Week 33—Wednesday Ephesians 3:14-19
Ephesians 3:14-19
HISTORICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL
CORROBORATED BY THE COLLECTIVE
We are studying the place of authority in Christianity, and we have seen that two kinds of reality—the historical and the experimental—corroborate each other. This brings a very high degree of certainty. But there is one weak spot in this—it rests too much on the individual experience, and the individual may be deceived—may be suffering from a hallucination. That weak spot can only be corrected when the individual experience is corroborated by collective experience.
And the church supplies the collective experience. The claim of the church to be infallible is, of course, silly, beneath contempt. But what the church supplies is the collective corroboration of the individual experience. In all ages, in all climes, among all classes of people, young and old, male and female, this experience of the living Christ within has been experienced as the central reality of life. When I was a young Christian I met with a man, very argumentative and very clever. He could run circles around me when it came to an argument. So finally I said, “Well, one thing I do know that whereas I was blind, now I see.” He was silent. His arguments couldn’t touch that.
People do not speak of experiencing Buddha—they worship him in an image. Experiencing him? No. People do not speak of realizing within the Virgin Mary—it is always an “appearance,” “a vision,” never an experience. The Hindus take long pilgrimages to get the “darshan” of the god—the “meeting” with the deity in the person of the idol—it is not an experiencing within. But the real and simple Christian does experience him within. The Christian discounts “appearances” and “visions” of Jesus with the attitude: “I do not need or want such ‘appearances’ or ‘visions’—I have him within—I have him within—all the time. ‘Lo, I am with you always’ is fact. I need no fading visions, I have the unfading Fact. I am never alone, hence never lonely.” And the reality of that Fact is seen in the fruits of changed character and attitudes. Christian experience is a Solid Reality.
O Lord Jesus, I do not ask you to come down from heaven in vision or dream, for that would be betrayal—betrayal of this blessed Fact within. You have brought heaven to me. I ask no heavenly Vision. I have him. You are my Heaven—now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I rest on a “vision” I have to look back; if I rest on the present living Christ I look within.