What is the key to truly experiencing God?

Now God has been manifested here on earth and this is specially set before us in John's writings, hence the frequent occurrence of the word "truth" there. That revelation has reached us in the Lord Jesus Christ who could say, "I am the truth" inasmuch as He could also say, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." He it is who makes God real to us and perfectly expresses all that He is, and hence we have in the knowledge of Christ the key that unlocks all reality everywhere.

Communion with God is a real thing, in which He pours into the soul, in a greater or less degree, the deep joy of His presence - of that favour and perfect love in which He communicates with the soul, revealing Himself - and gives, by His presence, the happiness of a relationship, in which no breach is suspected, nor thought of, in which the soul lives. It is more than faith, though founded on it; other than the certainty of salvation, though the crown and seal and realisation of this. The abstract certainty, the consoling certainty, that my Father loves me, and will not, nay, cannot, do otherwise, is another thing from happy intercourse with this love, with no consciousness of anything else, or of anything in the way of that enjoyment. The certainty of love in God constitutes the bitterness of the sense of the loss of the enjoyment of it, for I speak only of saints here. The Spirit's seal to the truth assures of God's love; and Christ, if we fail, intercedes for us. But the Holy Ghost being the spring of the enjoyment of it in the heart is another thing. The one - the foundation, it is true, of all - assures that God is for us: the other is God in us, filling the heart with joy, with communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

After the Lord's resurrection He appeared to His own, to Mary at the sepulchre, to the disciples in the upper room, to the two going to Emmaus, to the disciples at Olivet; but the world knew nothing about these manifestations: so now with the Holy Spirit. "He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." He is here to reveal Christ to us. The Lord Himself will come to us in our need — "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you" — but it is only by the agency of the Holy Spirit that we realise His presence. We cannot tell how the Lord comes to us; we cannot explain His coming to others, but we know He does come, for we have experienced it, and it is the Holy Spirit who reveals His presence to us.

What follows in John 14:18-23 are the consequences of the Spirit's presence. Because the Holy Spirit is here, the Lord can come in Spirit to His own; He is the power that gives the saints to know the reality of the Lord's spiritual presence with those that are gathered to His Name. We live in the life of the risen Son of God as having the Spirit of life, and it is by the Spirit that we know "that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The manifestation of the Lord to the individual saint who loves Him, and the abiding with us of the Father and the Son, are only known because of the Spirit's presence with us.

It is by the Holy Spirit that God has given to us that He dwells in us, and by that same Spirit we have the consciousness of this divine indwelling. The Holy Spirit is within us as the seal of God, as the divine earnest, and as the unction; but He is the One who brings to the soul the blessed sense of God’s indwelling us, so that we might express in our lives that which yields fruit for His delight, and that which testifies to His Son before men.

The presence of the Comforter is the grand present fact of Christianity: its basis is the revelation of the Father in the Son, then the accomplishment of the work of redemption by the Son; but the fact that man in His Person has entered into the divine glory, has given occasion to the descent of the Holy Ghost down here, given to believers to dwell with them and in them, that they may realise the fulness of this redemption, their relationship with the Father, the fact that they are in Christ, and Christ in them, and the heavenly glory where they will be like Him; and that He may lead them across the desert, with spiritual intelligence, and having their conversation in heaven, till they arrive there. The Spirit also gives us to realise the presence of Jesus with us here below. Jesus does not leave us orphans; He comes to us, and manifests Himself to us. Strengthened in our hearts by faith, the joy of His presence makes itself felt to our souls during our pilgrimage below.

The next thing is that it is by His SPIRIT God dwells there. I need not say to you that, if it is His Spirit, it is as equally God as if it were the Father or the Son. But it is neither the Father nor the Son, but the Spirit, and this is important to notice. God is before us objectively in the Father; the Son became man, that He might be servant to the Godhead, and accomplisher of the Father's counsels; and the Spirit is the One who has undertaken all subjective work in our souls, and who connects Himself with that work, as the spring and power of life in us, and as the means by which we enjoy all the blessings that are ours in Christ by the will of God. By the Spirit we are born again, sealed, anointed, cry Abba, Father, know that we are children of God, enjoy the love of God, mortify the deeds of the body, live to God, are led into all truth, know the deep things of God, know things to come, and contemplate the vast expanse of glory which stretches out before the vision of faith, radiant with the golden light of infinite and everlasting love. By Him our souls are nourished with all that God is as revealed in Christ. He is also the power for all worship, and service, and prayer. He dwells in our bodies individually, uniting us together as one body in Christ, and He dwells among us as His habitation.

