Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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My father used to tell us that the only preaching a man needs to do is to explain what he is doing. That is true because if the works that a man is doing are ordained of God, they will have to be explained. If a man has not been sent by God to do anything, he has nothing to explain. He can only repeat what he has been taught to say. True doctrine is just an explanation of what God is doing, and if a man is indeed working for God, he teaches God's doctrine when he explains himself. On the other hand, if he is self-ordained, or if his ordination is only of men or their organizations, he cannot teach true doctrine because God is the only source of truth.
In that Sunday afternoon sermon from long ago, the Preacher's exact words were, "All the doctrine you need is to tell what God's done for you. All the doctrine Jesus had was explaining what he was doing." But then, he proceeded to add this challenging sentence for the few people gathered in that little farmhouse: "Some of us don't do enough to have any doctrine."
Are you living in such a manner that you find it necessary at times to explain yourself to others? If we follow Jesus, we will find that people around us will become curious, and some will be sincere enough about their own life to ask us about ours. Knowing this would happen, Peter told the saints, "Sanctify the Lord in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear " (1Pet. 3:15). Your response to questions about your life in Christ is your doctrine.
You don't have to know the Bible in order to proclaim true doctrine; you only need genuine experiences with God. If your experience is truly of God, then it will be in harmony with what is in the Bible because it is an experience with the God of the Bible. True doctrine is not philosophy; it is not theory; it is not systematic theology; it is simply the explanation of a walk with God. And if the source of your experience is Jesus, then your confession of that holy experience can only be true.
Peter wrote to the believers of the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2Pet. 1:16). And when he and John were commanded by the authorities in Jerusalem never again to preach in Jesus' name, they answered, "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard " (Acts 4:20). Their testimony was their doctrine, and the rulers of Israel complained that these humble disciples had "turned the world upside down" with it! Yes, God will, as it seems, "turn our world upside down" with His love, and when He does, then we realize for the first time that our lives are right side up!
My father also used to teach us that if God's children would talk of nothing except their experiences with Christ, they would be united. It is because they speak things they have been taught to speak by Christian ministers and the world that they are divided. We all, every single one of us, desperately need experiences with God. But beyond even that, we need to trust God's wisdom in giving us those experiences. We have a great need to love what God has done to us, so much so that we cannot drift away from that holy influence. Then, others will ask us a reason for the hope in our lives, and what we will tell them will be the truth, and only the truth, because we are only confessing the work of God, who cannot lie.
It is true that God's children sometimes misunderstand what God has done for them. The best example available is this generation's explanation of their first experience with being touched by God's Spirit and being brought under conviction for sins. Christian ministers have persuaded this generation of God's children to call that precious experience "getting saved". And, as children ignorant of the Scriptures, they do this, in all sincerity and humility, thinking that it pleases God. But if they would only tell of what God did to their hearts, if they would speak only of the wonderful, new feelings and thoughts God created in them when He touched them, they would find that they all "speak the same thing, and . . . be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1Cor. 1:10). For us who believe to confess Christ is the only way we will ever "be made perfect in one", but confessing what we have been told is Christ may prove to serve the purpose of "that wicked one", heaven's outcast who envies every good thing we have from our heavenly Father. What God does to us will always unite us; what men, or Satan, persuade us add to those sacred experiences will always divide us.
I used to say it this way: Once God has touched someone's heart, God will perfect him if men will just leave him alone. Every person whose heart is softened by God to feel conviction for sin will at some point receive the baptism of the Spirit-unless that process is interrupted by somebody with a doctrine but no experience. (False doctrine is talk about God with no experience with God.) To receive Jesus' baptism after feeling conviction for sin is a normal process; it is not an experience reserved for a few, select believers; it is the promise of God "unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call". Every person whom God calls will receive it unless the process is interrupted. Moreover, after that, it is the normal process of holiness for a newly born child of God to live a happy, holy life and to be saved in the end.
That entire process, from the sinner's being convicted of sin all the way to salvation in the end, will always happen, if someone does not subvert it. God will save every one who believes, unless their faith is overthrown by teachers with no experience of being taught by God. God's word does not "return to Him void" when it enters into a heart. He will finish every work He begins-unless someone perverts His work with their own ideas. My greatest fear is to pervert with my own opinions the right ways of God, once He has planted them in a person's heart. May God help each one of us learn to get out of His way with our own ideas when He has begun His sacred work in a sinner's life. All His works are done in truth, and we should be content with that as the only foundation for faith.
Whatever our experience has been with Jesus is perfect because he is perfect. If we will learn to testify only to what he has done, and not to add words we have been told to add to it, then our doctrine will always be true. An extraordinary added benefit in learning to confess only what Jesus does is that we will be able to discern truth that others tell because of their own experiences with God. That communion in spirit is called "fellowship in the light", and for the saints to share in that blessing glorifies God as nothing else in this life quite can do.