Experience?

“It is not the sense of the [religious or spiritual] experience that is the main matter, but the source of the experience. It is not our experience we are conscious of, but it is Christ. It is not our experience we proclaim, but the Christ who comes in our experience.” P.T. Forsyth.

In commenting on the above, Arndt Halvorson writes, “To know Christ is to experience him, since he is a living person, for as we know, anytime we say we ‘know’ another person, we are saying we have experienced that person.”

Is it possible to work in Buckingham Palace and not think and speak of the Queen? I suppose there are two types of people in the Palace, those who know the Queen, who have a relationship with Her Majesty, and those who don’t. Then there are those who visit, and those who stand outside the gates and look in. Buckingham Palace would not have the same aura about it were it not the residence of the Queen.

I imagine that when those who know the Queen get together for tea or a pint of ale that they can’t help but talk about the Queen, about her desires, her wants, her personality, her sorrows, her joys.

How is it that professing Christians often refrain from speaking to one another about Jesus Christ? How is it that often, when we do talk of religious or spiritual things – that they are just that – “things” or “experiences” without reference to our Lord Jesus? Can we experience religion and not experience Jesus Christ? Of course we can. Can we focus on spiritual experience and not experience the Person of Jesus Christ…I think so.

When I was young I don’t know that Jesus was anything more than a romantic idea, an idealism. “Church” was more like a baseball team, meaning that there were many teams in the league and I needed to figure out which team I wanted to play on and root for – and for the most part every team had its recruiters. Did I want to experience the “long ball” or “small ball” – did I want home runs or bunts and steals and a barrage of singles?

I recently asked a professing Christian, “Tell me about Jesus.” Every verb he used was in the past tense. I said, “If I asked you to tell me about your Dad, who is still living, you would use the past tense for some things, but you’d also use the present tense to describe him and your relationship with him today. Jesus wants a relationship with you today.”

Are we conscious of Jesus Christ? Is Jesus Christ our experience?