Let us carefully remember that such knowledge as Paul here describes can never be attained by mental effort. It is by companying with the Lord, in the spirit of a worshipping intimacy which finds and tastes the kindliness of perfect human friendship in the very presence of Almighty God, that disciples grow into their Master's likeness, and learn the manner of the God with whom they have to do. For it is in the perfection of manhood that the fulness of the Godhead is in Christ revealed to our faith, and according to the form which He who is otherwise invisible has taken for our sakes, is the knowledge of His glory now made known to our hearts. Men are the objects and receivers of His mighty love, and it is a Man who both brings God down to be the minister of our need, and, as our effectual Redeemer and Intercessor, lifts us up in righteousness: not to such fellowship as Adam knew with his Creator, who descended to converse with him in Eden, but to that which is proper to a child with the Father who begat him, and such as may be known (and unspeakable as yet be one day worthily expressed) by a full vessel of mercy, in the presence of the God who has both formed and blessed it at His will. It is as the teacher of "Jesus Christ," according to the fulness and glory of His name and person, that the Spirit both nurses and strengthens the affections and the minds of such as are, by the power of His calling and His quickening word (James 1:18), distinctively "of God." To enlarge further on what is contained in this brief declaration of the Apostle — to show how God's glory in Christ reveals its gracious brightness through the ever-changing circumstances of our pilgrim way, familiarizing gradually the souls of His true children with His holiness, His power, His faithfulness and all-considering mercy and compassion, would here be out of place. What God is must be learnt through fellowship with God; and such fellowship, in the enabling power of the Spirit, is the one sure symptom of a growing faith. Now the property of faith is to seek for and find in another what is known not to exist within itself. If then we are led of the Spirit, we shall not only, as believers, have the Father in the Son as the supreme object of our faith and hope, but even now be ourselves found also in Christ, as we taste the sweetness of His love which passes knowledge, after having been lost and irremediably ruined in person, in nature, and in name.*

God is desired. Not the knowledge merely of truth by which the mind may be interested, but that which fills the heart while it stimulates the conscience. Such knowledge is of impossible attainment apart from habitual obedience and devotedness to Christ. He will not reveal Himself to hearts that are not truly thirsting for His love (John 14:21-23). To bring the soul to that condition, and to keep it there, is the perpetual striving of the blessed Comforter in the saints. Joy unspeakable and full of glory is the present experience of the soul that waits with patience upon God (verses 3-5). Christ is to such the marrow and fatness of heavenly blessing. The watches of the night of earthly trial, now far spent, pass lightly for the man whose heart has learned the secret of true strength (verse 6) (Col. 1:11). Past mercies are reviewed in proof of the faithfulness and power of God. Former experiences, both of trial and deliverance, are called to remembrance (verse 7), and found to be of active power as arguments of joy and peace. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is the needed and appreciated stay and support of the really growing Christian. Hopeful patience fails not to result and to abound, with present joy, from looking immediately to Him (Heb. 12:1-2). Divine mercy, tasted here below with the keen appetite of personal need, and traced upward to its ever-living spring, is found to be better far than life. It comes from Him who is our life, savouring of Him with a reviving freshness in the soul. The lips thus fed open willingly in acceptable praises, making glad confession to the name of Jesus (verse 5)(Heb. 13:15). Praise, joined with prayer, is the constant occupation of a soul that is abidingly in the presence of God. Jesus found solitary places long before the dawn (Mark 1:35), to seek this solace in the thirsty wilderness of a world which knew not God. And such is now the Christian's calling; to joy in God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:11). Finding tribulation in the world for Jesus sake, to rejoice evermore in Him, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and having no confidence in the flesh; watching, meanwhile, with thanksgiving in continual prayer (Col. 4:2); recognizing willingly the contrariety between the Father and the world, and wholly choosing Him. Kept thus of Him — preserved in Christ — kept by Divine power through a faith that already sees Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and looks even now for the hour of His appearing. The world is a thirsty land to such; but godliness with contentment makes rich their souls with an exceeding gain. Meanwhile the Lord knows them that seek Him. Jesus is not indifferent to that which is done and suffered for His sake. He is capable of sympathy with every heart whose desire is to find and follow the footsteps of His way. He is a merciful and faithful High Priest to every believer at his need; but His friendship (John 15), in the condescending nearness of His love, is appreciable only as we are like-minded to Himself (Phil. 2:5).

"I dwell... with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." God promises His presence and fellowship. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples: "If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him" (John 14: 23). Connecting these two verses we could say that where our love to the Lord manifests itself in obedience to His Word in the right attitude of mind and heart we will experience this personal communion with the Father and the Son. "And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full" (1 John 1: 3, 4).