“What Is a Christian?” Part 23” by Romans
We are continuing in our current Series, “What Is A Christian?” Last week I began a deep dive into Christianity being more than a religion, and being a relationship: a Father / Child relationship. Tonight, I am going to continue to make the case that those who have accepted Christ as Savior (John 1:12), and who are Spirit-led are the children of God (Romans 8:14), and not humanity in general.
As I pointed out last week, it cannot be said that all of humanity is Spirit-led. I submit that, since that is true, then only those who are Spirit-led are identified as children of God. The Holy Spirit was not promised across-the-board to every human,
Consider Jesus' words about this at the Last Supper: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16-17).
Albert Barnes says of this: “The Spirit of truth - He is thus called here because he would teach them the truth, or would guide them into all truth, John 16:13. He would keep them from all error, and teach them the truth, which, either by writing or preaching, they were to communicate to others.
The world - The term world is often used to denote all who are entirely under the influence of the things of this world - pride, ambition, and pleasure; all who are not Christians, and especially all who are addicted to gross vices and pursuits, 1 Corinthians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 11:32; John 12:31; 2 Corinthians 4:4.
Cannot receive - Cannot admit as a Teacher or Comforter, or cannot receive in his offices of enlightening and purifying. The reason why they could not do this is immediately added.
Because it seeth him not - The men of the world are under the influence of the senses. They walk by sight, and not by faith. Hence, what they cannot perceive by their senses, what does not gratify their sight, or taste, or feeling, makes no impression on them. As they cannot see the operations of the Spirit John 3:8, they judge that all that is said of his influence is delusive, and hence, they cannot receive him. They have an erroneous mode of judging of what is for the welfare of man.
Neither knoweth him - To know, in the Scriptures, often means more than the act of the mind in simply understanding a thing. It denotes every act or emotion of the mind that is requisite in receiving the proper impression of a truth. Hence, it often includes the idea of “approbation,” of “love,” of “cordial feeling,” Psalm 1:6; Psalm 37:18; Psalm 138:6; Nahum 1:7; 2 Timothy 2:19.
In this place it means the approbation of the heart; and as the people of the world do not approve of or desire the aid of the Spirit, so it is said they cannot receive him. They have no love for him, and they reject him. Men often consider his work in the conversion of sinners and in revivals as delusion. They love the world so much that they cannot understand his work or embrace him.
He dwelleth in you - The Spirit dwells in Christians by his sacred influences. There is no personal union, no physical indwelling, for God is essentially present in one place as much as in another; but he works in us repentance, peace, joy, meekness, etc. He teaches us, guides us, and comforts us. See the notes at Galatians 5:22-24. Thus, he is said to dwell in us when we are made pure, peaceable, holy, humble; when we become like him, and cherish his sacred influences.
The word “dwelleth” means to remain with them. Jesus was to be taken away, but the Spirit would remain. It is also implied that they would know his presence, and have assurance that they were under his guidance. This was true of the apostles as inspired men, and it is true of all Christians that by ascertaining that they have the “graces of the Spirit” - joy, peace, long-suffering, etc. they know that they are the children of God, 1 John_3:24; 1 John_5:10.”
In the Apostle Paul's words, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”(Romans 8:16-17a).
Of this, the Preacher's Homiletical writes, "By the Spirit here is undoubtedly meant that Holy Spirit which our Lord promised He would send upon His disciples after He was ascended into heaven, and which accordingly came upon them on the day of Pentecost, and which from thenceforth was to continue with the Church to the end of the world.
This Spirit is here in the text called the Spirit itself, to represent Him as a person, because in the verse before the apostle had used this word “spirit” in another sense—viz., for a state and dispensation.
But, secondly, What is meant by being the children of God? To this I answer, that to be a child of God, in the Scripture phrase, is to be an heir of immortality, or to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven—that is to say, either in actual possession of it, or in a right title to it.
But, thirdly, What is meant by this expression of the Spirit’s bearing witness with our spirit? I conceive that which the apostle here meant is this: that the Holy Spirit by the visible, sensible operations which He wrought in and amongst Christians, that God owned them for His people, and as such would glorify them with His Son Jesus at the last day.
