Vital Experience of Jesus

J. Rufus Moseley wrote the following article for the December 8, 1929 issue of The Macon Telegraph. It's republished in the book A Heavenly View compiled by Wayne McLain:

"I am indebted to Fred Gladstone Bratton for the phrase, 'Vital Experience of Jesus.' In his article, 'Toward the Understanding of Paul', in The Christian Century of October 9, 1929, he says that St. Paul had 'the most vital experience of Jesus that the world has ever had.' Yet, St. Paul did not know Jesus after the flesh and only knew Him in the way that everyone of us can and must know Him, in order to really know Him. Jesus is as much alive today as He was when He walked the earth in the flesh, and through His crucifixion, resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Ghost He can make Himself more real now than He could make Himself when He walked the earth in the flesh. It was this resurrected and glorified Christ Jesus that St. Paul knew, and who wants to reveal Himself to and triumph in all of us.

"St. Paul reports that Christ appeared to him objectively three times and talked to him. On the Damascus road, He appeared to him in a light outshining the noonday sun and asked him why he was persecuting Him. When Paul said unto Him, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' He replied, 'I am Jesus whom Thou persecutest. But arise and stand on thy feet; I have appeared for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen and of those things in which I will appear unto thee: Delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and the inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith in Me'. (Acts 26:14-19)

"When St. Paul went up to Jerusalem the last time and the persecution against him was so bitter, while he was praying in the temple, he was in a trance, or lost in the Spirit, and saw Jesus, who said unto him: 'Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem for they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me . . . Depart, for I will send thee to the Gentiles'. (Acts 22:18-21) 'And the night following the Lord stood by him and said: 'Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou hast testified for me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome,' (Acts 23:11). The Lord protected Paul, as He protects everyone who surrenders to Him to do His will and to receive His best, until he had finished the work that He had for him to do on earth. Neither man nor storm nor poisonous viper could prevent Paul from reaching Rome, and even his imprisonment while at Rome added to the furtherance of the gospel. Paul saw in his own experience that God worked everything together for good, that the forces that seek to defeat God's will only help to carry it out.

"Returning to the first appearance of the Lord to St. Paul, an appearance that occurred just as soon as he was ready to say and mean it: 'Lord, what will Thou have me to do?', we find that shortly after this the Lord baptized him with the Holy Ghost, restored his sight, and gave him the highest spiritual gifts. Among those gifts were wisdom, knowledge, prophesy, and speaking in tongues. In fact, he appeared to have had all the gifts of the Spirit. Christ came and abode within Paul, and Paul entered into Christ and abode within Him, so that his life was consciously hid with Christ in God. He lived in the Spirit, he walked in the Spirit, he was in heavenly places with Christ. He bore the fruit of the Spirit. He labored more abundantly to make Christ known unto the world than did any other apostle. As he was forgiven much, he loved much.

"In persecutions, revelations, and in glories Paul lived the most wonderful life of any man of his time who had not seen Jesus in the flesh. As he put it, 'For me to live is Christ.' Christ was his life, and even the life that he lived in the body he lived by the faith of Christ. By union with Christ and living in the Spirit, he felt in his mortal body the quickening power and glory that raised Jesus Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11). He felt the first workings of the glorification of the body. While assured that if he lost his natural body the Lord had prepared for him a spiritual, or heavenly body that he would enter, he nevertheless longed to have his natural, or visible body clothed upon rather that unclothed so that all that was mortal of him might be swallowed up of life (II Cor. 5). If Paul had not glorified Christ by martyrdom, having helped to finish out that which was lacking in the suffering of Christ, let us believe that Jesus who answers every prayer of those who abide in Him would have taken the faithful apostle to Himself by translation.

