THE CHRISTIANITY THAT JESUS BROUGHT WITH HIM IS AN EXPERIENTIAL RELIGION, not just believing His revealed facts and obeying what He commands.
THE CHRISTIANITY THAT JESUS BROUGHT WITH HIM IS AN EXPERIENTIAL RELIGION, not just believing His revealed facts and obeying what He commands.
He led them to “believe.” He led them to “obey.” And He led them to EXPERIENCE!”
Just look at the way that He “processed” His disciples in the Gospels:
He personally called them to become His disciples: “… Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John” (John 4:1). They had to personally wrestle with His many difficult sayings before they were willing to openly announce that they were coming under His authority by baptismal immersion. And as you recall from reading Matthew 5-7, Jesus gave those “difficult sayings” to the masses who were NOT yet His disciples, so they clearly KNEW what they were getting into in deciding to become His “disciple”: “And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine!” (Mathew 7:28). This means that HIS recognition of them as being His “disciples” did not even BEGIN until they had heard and embraced things like:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you to NOT resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”
Jesus personally demonstrated for them what He meant by that saying. His apostles later did the same. AND, until Constantine came along and helped the church’s leaders redefine a clever new way of teaching a new form of “loving your enemies” that allowed us to kill them in a “loving way,” so did the first centuries of His churches. Among the many forms of “Christianity” that exist today, there are exceedingly few who dare to even MENTION passages like that one in their “Statements of Faith,” let alone take them seriously enough to train their members how to live them out in the way that Jesus, His apostles, and the first centuries of faithful disciples modeled them!
Can you possibly imagine that Jesus has accepted our adulterated ecclesiastical “adaptations” of His painfully clear requirements for being enrolled as His “disciples”?
And the experience of becoming His “disciple” is but the FIRST decision that enters us into His “Way” that leads to salvation: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus only baptized those who were willing to become His disciples. Throughout all of the New Testament the apostles only baptized those who had been willing to become His disciples. Do you honestly even imagine that it could have been JESUS who invented or approved of the centuries later decision to reverse His process: “make disciples” by baptizing those who were utterly INCAPABLE of making any decisions at all, who had no sins to repent of, who had never even HEARD of Jesus‽
The audience of His famous “Sermon on the Mount” did not have the same satanic “advantage” that we ecclesiastically acceptable Christians have today – being taught by our religious authorities that Jesus really did not mean to be taken literally when He taught them, “Do NOT resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also!” Simpletons that they were, they actually assumed that He always meant EXACTLY some clear version of what He said!”
Our incarnated Creator invented one form of “Christianity” and then we humans invented another form. When it is time for Him to look us in the face, and either say, “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased” OR say “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” – when that time comes, which “form” of “Christianity” should we imagine He will be using to make that decision about what to say? Therefore, no matter what we have been encouraged to embrace in the past, which “form” should we decide to embrace now in order to remove any possibility of being surprised to wind up having a satanic “roommate” for all eternity?
Is it really possible that the one who hates both his Creator and his human victims has made such headway within the holy movement that Jesus brought into being that we can defy what our own ancient brethren embraced and yet hope to share in their hope of heaven? Well, it actually DID happen to me, so I certainly am not surprised at the thought! If you are still caught in that trap, then your next “experience” is to undergo that “repentance” of having been seduced into believing that His “hope of heaven” can be separated from the crucifixion of self that He insisted upon over and over again:
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26).
Have you ever considered His command to “NOT resist him who is evil” as being part of what He means by “take up your cross”? Have you ever considered the idea that He is SO serious about what He said that your eternal glorification or damnation may hinge on letting Him lead you into learning to DO it?
Jesus’s teachings and commands are SO “unnatural” and threating to our “fight and flight” instincts that anyone who does not do substantial wrestling about His wisdom, divine power and goodness before getting “married” in baptismal union to Him is either a fool or has been convinced by Christendom’s compromised and adulterated versions of Biblical teaching that they are getting married to a total stranger! And when you get married to a total stranger, there is no need to be surprised to find that a divorce is in your future! In my case, fortunately, it was a temporary divorce before He restored my marriage relationship with Him.
Well, Jesus’s teachings were full of “experiential language,” language that can only be understood by people who first actually experience what He was talking about. As I often explain, if your friend John said that He had “fallen in love” with Mary you can never “know” what John means if you have not already “fallen in love” with someone. You can “imagine” it, but you cannot “know it.” Listen to the following:
“Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his belly [Greek: “koilia” – “gut”] will flow rivers of living water.’ But this He said in reference to the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:37-39).
Jesus was clearly not talking there about some form of intellectual learning, but about an experience in which even your body participates! “Innermost being” or even “heart” are far too cerebral concepts to use instead of “gut,” especially when you read about those “Pentecostal” experiences in the Book of Acts!
“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life’ (John 4:13-14).
When you read how intense and memorable was their experience of “receiving” or being “filled by” that Holy Spirit (Acts 2, 8, 10, & 19) it ought to be very obvious how experiential HIS version of Christianity was for them! Can you imagine any good reason why Jesus should have wanted that deeply experienced empowerment by God to have existed only in the first century? I actually ASSUMED that it was a temporary experienced event for some years because I accepted the ecclesiastical substitution confidently taught by my denomination’s theological experts – that when my bishop in “apostolic succession” laid his hands upon me at my “Confirmation” I “obviously MUST HAVE” received His Spirit. So I took their word for it until it became so obvious to me that they did not know what they were talking about!!
Jesus’s Pentecostal promise led to the Pentecostal EXPERIENCE! It was not until I could see back in 1972 what was obvious to those ancient “simpletons” – that Jesus really MEANT what He really SAID – that I began to pray for Him to grant to me what He had so generously bestowed upon them. And after giving me an experiential “refresher course” in repenting and trusting Jesus, He fulfilled His wonderful promise in December of that year!
Please, PLEASE, do not let yourself be cheated out of God’s generosity and willingness to unite Himself to you in the very same way that He did for those “simpletons” back then – God has never changed His commands, His promises, His Gifts, or His methods – WE changed them many centuries ago, when we became too full of OUR “wisdom” and “common sense” to take His written words in the same way that his simple fishermen and carpenters had taken His spoken words!
Leap out in crazy faith in His Pentecostal promise, because it was always what He had in mind that would actually motivate us to both WANT to obey them and be ABLE to obey them! “The things which ARE impossible with men ARE possible with God” (Luke 18:27)!
He may well have to give YOU the same “refresher course” in repentance and yielding that He gave me, but He will be as faithful to you as He was with me! His written recording of His New Covenant revelation was never intended to be merely a history book of what He did “once upon a time – a long, long time ago – in a land far away.” It was always intended to be His forever relevant “User’s Guide” for what is ALWAYS available for those who are willing to be, “converted and become as little children” (Matthew 18:3).
He is no longer visible to us in the way that He was with His first disciples, but if He regards YOU as a person that He intends to bring safely home to His Father then He is going to treat you in the same creative way that He treated His first disciples. Some version of what He did to them in the Gospels and Book of Acts He will do to YOU!
AMEN?
God be with you, fellow pilgrim!
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