Did We MISS the Entire Point of the GOSPELS?

March 10th, 1985. It’s the first time we’ve ever met in this room, and this is the first session of a one-week meeting with ten people from other parts of America. I’m going to talk about an introduction to the deeper Christian life, and I’m going to start right now. Where did the deeper Christian life begin? Where did the experience of the deeper Christian life begin? Where was its origin? Before we come to a definition of it, where did it begin? Does anybody want to venture a guess? Anybody new around here want to venture a guess? Okay, a little louder.

Certainly, it didn’t start at Patmos. It wasn’t in the churches. An experience with Christ of full and real meaning, experience as over against head knowledge. Where did an encounter with Christ come from? Where did this thing of being in Christ and Christ in you and all of these mysterious terms begin? The answer is not in the church, not in Galilee, not in the Old Testament.

Where it began, if you can get a hold of this, it will change your life. In fact, it will so completely alter your life that it’ll just make you totally different. Maybe not change you spiritually, but it’ll just give you a whole new attitude as a Christian. If you’re a fundamentalist, you’ll stop being a fundamentalist. If you’re a Pentecostal, you’ll stop being a Pentecostal. And if you stop being a fundamentalist and a Pentecostal, I’ll be so relieved.

The deeper Christian life began in God before creation. There was a fellowship going on in the Godhead. There was a fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit even before eternity. The Lord would say there never was when I was not. He was always there. It would be my guess that this fellowship was so rich and so wonderful that the Lord must have thought to Himself, I would like to enlarge it. Now I cannot prove this point, and I may be completely amiss, but I have a notion that with all the joy that there was in the Godhead, my guess is there was also some pain and suffering. Maybe not, but perhaps. I am certain of one thing: that suffering preceded the visible creation. But whatever was going on inside of God, there must have come a time when He said, I would like to expand the experience, the fellowship that goes on among us.

Now then, that was not the beginning of the deeper Christian life. That was the beginning of the Christian life, which happened to be a very profound thing, so we would call it quite deep. Whatever God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit do together, it has to be more than trivial. I have often asked this question, and I will ask you this question. I will ask Barbara this question. Barbara, who was the first Christian? Who was the very first Christian? No, not exactly, but maybe it’s a trick question. Just give a stab, it doesn’t matter.

Audience: Alright, I want to think I’m thinking cosmic now because…

Aww, you shouldn’t do that. You’re supposed to give me an answer like this, Mary Magdalene, you’re supposed to say Mary Magdalene or you’re supposed to say John the Baptist, or I know you and now you’re cheating, so you’ve ruined everything. Alright, who was the first Christian? Adam. Ah, good. We slipped by it.

I would say, or would you say that Jesus Christ was the first Christian? And I think we would be wrong. I think we would be completely wrong. God the Father was the first Christian, if there is any first in the Trinity, and perhaps there is not.

Now again, that may seem like a very small observation, but it is not a small observation, because if you get the implication of it, it destroys the whole foundation of almost everything you and I have been taught about what the Christian life is. I would like you to imagine the origin of the Christian life in the Godhead. Now, I would like for you to take our concept of what the Christian life is and try to put it in the Godhead, and we end up with the Lord Jesus sitting there with the Father, and they’re reading the Bible and praying. Is that not true? And they are witnessing, and they’re passing out tracts. They’re praying, and they’re giving their tithe. Alright, is that not true?

Now, I am telling you, if the Christian life originated in the Godhead, then whatever was going on there in that glorious fellowship was greater, much greater, than Bible study, prayer as we know it, forbid, and passing out tracts and witnessing and reading our Bibles and tithing and speaking in tongues. Now, I am telling you that when this one who had lived in eternity incarnated himself into humanity, he came with the enormous storehouse of that eternal fellowship with Him and in Him and from Him, and He did not come and say, That was wonderful, but now I’ll make all these people read their Bible and tithe.

Do you understand? He had to come mostly with a backlog of His personal experience, which was the fellowship of the Godhead, and that is what He came to share, far and away above any and everything that you and I have laid upon him in our interpretation of Scripture. It was greater than that. It was deeper than that. And yes, I feel like we’ve missed a great deal by our traditional…you know, if you say praying, reading the Bible, speaking in tongues, and going to church are the center of the Christian life, and you come to the Bible, that’s what you will find; I promise you. But if you come looking for the fellowship of the Godhead in the scripture, you will be dumbfounded at how much you will find, and it will put your Christian life on a totally different plane. It will put the Christian gospel on a different plane.