Experience

"Experience" in scripture has two main shapes: the long retrospective on a life lived under the sun, and the public account a believer gives of what God has done. The first is fixed by Solomon's preface to Ecclesiastes; the second runs through the testimony rows the Old Testament psalmists, prophets, and New Testament writers all share.

Solomon's life looked back on

Ecclesiastes opens by collapsing a long life of inquiry into a single verdict: "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Ecc 1:2). The book is staged as the report of one who has reached the limit of what wisdom alone can find. Later in the chapter the Preacher is explicit that his report rests on what he has seen and tested: "I communed with my own heart, saying, Look, I have gotten myself great wisdom above all who were before me in Jerusalem; yes, my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge" (Ecc 1:16). The word "experience" in UPDV anchors here — a life's accumulated tested wisdom, recorded so that others may receive its conclusion without having to retread the ground.

What Yahweh has done — the speaking out

The other shape of experience is its outward telling. Across the psalms and prophets, those who have known Yahweh's deliverance are urged not to keep it private. "O give thanks to Yahweh, call on his name; Make known his doings among the peoples" (1 Chr 16:8). "Come, and hear, all you⁺ who fear God, And I will declare what he has done for my soul" (Ps 66:16). The redeemed are charged simply to say so: "Let the redeemed of Yahweh say [so] Whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary" (Ps 107:2). The same pattern lies in Isaiah's commission — "you⁺ are my witnesses, says Yahweh, and my slave whom I have chosen" (Is 43:10) — and in the watchmen of Is 62:6 set on Jerusalem's walls who "will never hold their peace day nor night."

In the prophets the inward pressure of experience is sometimes irrepressible. Jeremiah, threatened into silence, cannot keep what he knows: "if I say, I will not make mention of him, nor speak anymore in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I can't [contain]" (Jer 20:9). Daniel, after a personal divine encounter, opens his official letter with the testimony: "It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has wrought toward me" (Dan 4:2). Jonah, asked to declare himself, names Yahweh first: "I am a Hebrew; and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land" (Jon 1:9). Malachi adds that those who fear Yahweh speak one to another, and that the speaking is recorded — "Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him" (Mal 3:16).

In the gospels — bearing witness

In the Fourth Gospel John the Baptist's place is exactly this work of testimony: "John bears witness of him, and cries out, saying, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me has become ahead of me: for he was before me" (John 1:15). Jesus extends the charge to the disciples: "and you⁺ also bear witness, because you⁺ have been with me from the beginning" (John 15:27). After the healing of the demon-possessed man at the Gerasenes, Jesus refuses the man's request to come along and gives him a different commission: "Go to your house to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and [how] he had mercy on you" (Mark 5:19). The healed man's neighbors, in another scene, supply their own evidence by simply saying what they had previously seen: "Isn't this he who sat and begged?" (John 9:8). The crowd at Bethany comes "not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead" (John 12:9) — testimony by living evidence. Jesus tells the disciples that even arrest and trial will become occasions of witness: "It will turn out to you⁺ for a testimony" (Luke 21:13).

In the apostolic letters

Paul charges the Corinthians for the equipment they have already received in this work: "in everything you⁺ were enriched in him, in all utterance and all knowledge" (1 Cor 1:5). His own practice rests on the same internal logic as the prophet's burning fire: "having the same spirit of faith, according to that which is written, I believed, and therefore I spoke; we also believe, and therefore we also speak" (2 Cor 4:13). He asks for prayer that "utterance may be given to me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the good news" (Eph 6:19) and that "God may open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ" (Col 4:3). The household speech in Eph 5:19 — "speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" — is testimony's shared, congregational form.

To Timothy the apostle puts the charge bluntly: "don't be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but suffer hardship with the good news according to the power of God" (2 Tim 1:8). To Titus: "These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no man despise you" (Titus 2:15). Peter holds the church to readiness for the request that comes from outside: "sanctify in your⁺ hearts the Lord Christ: [being] ready always to give answer to every man who asks you⁺ a reason concerning the hope that is in you⁺" (1 Pet 3:15). And Peter signs off the letter with his own brief witness — "exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God: stand⁺ fast in it" (1 Pet 5:12).