First of all, I say, the Spirit gave an undeniable proof to Christians that they were the children of God in descending upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. The fulness of the evidence we have for the truth of the matters of fact wrought by the Spirit in the ancient times for the confirmation of Christ’s doctrine, and the new arguments that the same Spirit hath given us since;
we, at this day, have as much reason to say with St. Paul, as any in those days had, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God”—that we are Christians, in contradistinction to men of all other religions, are the very people of God, and heirs of eternal life, if we do not forfeit our title to it by a loose and wicked life.
It ought to be a matter of unspeakable comfort and rejoicing to us that we have such an infallible witness as the Spirit of God to bear testimony to our minds that we are in a right and sure way to eternal happiness. The Spirit’s bearing witness to our minds thus effectually that we are the children of God should be an argument to us above all others that we should never depart from our Christian profession, but that we should hold it to our lives’ end without wavering—nay, and be zealous for it.
For where can we have eternal life but in the faith of Jesus Christ? We are always to remember that, when the Spirit gave His witness to the Christians that they were the children of God, it was to the Christians as professing the true faith of Christ.
Though it be here said of all Christians in general that the Spirit bears witness to them that they are the children of God, yet it is to be remembered that no benefit will hereby accrue to any particular person that professeth Christianity if he does not lead his life according to the precepts of it.
Secondly, if it be asked what this private witness of the Spirit is to the minds of particular persons, that they are the children of God, or wherein it doth consist, I answer very briefly, as far as we can gather from the apostle’s discourse, both in this place and in others of his epistles, it consists in this—viz., in the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in the hearts of particular Christians, and enabling them to mortify their lusts, and to lead a holy life, in all sobriety, righteousness, and godliness.
Lastly, they are a testimony or evidence to their spirits that they are the true sons of God, and shall be glorified with Jesus Christ in another world, which is the tenor of his expression in my text. Now that this is the true meaning of the Spirit’s witnessing with our spirit that we are the children of God, so far as that witness concerns particular persons, will appear evidently from what goes before in this chapter.
The main design that the apostle is pursuing is to encourage and animate the Christians of his time against the sufferings and persecutions they were likely to meet with in this world upon account of their religion; and this he doth chiefly from the consideration of the great rewards that were laid up for them in the other world.
And to this purpose he tells them in the tenth verse, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10)—that is, your body is indeed obnoxious to all sorts of outward calamities, and even to death itself, which is entailed upon the sons of Adam, upon account of sin; but yet the Spirit of Christ, which He hath given to dwell in you, will procure you a glorious life in another world, upon account of that inward spiritual righteousness which He worketh in you.
And, first of all, from this account that has been given, we learn what the true marks are of a child of God, or upon what grounds any person can rationally assure himself that he is in God’s favour and shall go to heaven. For as the miraculous operations of the Spirit in the days of the apostles were the public testimony of the Holy Ghost that the Christian Church in general was the people of God and designed to everlasting happiness...
so the Spirit’s dwelling in the souls of particular Christians is His private testimony to particular persons that they are effectually the children of God and shall be actually raised up to everlasting happiness.
Since all the evidence we can give to ourselves that we in particular are the children of God is that the Holy Spirit dwelleth within us, how infinitely doth it concern us, both to endeavour that the Holy Ghost should take up His habitation in our hearts, and also, after He hath so done, to be careful that we do not by our ill treatment of Him give Him cause to depart from us!
Would we invite and prevail with the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within us? The way is to forsake our sins and to devote ourselves entirely to God’s service, and to solicit Him most earnestly with our daily prayers that He would purify our hearts, that they may become a temple fit for Him to dwell in, and withal to encourage and improve every good motion and every opportunity that He puts into our hands of growing in virtue and goodness.
By this means we shall allure the good Spirit of God to take up His lodging in our hearts. And when once it is our happiness to have received so illustrious a guest, oh, with what zeal should we endeavour to preserve Him!—Archbishop Sharpe.”
Alexander MacLaren adds to the above, "Romans 8:16: THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT: The sin of the world is a false confidence, a careless, complacent taking for granted that a man is a Christian when he is not. The fault, and sorrow, and weakness of the Church is a false diffidence, an anxious fear whether a man be a Christian when he is.
There are none so far away from false confidence as those who tremble lest they be cherishing it. There are none so inextricably caught in its toils as those who are all unconscious of its existence and of their danger. The two things, the false confidence and the false diffidence, are perhaps more akin to one another than they look at first sight.
