The Witness of the Spirit

 

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.                                                                                                    (Romans 8:16)

 

To be called a child of God is to have the most noble title in heaven or earth. If we are God’s children, we should live in the enjoyment of all the privileges of full-grown children in the family of God. Soon, we shall know fully and perfectly what Paul meant when he spoke of “the glorious liberty of the children of God.” We should ever live in the joy of life in Christ, as the peculiar objects of God’s everlasting love, and as heirs of his unceasing grace here and eternal glory hereafter.

 

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            “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (v. 15). — Religion brings bondage, the terrible bondage of rules and regulations devised by men, ever threatening punishment. Christ, by his Spirit and by his gospel, brings liberty. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace we have received, does not produce a slavish, fearful heart of bondage, such as that which possesses those who live under the law. All who live in the Spirit live in the liberty of the children of God, and from hearts of God-given, God-wrought love, gratitude, faith, and joy, we confidently look upon the holy Lord God, and call him Father.

 

            We who once, with good reason, feared God and did everything we could to hide from him and avoid him, now love him, seek him with all our hearts, delighting in his company, having no fear of wrath, judgment, or condemnation. God the Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of adoption,” because it is by him that we are given the nature of God’s sons in regeneration, and because he is, by dwelling in us, the seal, the pledge, the assurance of our sonship and final salvation (Eph. 1:14).

 

            “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (v. 16). — God the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. What does that mean? If read and understood in the context in which it is given, it appears to me that it can mean only one thing. — God the Holy Spirit, by that which is written in the Word of God, bears witness with our Spirit of faith, the Spirit of adoption dwelling in us, by which the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts, that we are the children of God. Here is the witness of the Spirit. — “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God…If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (John 5:1, 9-11).

 

            “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (v. 17). — If we are the children of God, we shall possess the inheritance of God’s children in heaven. That is only reasonable. But here the Spirit of God tells us that all who live by faith in Christ, that all who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit, being totally free from all sin and from all fear of condemnation, or even the possibility of it, live in the constant, immediate hope and expectancy of the glorious liberty of the sons of God, as “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” Being one with Christ, all God’s elect shall fully possess all that Christ himself has earned as our Mediator. The Savior himself declares that the glory God the Father gave him as the reward of his obedience (John 17:4-5), he has given to us (John 17:22).