John 4:28-30, 39-42; 2 Peter 1:16,17
The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Then they went out of the city, and came unto him. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): Peter believed the evidences which he had in common with others: but he felt peculiar conviction from those which he derived from his own personal experience. So the people of Samaria, who had believed on Jesus on account of the woman’s testimony, told her afterwards, “Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): Experience is very different from theory; and when we are taught of God, we have other views of those very things of which we have read and heard before…And there is such a thing as experience, or an acquaintance with divine things derived from trial, in addition to testimony, which is peculiarly satisfactory.
JOHN FLAVEL (1630-1691): There are two sorts of knowledge among men; one traditional, the other experiential: this last the apostle calls a “knowing in ourselves,” Hebrews 10:34, and opposes it to that traditional knowledge which may be said to be without ourselves, because borrowed from other men.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): There are two kinds of knowledge—the knowledge of faith, and what they call experiential knowledge.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): The knowledge that David had of God’s goodness was experiential—“I was brought low, and He helped me,” Psalm 116:6. A carnal man knows God’s excellencies and will revealed in His word only, as we know far countries by maps; but an experienced Christian knows them as one that hath himself been long there. See the like with Paul in Romans 8:2, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Paul not only knew these things by faith, but he knew much of them by experience.
JOHN CALVIN: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us,” 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. Here he applies to himself personally, what he had stated in a general way, and by way of proclaiming the grace of God, he declares that he had not been disappointed in his expectation, inasmuch as he had been delivered from death, and that too, in no common form.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): “I know whom I have trusted,” 2 Timothy 1:12. And it is because he knows Him that therefore he is persuaded that “He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him.” How did Paul know Him? By experience. By the experience of his daily life. By all these years of trial and yet of blessedness through which he had passed; by all the revelations that had been made to his waiting heart as the consequence and as the reward of the humble faith that rested upon God. And so the whole past had confirmed to him the initial confidence which knit him to Jesus Christ.
JOHN FLAVEL: This experience we have of the power of religion in our souls is that only which fixes a man’s spirit in the ways of godliness; it made the Hebrews take joyfully the spoiling of their goods; no arguments or temptations can wrest truth out of the hand of experience.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): And so, to deepen their knowledge of the truth, to ground and settle them in it, to bring it out in all its practical power, a good, covenant God often places His children in sore trials and temptations. The mariner becomes practiced in his trade in the storm and the hurricane, amid rocks and shoals. All that he knew before he launched his vessel on the ocean or encountered the storm was only theory—but a single tempest or one escape from shipwreck imparts more experiential knowledge than years of merely theoretical work. So learns the believer how theoretical and defective his views of divine truth; how little his knowledge of his own heart, his deep corruptions, perfect weakness and little faith; how imperfect his acquaintance with Jesus and His fullness, value, all-sufficiency, and sympathy, until the hand of God falls upon him! When messenger after messenger brings news of blasted gourds or broken cisterns, when brought down and laid low, they are constrained to confess like Job, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” Job 42:5,6.
CHARLES SIMEON: He knows the power and grace of Christ in a way that he never could know it from mere argument: and in speaking of Christ he can say, “what my eyes have seen, my ears have heard, my hands have handled of the word of life, that declare I unto you,” 1 John 1:1.
C. H. SPURGEON: He is precious to us by experience because He has helped us in many a dark hour of trial…Those who are, for the most part, without trial, are usually the weakest in the Church of God. They are usually the least spiritual, the least instructed in experimental truth and altogether the least knowledgeable in Divine things. We have our sorrows, but have we not found, by actual experience, that the choicest consolation for sorrow is the fact that Jesus Christ knows all about it and is with us in it!
JOHN TRAPP: In matters of divinity we must first believe, and then know; not know, and then believe.
AUGUSTINE (354-430): If you do not believe, you will not understand.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: We must trust, to begin with, before experience. But the faith that is built upon a lifetime is a far stronger thing than the tremulous faith that, out of darkness, stretches a groping hand, and for the first time lays hold upon God’s outstretched hand. We hope then, we tremblingly trust, we believe on the authority of His Word. But after years have passed, we can say, ‘We have heard Him ourselves, and we know that this is the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Those know Christ best that know Him by experience.
C. H. SPURGEON: Some Christians have a large amount of experimental knowledge. They are not eloquent, they are not educated, but they are wise. It has been our privilege to have some, in the very humblest walks of life, whose experiential knowledge of Divine things was very much more profound than would usually be found in a doctor of divinity—men and women who have learned their theology, not in halls and colleges, but in courts and cellars. They have learned how to pray on bare knees. They have learned how to cry to the God of Providence when the cupboard was empty…If you have any experience, let me say to you—as you have opportunity tell it out. Empty it upon the earth! If you have gained some knowledge of God, communicate it. If you have proved Him, confess to the generation about you that He is a faithful God!