Their opposites, at all events-the true confidence, which is faith in Christ; and the true diffidence, which is utter distrust of myself-are identical. But there may sometimes be, and there often is, the combination of a real confidence and a false diffidence, the presence of faith, and the doubt whether it be present.
Many Christians go through life with this as the prevailing temper of their minds-a doubt sometimes arising almost to agony, and sometimes dying down into passive patient acceptance of the condition as inevitable-a doubt whether, after all, they be not, as they say, ‘deceiving themselves’;
and in the perverse ingenuity with which that state of mind is constantly marked, they manage to distil for themselves a bitter vinegar of self-accusation out of grand words in the Bible, that were meant to afford them but the wine of gladness and of consolation.
Now this great text which I have ventured to take-not with the idea that I can exalt it or say anything worthy of it, but simply in the hope of clearing away some misapprehensions-is one that has often and often tortured the mind of Christians. They say of themselves, ‘I know nothing of any such evidence: I am not conscious of any Spirit bearing witness with my spirit.’
Instead of looking to other sources to answer the question whether they are Christians or not-and then, having answered it, thinking thus, ‘That text asserts that all Christians have this witness, therefore certainly I have it in some shape or other,’ they say to themselves, ‘I do not feel anything that corresponds with my idea of what such a grand, supernatural voice as the witness of God’s Spirit in my spirit must needs be; and therefore I doubt whether I am a Christian at all.’
I should be thankful if the attempt I make now to set before you what seems to me to be the true teaching of the passage, should be, with God’s help, the means of lifting some little part of the burden from some hearts that are right, and that only long to know that they are, in order to be at rest.
‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’ The general course of thought which I wish to leave with you may be summed up: Our cry ‘Father’ is the witness that we are sons. That cry is not simply ours, but it is the voice of God’s Spirit. The divine Witness in our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.
Let us take these three thoughts, and dwell on them for a little while. I. Our cry ‘Father’ is the witness that we are sons. Mark the terms of the passage: ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit-.’ It is not so much a revelation made to my spirit, considered as the recipient of the testimony, as a revelation made in or with my spirit considered as co-operating in the testimony.
It is not that my spirit says one thing, bears witness that I am a child of God; and that the Spirit of God comes in by a distinguishable process, with a separate evidence, to say Amen to my persuasion; but it is that there is one testimony which has a conjoint origin-the origin from the Spirit of God as true source, and the origin from my own soul as recipient and co-operant in that testimony.
From the teaching of this passage, or from any of the language which Scripture uses with regard to the inner witness, it is not to be inferred that there will rise up in a Christian’s heart, from some origin consciously beyond the sphere of his own nature, a voice with which he has nothing to do;
which at once, by its own character, by something peculiar and distinguishable about it, by something strange in its nature, or out of the ordinary course of human thinking, shall certify itself to be not his voice at all, but God’s voice. That is not the direction in which you are to look for the witness of God’s Spirit. It is evidence borne, indeed, by the Spirit of God; but it is evidence borne not only to our spirit, but through it, with it. The testimony is one, the testimony of a man’s own emotion, and own conviction, and own desire, the cry, Abba, Father!
So far, then, as the form of the evidence goes, you are not to look for it in anything ecstatic, arbitrary, parted off from your own experience by a broad line of demarcation; but you are to look into the experience which at first sight you would claim most exclusively for your own, and to try and find out whether there there be not working with your soul, working through it, working beneath it, distinct from it but not distinguishable from it by anything but its consequences and its fruitfulness...
-a deeper voice than yours-a ‘still small voice,’-no whirlwind, nor fire, nor earthquake-but the voice of God speaking in secret, taking the voice and tones of your own heart and your own consciousness, and saying to you, ‘Thou art my child, inasmuch as, operated by My grace, and Mine inspiration alone, there rises, tremblingly but truly, in thine own soul the cry, Abba, Father.’
So much, then, for the form of this evidence-my own conviction. Then with regard to the substance of it: conviction of what? The text itself does not tell us what is the evidence which the Spirit bears, and by reason of which we have a right to conclude that we are the children of God.