"The gospel preached by Paul, the gospel of the grace of God, or salvation by grace through faith that works by love, was a reality in the experience of his own life. He was saved by the grace of God by believing Christ and by giving himself to Christ to do His will. The Lord made certain to Paul that all can be saved the same way and the salvation of Christ is nothing less than translation out of darkness into light, out of the flesh into the Spirit, out of the self into Christ. The phrases 'in Christ' and in 'union with Christ' are the great phrases in the epistles of St. Paul. To be in Christ was to be 'a new creature' at once and in the end to be a full overcomer, like Christ, and to reign with Christ. One even enters the church, or the body of Christ by being baptized by the one Spirit into the Christ. All in union with Christ are in the church; all out of union with Him are out of the church. We enter into Christ and abide in Christ as we are born of the Spirit, live in the Spirit, and bear the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, goodness, self control, and the other qualities of Christ. The kingdom of God is nothing less than the love, righteousness, peace, and joy of the Lord in the Holy Ghost.

"St. Paul found himself changed from glory to glory as he beheld in a mirror the glory of the Lord. In Him he saw God; in Him He saw the perfect man in God's image and likeness. In Him he saw the likeness of what he himself was to be and what the rest of us are to be as we yield and respond to Him. As I have indicated in previous articles, this vision through the Spirit, of the perfect Father, the perfect Man, and the perfection that is for all of us in Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the truth hinted at and sought for in all the healing movements of the time. Our diseases, as we are coming more and more to see, are not creations of God, but only the externalized fears, doubts, and disobediences of the race and of ourselves. As we face the truth about them, repent and turn to Christ, and behold His perfection, and our perfection in Him, we are set free--free from our fears, doubts, and diseases, as well as from our sins. This is the truth cure; this is the Christ cure.

"There is not an imperfection or disease anywhere that will not go when the perfect in Christ is seen and yielded to. He is not only perfect Himself, but there is perfection in Him for us. He was manifested for the purpose of taking away our sins and imperfections and for making us every whit whole and like Him. Through the union with the forces of evil, man is distorted, perverted, and sick inwardly and outwardly. Through union with Christ he is given a new and Christlike heart and understanding; through these the Lord works to make the body whole. In the end the body is to be like His resurrected and glorified body.

"St. Paul was so many sided that each age has taken from him what appealed to its special interest and need. Paul, the man who so vitally experienced Jesus, lived in such marvelous union with Him, and preached justification by faith and by union with Him, also urged the most practical life of loving kindness. As Professor Charles F. Kent of Yale develops in his book, Work and Teachings of the Apostles (published by Charles Scribner's), Paul's social teachings stand out as clearly in his epistles as do his teachings concerning the individual's redemption through union with Christ. The two sides cannot be separated. To bear fruit we must abide in the Vine, and to abide in the Vine we must bear fruit. The more we love one another the deeper we enter into union with Christ; the deeper we enter into union with Christ the more we love one another. He that loves God loves his brother also, and he that loves even the least of God's children and Christ's brethren, and ministers unto them also ministers unto Christ. As the kingdom of heaven is a state of perfect love to both God and man, as one enters and abides in this love and has nothing in him except love, he also has all of the other qualities of God. Love fulfills everything. St. Paul saw this and experienced it in a marvelous way. Out of his great experience, and experiences, came his mighty labors and his weighty epistles.

"In nothing else is St. Paul more admirable that in his refusal to allow a sect to form about him. He saw that so long as anyone feels that he is a disciple of anyone other than Christ that he is yet carnal, and that Christ must be followed not in a sectarian sense but as the light of the world and as God with us. Paul was all for Christ and nothing for himself in a selfish sense. We all have to give up our Protestantism, Roman and Eastern Catholicism, and all of our efforts to exalt anything that man has built up, humbly submitting to Christ and letting Him be all to us as he was to St. Paul. As Paul continued to tell the people that he preached and wrote to, 'God is no respecter of persons.'

"We can and must have the same kind of firsthand fellowship and union with the Lord as St. Paul had; and we have it when we become obedient and yielded to Him as did St. Paul. The very fact that Paul was in the beginning of the dispensation of the Spirit and that we are apparently standing so near the coming of the Lord and the kingdom of God in victory would seem to make our day even better than the day of St. Paul; that is, if we surrender to Christ and let Him be all in us as did Paul. Man has the weapons of mastery of the forces of nature in his hands today as he has never had them before, and can use these forces either for destruction or for the largest benefit. Never before has it seemed quite so imperative that the nations as well as individuals yield to the love and spirit of Christ. Every day it becomes better to live in Christ and more perilous to live outside of Him."