What is Experiential Christianity?
What is “experiential” Christianity?
Today, this phrase is often confused with emotionalism, mysticism, or frenzied excitement, something like sentimentality detached from the intellect or the Scriptures. Many of us are used to the extremes of the charismatic movement, so anything that smacks of unbalanced experience or mere enthusiasm is jettisoned, as it should be. But that is exactly what is not meant by the phrase “experiential Christianity.”
The origin of experiential Christianity comes down to us from the older term experimental Christianity, which itself comes from the Latin experiri, “to try, to test, to prove.” We are used to this concept of experiment in the realm of natural science, as in trying or testing a hypothesis. However, when the term experimental was first deployed in the theological context of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformations, it described something else entirely.
The idea referred to a Christianity that has been known, tasted, felt, or verified by personal experience. It is a Christianity that is found in the heart, not just the intellect. The fathers of the Reformed faith treated experiential or experimental Christianity as a non-negotiable when it came to true faith. They went so far as to say that without it, one is not a Christian.
What Experimental Christianity Does Not Mean
The phrase does not mean, now or then, “let’s try out Christianity” or “let’s experiment to see if it’s the real religion,” as if one were uncertain that it is true. Nor does it mean bare emotionalism. Rather, it refers to a Christianity that has been personally realized and known to be alive, vital, and true. It has been verified by experience.
To say it another way, experimental Christianity is when the objective truths of Christianity are experienced or proven in a subjective sense. It is the difference between hearing facts about the existence of a certain place, let us say China, and actually visiting that place. I can read books about China and even see photographs of its streets, but it is not until I am on the ground in China, breathing its air and touching the doorknobs of its buildings, that such objective facts are truly experienced. It is the difference between studying the pages of a cookbook about a certain dish and actually eating it. It is the difference between knowing the properties of honey and tasting its sweetness for yourself.
Or to take a more biblical metaphor: it is like a blind man trying to describe what light is. He might be able to articulate on the topic of light with all the skill of Shakespeare or the eloquence of a Cicero, but unless the blind man’s eyes are opened, he’s never actually known light.
The same is true of Christianity. You can know its historical facts. You can read the Bible. You can memorize the catechisms. But that does not mean you know Christ. It does not mean you have encountered the living God.
In the beginning of John’s Gospel, we are told that the darkness did not “comprehend” or “grasp” Jesus (John 1:5). A similar idea appears when Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. The idea of seeing here refers to spiritual awareness or knowledge. It is more than bare assent to the objective facts of the kingdom. It is the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit in a person’s soul, so that he experiences the truth of Christ in an inward, felt way, and comes to believe in the gospel for himself.
This is what it means to see the kingdom of God. Experiential Christianity is always connected to the objective facts of the faith. Yet to know objective facts is not the same thing as to know Christ.
The demons believe the facts of Christ’s resurrection, His status as the Son of God, and His victory over death and evil, but they do not love Christ. They do not worship Christ. They do not know Christ in the experimental sense. They do not possess what the Heidelberg Catechism calls “the heartfelt joy in God through Christ” (Q&A 90), nor do they glorify God and enjoy Him, as described in the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC 1).
But what about you? Do you know God in this experiential sense? Do you enjoy God? Do you know anything of this heartfelt joy in Him? Or is it all head knowledge? Are the things of Christ merely facts, no different for you than the facts of the Roman Empire or Napoleon’s campaigns through Europe? Is the Bible simply one interesting text among many, or is it truly the very word of God?
Unfortunately, this is the condition of many professing Christians today. They know Christ in name only. They have heard reports of Christ but have never closed with Him in any real, supernatural way. They know only a dry, stale, clinical, intellectual religion, but nothing of its vitality or power in the inner man.
It is true that experiential Christianity, severed from objective truth, will drift into a realm where experience becomes the authority. But make no mistake, the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about the new birth necessarily produces heavenly affections and spiritual experience, or what earlier writers called heart religion. It will also produce a growth in holiness, because the man or woman who has been born again will be actively putting sin and self to death and living afresh for Christ. There will be growth in sanctification, in other words.
The Inward Witness of the Spirit
Consider how we view the Scriptures. Why does a believer have a relish for the Word of God, while an unbeliever does not? Two people can read the same Bible, yet only the believer feels the burning conviction in the soul that this is truly God’s Word. The other remains unmoved, merely impressed, or even enraged by it. One is compelled to submit to its teaching and would, if it came to it, even die for such a book. The other would gladly burn it.
When an unbeliever asks for proof that the Bible is the Word of God, it often does little good to marshal the facts of its historical reliability, its internal consistency, or its correspondence to archaeological data, though such evidence is abundant. The Bible is the most reliable and vindicated book of antiquity, and its beauty and coherence speak for themselves.
Yet, what usually happens when this evidence is presented? Does the unbeliever automatically bow before it as the Word of God? Does he surrender to its authority? No, unless the Lord is using these means to draw him to Christ, which indeed often happens. But where unbelief remains, the reason is plain: the eyes must be illuminated by the Holy Spirit. Or more precisely, it is the inward witness of the Spirit that testifies to the divine authority of the Scriptures.
Thus, we see that true faith is more than intellect. It is more than knowledge, or even assent to objective truth. It is a work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. This accords with a biblical understanding of human nature. We are more than disembodied brains. We are not robots or blocks of wood. We have affections, loves, desires, and a will.
Objective truth and intellect are essential to faith, but they are meant to serve as catalysts for holy affections and renewed desires. True faith is when a man’s heart and will, not merely his intellect, reach out and appropriate Christ for himself.
There are, then, two ways of knowing something: by hearing about it intellectually, or by experiencing it through sight and participation. One is merely notional. The other is experiential. The latter is what is meant by experimental Christianity. You possess Christ not in theory only, but in the heart. The Samaritans first heard about Jesus from the woman at the well. But after encountering Him for themselves, they could say, “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).
The Need of the Hour is Experiential Christianity
This is why experiential Christianity matters so deeply in our own hour, and why it is deadly for the church to downplay or dismiss it. Christians rightly prize the intellect. Christianity is the religion of the Book. Reading, education, and careful study have been central to the church since the beginning. We love books, catechisms, and theological precision, and we should.
Yet with this comes the danger of rationalism, the notion that reason alone is sufficient. Combine this with modern anti-supernaturalism and materialism, and a serious distortion emerges. Conversion becomes untethered from the new birth and redefined as the acquisition of knowledge. We might call it doctrinal regeneration.
Religion then becomes formal, external, and lifeless. It is reduced to creeds, propositions, and intellectual assent. Christianity turns into a school of philosophy or a social club with religious language. I fear this describes far too many churches today, and, tragically, far too many who call themselves Christians.
So what about you, reader? Do you know this Christ experientially, in the heart, or is Christianity just an intellectual playground or a tradition you were told to revere? Do you have holy affections? Do you find yourself growing in holiness and putting sin to death? Do you know anything of heart religion?
If not, fly to Jesus as He’s offered to you in the gospel. Look upon Him whom you have pierced, and mourn. Gaze upon Him who has died for sinners. Ask Him for new eyes that you may see and a new heart that you may come and taste that the Lord is good.