The previous verse tells us. I have partially anticipated what I have to say on that point, but it will bear a little further expansion. ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.’ ‘The Spirit itself,’ by this means of our cry, Abba, Father, ‘beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’
The substance, then, of the conviction which is lodged in the human spirit by the testimony of the Spirit of God is not primarily directed to our relation or feelings to God, but to a far grander thing than that-to God’s feelings and relation to us.
Now I want you to think for one moment, before I pass on, how entirely different the whole aspect of this witness of the Spirit of which Christian men speak so much, and sometimes with so little understanding, becomes according as you regard it mistakenly as being the direct testimony to you that you are a child of God, or rightly as being the direct testimony to you that God is your Father.
The two things seem to be the same, but they are not. In the one case, the false case, the mistaken interpretation, we are left to this, that a man has no deeper certainty of his condition, no better foundation for his hope, than what is to be drawn from the presence or absence of certain emotions within his own heart. In the other case, we are admitted into this ‘wide place,’ that all which is our own is second and not first, and that the true basis of all our confidence lies not in the thought of what we are and feel to God, but in the thought of what God is and feels to us.
And instead, therefore, of being left to labour for ourselves, painfully to search amongst the dust and rubbish of our own hearts, we are taught to sweep away all that crumbled, rotten surface, and to go down to the living rock that lies beneath it; we are taught to say, in the words of the book of Isaiah, ‘Doubtless Thou art our Father-we are all an unclean thing;
our iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away’; there is nothing stable in us; our own resolutions, they are swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, by the first gust of temptation; but what of that?-’in those is continuance, and we shall be saved!’
Ah, brethren! expand this thought of the conviction that God is my Father, as being the basis of all my confidence that I am His child, into its widest and grandest form, and it leads us up to the blessed old conviction, I am nothing, my holiness is nothing, my resolutions are nothing, my faith is nothing, my energies are nothing;
I stand stripped, and barren, and naked of everything, and I fling myself out of myself into the merciful arms of my Father in heaven! There is all the difference in the world between searching for evidence of my sonship, and seeking to get the conviction of God’s Fatherhood. The one is an endless, profitless, self-tormenting task; the other is the light and liberty, the glorious liberty, of the children of God.
And so the substance of the Spirit’s evidence is the direct conviction based on the revelation of God’s infinite love and fatherhood in Christ the Son, that God is my Father; from which direct conviction I come to the conclusion, the inference, the second thought, Then I may trust that I am His son. But why? Because of anything in me? No: because of Him.
The very emblem of fatherhood and sonship might teach us that that depends upon the Father’s will and the Father’s heart. The Spirit’s testimony has for form my own conviction: and for substance my humble cry, ‘Oh Thou, my Father in heaven!’
Brethren, is not that a far truer and nobler kind of thing to preach than saying, Look into your own heart for strange, extraordinary, distinguishable signs which shall mark you out as God’s child-and which are proved to be His Spirit’s, because they are separated from the ordinary human consciousness?
Is it not far more blessed for us, and more honouring to Him who works the sign, when we say, that it is to be found in no out-of-rule, miraculous evidence, but in the natural (which is in reality supernatural) working of His Spirit in the heart which is its recipient, breeding there the conviction that God is my Father?
And oh, if I am speaking to any to whom that text, with all its light and glory, has seemed to lift them up into an atmosphere too rare and a height too lofty for their heavy wings and unused feet, if I am speaking to any Christian man to whom this word has been like the cherubim and flaming sword, bright and beautiful, but threatening and repellent when it speaks of a Spirit that bears witness with our spirit - I ask you simply to take the passage for yourself...
and carefully and patiently to examine it, and see if it be not true what I have been saying, that your trembling conviction-sister and akin as it is to your deepest distrust and sharpest sense of sin and unworthiness-that your trembling conviction of a love mightier than your own, everlasting and all-faithful, is indeed the selectest sign that God can give you that you are His child.
Oh, brethren and sisters! be confident; for it is not false confidence: be confident if up from the depths of that dark well of your own sinful heart there rises sometimes, through all the bitter waters, unpolluted and separate, a sweet conviction, forcing itself upward, that God hath love in His heart, and that God is my Father. Be confident; ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness with your spirit.’
II. And now, secondly, That cry is not simply ours, but it is the voice of God’s Spirit. Our own convictions are ours because they are God’s. Our own souls possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out to God-our own spirits possess them; but our own spirits did not originate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source.
