The Experience of Conversion

In Galatians 2, Paul speaks of false teachers who are spreading a gospel that is "contrary to the one we preached to you" as well as "contrary to the one you received." This repetition of the gospel as "preached" and "received" draws the distinction between the objective nature of the gospel message and the subjective appropriation of that message. While it is vital for us to understand that the gospel is the message of objective redemptive events, we lose much of the power of that objective work if we do not also dwell on the experiential side of the good news. Here are a couple of great quotes from Christian figures that speak of the joy and wonder they experienced as a result of the Holy Spirit applying Christ's work of redemption to their lives.

The first is from Abraham Kuyper, the prolific Dutch theologian and statesman:

What my soul went through in that moment, I have only later fully understood; but yet in that hour, nay, from that very moment, I learned to despise what formerly I admired, and to seek what formerly I spurned. But enough. You know the lasting character of the impression of such an experience; what the soul encounters in such a conflict belongs to that eternal something, which presents itself to the soul years afterward, strongly and sharply defined, as though it happened but yesterday.

John Wesley describes his conversion in these words:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Let each one of us experience anew the wonderful feeling of our hearts being "strangely warmed" as we meditate on the glorious certain redemptive work of God in Christ. May we remember with awe the time that the message of the gospel was first made known to us and may we experience it afresh each day.