GOD’S REVELATION OF CHRIST IN US
Saul
of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle, experienced the mighty work
of God’s Spirit. God brought this rebel sinner to bow before Him in
the dust and revealed Himself in Paul. He gives confession of this in
his letter to the Galatians: “But when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, To
reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen;
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood”
(GALATIANS
1:15,16).
This
all came to pass at God’s appointed time (“when it pleased
God”) and according to His purpose and power of grace (“called
me by His grace”). But what did God do in this man and what was
the result of this great work? God revealed the Lord Jesus Christ, as
Paul says, “in me.” The result was that Paul never stopped
talking about, believing in, glorying in and preaching the Lord Jesus
Christ. At the center of his experience was the revelation of Jesus
Christ!
While
his experience was the same experience for all who are born of God,
Paul did not focus on the experience itself but the One who was
revealed to him and in him. God revealed Christ to Paul as the One
who is God manifest in the flesh. He saw Christ as the true God, as
the ONLY SAVIOR and as THE VERY RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD FREELY GIVEN to
him. He was brought to forsake his old religion, his imagined
righteousness and his own way. But one thing is sure, experience for
experience sake is nothing. Only that experience which leaves a
sinner talking about, worshipping, following, believing, glorifying,
trusting in and resting upon the Lord Jesus Christ is the experience
of God’s grace wrought by the Holy Spirit.
The
blessed Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. Grace
experienced is Christ believed on! Balaam also had a mysterious
experience on a road when the ass spoke to him about an angel but he
perished. Balaam experienced an
experience, Paul experienced Christ! Christ revealed is
Christ believed on because both are the work of God’s Spirit.
Grace
experienced is Christ! Can you hear Christ saying unto you, “Look
unto Me and be ye saved…” Experiencing God’s grace to
us in the revelation of Christ is an eternal experience! Hear Him
again, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given
Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My
glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst
Me before the foundation of the world” (JOHN
17:24).
-Gospel
report by preacher Gary
Shepard
Sovereign
Grace Baptist church of Jacksonville, North Carolina USA
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