RICHES
IN CHRIST; EXPERIENCING GOD

The experience of God within the believer ought to result from the text, but it is possible to have the text and not have the experience!

This can be simply but plainly illustrated. Suppose a very rich man dies and leaves a will, the text of which passes on all of his millions to his only son. So the son and heir borrows the text of his father’s will from the attorney and carries it around with him. He becomes ragged and hungry, begging on the street for a crust of bread.

But when someone says, “Poor fellow, you are in bad shape, weak and pale and sickly,” the heir to the fortune reacts strongly.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” he says. “I have much more than I will ever be able to use!”

To prove it, he opens the will and reads: “Unto my dear son, Charles, I bequeath my property, my stocks and bonds, my bank accounts, my entire estate.”

You see, Charles is completely satisfied with the text of the will. He has it and he holds it—but he has never had it executed, never had it filed for probate, never presented his legitimate claims to the inheritance. In actual experience, he has received nothing. He simply holds the text of the will.

In the same sense, a Christian may go around clutching the book of Ephesians and not realize that he is spiritually lean and hungry, pallid and weak, and ragged as well.…

It is one thing to have the text of the will—it is another thing to come into possession of the riches.

Ephesians 1:3; Ephesians 3:8

I Talk Back to the Devil, 103, 104.