Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
Isn't that what Paul meant when he said "For me to live is Christ?" Wasn't he saying in some sense that the experience of living to him was Christ?
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Of all the things you've written, this was the one that gave me most pause. I had to ask, well, isn't living an experience? And don't I want to "live Christ" as Paul put it? So don't I want to experience Christ?
I'm somewhat biased about that verse, though; I've always seen Paul as saying, "For you to live may be your job or your family or some philosophy. But to me to live is the person of Jesus Christ." Life itself, eternal, uncreated, divine, incorruptible, was presented to us in the very person of Jesus the Galilean. And Paul wanted this: nothing else. But this is a subjective statement. That is Paul's choice. Ultimately, God also will speak. "We all have to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ". Then God will either say "amen" or "nay" to Paul's declaration. Until then we take it as provisional.
Of course Paul wrote a dozen or so epistles. We take it as granted that he "experienced Christ" or "lived Christ" or "gained Christ" to some degree. But to what degree we don't know. God knows.
When Paul said, "that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him" in Philippians 3:8, I think he was likewise saying that this was his goal, his ultimate object. How much did Paul gain or experience Christ on a day-to-day basis? Who knows. So what is the "gain Christ" or "experience Christ" as some kind of divine currency of enduring value in our daily lives? Nothing.
WL turned "Christ" into an objective commodity that could be "gained" by coming to (his) meetings and saying "amen" when he spoke. By pray-reading and PSRP'ing and whatnot. There is a big, big danger of people thinking they have "gained" some commodity, stored up in heaven, and one day hearing, "I don't know you" from the Judge of all. This is serious. Our faith is in God's goodness, not our experience. I certainly hope to "gain Christ" and be found in Him. But I look away unto Him, not to my daily experiences of Him.
I know RK said once at a meeting that he had "more Christ" than before. He said that because WL said that. Ultimately he put his trust in WL. Bad move. I think that to humble ourselves is to distrust ourselves, our experiences, out thinking, our motives. Look at WL's motives. When some young gullible brother inherited money, suddenly a motor home factory was in the works. Where was that lurking, while WL was experiencing and gaining Christ?
I do have faith, and believe: the conclusive proof that I see, of Jesus being the personification of life itself, is God's proving to all that Jesus is Lord and Christ, by raising Him from the dead, and giving Him glory. I trust that. I believe in that. That, to me is irrefutable. And if I didn't have faith, why struggle forward, daily? But how much am I going forward, if at all, I don't worry about. Am I gaining Christ today? Am I experiencing Him? I just keep going on, and like Paul said, "I forget what is behind", including all my possible experiences of gaining Christ. The race is on.
To claim the experience is to obviate or annul the experience. We claim, rather, that we believe Christ is the victor. He finished the race. Now we follow Him. Couldn't He have "claimed" to be higher than the angels, while on earth? No, He humbled Himself and took the lowest position. He claimed nothing. It was the Father's testimony (resurrection, ascension, glory) which ultimately claimed Him and what He had laid hold of, here on earth. But if we, today, claim our experience as somehow objectively real and valid in its own right I think we trust ourselves too much. The scriptural record is littered with the carcasses of those who trusted in themselves too much while they were still on the way. "The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to play."
It's like saying, "I am a five-talented saint." By saying that you probably disqualify yourself. You err, and will be unpleasantly surprised. If you say, "Well I am merely a one-talented saint" you may also err - maybe you are two talented. Who knows? Just struggle on. Evaluating yourself, or others, is a waste of time and attention. And the idea of experiencing Christ seems to me like a self-created and imposed evaluation. By the time you get done qualifying it, it has no value. And if you don't qualify it, then you risk being seriously led astray, or captivated, by your conjectures, as if they had reality of their own. And that, to me, was WL's ministry in a nutshell.