we will experience Christ.
In this matter it is not about who is first and who is the most zealous or burning; it is about us all, as a corporate Body, having fellowship unto the gospel, and therefore enjoying and experiencing Christ.
We need to ask ourselves whether in our preaching of the gospel we have the experience of Christ; this depends on whether or not we have the fellowship unto the gospel.
It is easy to take some Bible tracts and your New Testament and go on the street corner to preach the gospel, but it is not so easy to enter into the fellowship of the gospel.
When we pay the price to have the fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel, our self will be denied, our ambition is put aside, our reputation is smashed, and we simply are one with the Lord and with the saints to both experience Christ and propagate Him.
The fellowship unto the gospel kills the self, the flesh, and the natural man; also, it causes us to experience Christ. Whether we speak or remain silent, our life with our living, our being with our entire person, in all things we must be preaching Christ.
Sometimes we may be restricted from speaking, while other times we can freely speak; in all things, we need to fellowship with the saints unto the gospel, and we need to experience Christ and preach Christ.
Lord Jesus, may we experience Christ as we have fellowship unto the furtherance of the gospel in the Body. May we live a Christ-experiencing and Christ-enjoying life in the furtherance of the gospel corporately. We give ourselves to You, Lord, to be in the fellowship of the gospel with the saints corporately, so that our life and living, even our very being and person, would be emanating Christ, preaching Christ, and ministering Christ to others. Lord, we put ourselves aside, and we deny our ambition, preference, desire, and choice; we just want to experience Christ by having much fellowship unto the gospel corporately!
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, ch. 2 (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:
# Ours is a fellowship in the gospel / Since we received the Lord; / We’re for the furtherance of the gospel, / Spreading to all His Word. / For its defense and strong confirmation / We all partake of grace— / He who began this work will perfect it / Till we shall see His face. (Hymns #1295)
# We must ever preach the gospel, / Holding forth the word of life. / We must never shirk our duty; / Saving man from sin and strife. / Fellowship unto the gospel / For the increase and the spread; / In the vital groups empowered, / Into victory we’ll be led. (Song on, We must ever preach the gospel)
# To the lost world minister Christ, / Not just by word, but by life, / Imparting Christ by living deeds / To the poor souls living in strife. (Hymns #922)
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