b. The Witness of the Holy Spirit
What more can he say than to you He hath said, To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
"Fear not, I am with thee; oh, he not dismayed!
For I am thy God; I will still give thee aid; I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand.
"When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
"When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not harm thee; I only design The dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
"The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake." b. The Witness of the Holy Spirit
But the promises of God, no matter how beautiful and reliable, are not in and by themselves sufficient to awaken faith in the heart of the sinner. They are not seen in their beauty and strength until the eye of faith is opened by the operation of the Holy Spirit. And after faith has been wrought in the heart, it is ever dependent on the Spirit for its progressive growth and its increasing maturity. It is through the illuminating influence of the Holy Spirit that the light gradually dawns on the Gospel promises, increases in strength, and finally reaches its mid-day height. Again, the first faltering steps that give evidence of trust in Christ, the increasing confidence based on the promises of the Gospel, and the final complete self-surrender to Christ,—they are all fruits of the Spirit. In view of all this it is but natural that we should have alongside of the objective ground of assurance in the promises of God, also a subjective ground in the witness of the Holy Spirit. Both are clearly recognized in the Canons of Dort: "This assurance, however, is not produced by any peculiar revelation contrary to, or independent of the Word of God, but springs from faith in God's promises, which He has most abundantly revealed in his Word for our comfort; from the testimony of the Holy
Spirit, witnessing with our spirit, that we are children and heirs of God (Rom. 8:16); and, lastly, from a serious and holy desire to preserve a good conscience, and to perform good works.
There is good Scriptural evidence for such a witnessing of the Holy Spirit. The most famous passage containing this truth, is Rom. 8:15–
17, "For ye received not the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." A similar note is sounded, though not with the same fulness, in Gal. 4:6, "And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his
Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Again, we hear an echo of the same truth in a slightly different form in 1 Cor. 2:12, "But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given us of God." The Holy Spirit is clearly set before us in Scripture as a witness,
witnessing particularly to Christ and his saving work. He witnesses to the objective truth revealed in Christ, both in and through the disciples, John 15:26; 16; 13–15; Acts 5:32; 1 John 5:7, 9, 10; and also to the life of Christ in the hearts of believers, that expresses itself in a holy conversation.
Though the fact of the Spirit's witnessing to the sonship of believers is well established by Scripture, there is considerable difference of opinion as to the manner in which He gives his testimony. Our
Confessional Standards simply speak of the "testimony of the Holy Spirit, witnessing with our spirit, that we are children and heirs of God." This statement clearly proceeds on the assumption, based on Rom. 8:16, that there is a joint testimony of the spirit of believers and of the Holy Spirit, but does not indicate the precise nature of this testimony. Wesley and the Wesleyan Methodists conceive of the witness of the Holy Spirit as being of the nature of an immediate and overpowering impression upon the soul, almost if not quite a special revelation, at the time of the believer's justification, respecting his spiritual state. Says Wesley: "By the testimony of the Spirit, I mean an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God, that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me, that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God." He distinguishes sharply between the witness of the Holy Spirit and that of the spirit of believers, and regards the latter as an inferential judgment, based on a comparison of the believer's experience with the Scriptural delineation of the Christian life. It is really the result of reflection on the Christian graces which the believer discovers in his own soul.
Reformed theologians generally have a somewhat different conception of the testimony of the Holy Spirit, added to that of our own spirit. While some are inclined to think that Paul in Rom. 8:15,
16 speaks of but a single witness, that of the Holy Spirit, the majority are of the opinion that he has two witnesses in mind, the witness of the believing spirit and that of the Spirit of God. There can be little
doubt that the apostle refers to a double testimony. At the same time it is perfectly clear that he conceives of the two as most intimately related, the one as grounded in the other. This is evident from the fact that, according to Rom. 8:15, believers cry "in the Spirit," Abba,
Father; and that Gal. 4:6 represents this cry as that of the Spirit himself. It may be said that the Spirit of God testifies through our spirit, but also to our spirit.
Even in Reformed circles the testimony of the human spirit is often represented as being exclusively the product of a reflective process, and not at all the result of a spontaneous conviction which issues, without any consciousness of argumentative procedure, from living spiritual affections. And yet it would seem that Paul has in mind such an instinctive witnessing, when he says that we cry in the Spirit,
Abba, Father. Certainly a man's judgment, on reviewing himself and finding that he has the fruits of the Spirit, is a witness of his own spirit that he is a child of God. "But," says Sheldon, "there is a swifter and intenser witness than this. The mother whose heart is actually bound up in her child does not need, in order to convince herself that she has parental love, to reflect upon an approved catalogue of the fruits of parental love. The outgoing of her heart to her offspring is an immediate experience of parental love, an original knowledge which reflection may ratify, but to whose vivacity and certainty it can add little or nothing. So spiritual emotions and affections in the heart,—the feeling of trust, the blended reverence and confidence, the joyful complacency which accompanies the thought of God, the thirst for divine fellowship, and the sense of that fellowship,— irradiate one's relation to God before time is taken for any formal induction." And it is just this immediate consciousness of love to God, of trust and confidence in him, of reverence and childlike fear, of longings for God and satisfaction in his blessed communion, and of joy in obedient service, that prompts the spontaneous cry, arising from the depths of the soul, "Abba, Father." It is a human cry, but a cry of divine origin, born of the Spirit of God.
But the believer, knowing the deceitfulness of his own heart, and conscious of his inability to understand, to fathom, and to evaluate the deep things of God, may be inclined to doubt his own testimony, especially in seasons of spiritual darkness and when Satan sows the seeds of distrust in the heart. Therefore the apostle points to the fact that there is another and more fundamental testimony than that of the human consciousness; a testimony of one who knows, a testimony that is absolutely reliable, a testimony that can never be invalidated. It is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, who knows the deep things of God, who is absolutely infallible in his judgment, and who will maintain his estimate of believers in spite of all adversaries.
"The spirit himself beareth witness with (or, to) our spirit, that we are children of God." If the believer confidently addresses God as his
Father in heaven, God recognizes the believer as his child.
This testimony of the Holy Spirit should not be conceived of as a communication, conveyed to the believer by a secret voice, and giving him the assurance that he is a child of God; nor as a specific operation of the Holy Spirit on the mind, by which he directs attention to a passage of Scripture containing that assurance. Neither should it be regarded as a testimony that is given once for all at the moment of conversion, to which the believer can confidently appeal ever after, no matter whether he be yielding the fruits of the Spirit, or be following the lusts of the flesh. The Spirit of God testifies continually by his indwelling in the hearts of those that fear the Lord, and by all those gracious operations in the renewal of man that are so manifestly divine. He opens the eye of faith to the beauty and glory of the promises of God, illumines the mind so that their spiritual import is understood, and fills the heart with a sense of their appropriateness for lost sinners. He discloses to the spiritual eye the gracious character of the Saviour, causes the sinner to flee to him for refuge and to seek shelter in the shadow of his wings, and leads the soul to a trustful repose, safe in the arms of Jesus. He speaks in all the movements of the new life: in the love of God that is shed abroad in our hearts, in the filial spirit, the spirit of love and reverence and obedience, in his intercessions in the inner man with groanings that