The spirit of a Christian man has no good thought in it, no true thought, no perception of the grace of God’s Gospel, no holy desire, no pure resolution, which is not stamped with the sign of a higher origin, and is not the witness of God’s Spirit in his spirit. The passage before us tells us that the sense of Fatherhood which is in the Christian’s heart, and becomes his cry, comes from God’s Spirit.
This passage, and that in the Epistle to the Galatians which is almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken in connection. ‘Ye have received,’ says the text before us, ‘the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’ The variation in the Epistle to the Galatians is this: ‘Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying (the Spirit crying), Abba, Father.’
So in the one text, the cry is regarded as the voice of the believing heart; and in the other the same cry is regarded as the voice of God’s Spirit. And these two things are both true; the one would want its foundation if it were not for the other; the cry of the Spirit is nothing for me unless it be appropriated by me.
I do not need to plunge here into metaphysical speculation of any sort, but simply to dwell upon the plain practical teaching of the Bible-a teaching verified, I believe, by every Christian’s experience, if he will search into it-that everything in him which makes the Christian life, is not his, but is God’s by origin, and his only by gift and inspiration.
And the whole doctrine of my text is built on this one thought-without the Spirit of God in your heart, you never can recognise God as your Father. That in us which runs, with love, and childlike faith, and reverence, to the place ‘where His honour dwelleth,’ that in us which says ‘Father,’ is kindred with God, and is not the simple, unhelped, unsanctified human nature.
There is no ascent of human desires above their source. And wherever in a heart there springs up heavenward a thought, a wish, a prayer, a trembling confidence, it is because that came down first from heaven, and rises to seek its level again. All that is divine in man comes from God.
All that tends towards God in man is God’s voice in the human heart; and were it not for the possession and operation, the sanctifying and quickening, of a living divine Spirit granted to us, our souls would for ever cleave to the dust and dwell upon earth, nor ever rise to God and live in the light of His presence.
Every Christian, then, may be sure of this, that howsoever feeble may be the thought and conviction in his heart of God’s Fatherhood, he did not work it, he received it only, cherished it, thought of it, watched over it, was careful not to quench it; but in origin it was God’s, and it is now and ever the voice of the Divine Spirit in the child’s heart.
But, my friends, if this principle be true, it does not apply only to this one single attitude of the believing soul when it cries, Abba, Father; it must be widened out to comprehend the whole of a Christian’s life, outward and inward, which is not sinful and darkened with actual transgression.
To all the rest of his being, to everything in heart and life which is right and pure, the same truth applies. ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit’ in every perception of God’s word which is granted, in every revelation of His counsel which dawns upon our darkness, in every aspiration after Him which lifts us above the smoke and dust of this dim spot, in every holy resolution, in every thrill and throb of love and desire.
Each of these is mine-inasmuch as in my heart it is experienced and transacted; it is mine, inasmuch as I am not a mere dead piece of matter, the passive recipient of a magical and supernatural grace; but it is God’s; and therefore, and therefore only, has it come to be mine!
And if it be objected, that this opens a wide door to all manner of delusion, and that there is no more dangerous thing than for a man to confound his own thoughts with the operations of God’s Spirit, let me just give you (following the context before us) the one guarantee and test which the Apostle lays down. He says, ‘There is a witness from God in your spirits.’
You may say, That witness, if it come in the form of these convictions in my own heart, I may mistake and falsely read. Well, then, here is an outward guarantee. ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’; and so, on the regions both of heart and of life the consecrating thought,-God’s work, and God’s Spirit’s work-is stamped.
The heart with its love, the head with its understanding, the conscience with its quick response to the law of duty, the will with its resolutions,-these are all, as sanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit; and the life with its strenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and temptation, with its patient persistence in the quiet path of ordinary duty, as well as with the times when it rises into heroic stature of resignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and the martyrdom of life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure and right) the work of that same Spirit.
The test of the inward conviction is the outward life; and they that have the witness of the Spirit within them have the light of their life lit by the Spirit of God, whereby they may read the handwriting on the heart, and be sure that it is God’s and not their own.”
This concludes our Discussion, “What Is A Christian? Part 23.”
This Discussion was presented “live” on July 3rd, 2024.
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