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.
III. And now, lastly, this divine Witness in our spirits is subject
to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.
The notion often prevails that if there be in the heart this divine
witness of God's Spirit, it must needs be perfect, clearly indicating
its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinary human
feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering, never
darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burning always
on the altar of the heart! The passage before us, and all others that
speak about the matter, give us the directly opposite notion. The
Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow room of the human
spirit, condescends to submit itself, not wholly, but to such an
extent as practically for our present purpose _is_ wholly to submit
itself to the ordinary laws and conditions and contingencies which
befall and regulate our own human nature. Christ came into the world
divine: He was 'found in fashion as a man,' in form a servant; the
humanity that He wore limited (if you like), regulated, modified, the
manifestation of the divinity that dwelt in it. And not otherwise is
the operation of God's Holy Spirit when it comes to dwell in a human
heart. There too, working through man, _it_ 'is found in fashion as a
man'; and though the origin of the conviction be of God, and though
the voice in my heart be not only my voice, but God's voice there, it
will obey those same laws which make human thoughts and emotions
vary, and fluctuate, flicker and flame up again, burn bright and burn
low, according to a thousand circumstances. The witness of the
Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine like a perpetual
star; the witness of the Spirit, here in the heart on earth, burns
like a flickering flame, never to be extinguished, but still not
always bright, wanting to be trimmed, and needing to be guarded from
rude blasts. Else, brother, what does an Apostle mean when he says to
you and me, 'Quench not the Spirit'? what does he mean when he says
to us, 'Grieve not the Spirit'? What does the whole teaching which
enjoins on us, 'Let your loins be girded about, and your lights
burning,' and 'What I say to you, I say to all, Watch!' mean, unless
it means this, that God-given as (God be thanked!) that conviction of
Fatherhood is, it is not given in such a way as that, irrespective of
our carefulness, irrespective of our watching, it shall burn on--the
same and unchangeable? The Spirit's witness comes from God, therefore
it is veracious, divine, omnipotent; but the Spirit's witness from
God is in man, therefore it may be wrongly read, it may be checked,
it may for a time be kept down, and prevented from showing itself to
be what it is.
And the practical conclusion that comes from all this, is just the
simple advice to you all: Do not wonder, in the first place, if that
evidence of which we speak, vary and change in its clearness and
force in your own hearts. 'The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and
the spirit against the flesh.' Do not think that it cannot be
genuine, because it is changeful. There is a sun in the heavens, but
there are heavenly lights too that wax and wane; they _are_ lights,
they _are_ in the heavens though they change. You have no reason,
Christian man, to be discouraged, cast down, still less despondent,
because you find that the witness of the Spirit changes and varies in
your heart. Do not despond because it does; watch it, and guard it,
lest it do; live in the contemplation of the Person and the fact that
calls it forth, that it may not. You will never 'brighten your
evidences' by polishing at them. To polish the mirror ever so
assiduously does not secure the image of the sun on its surface. The
only way to do that is to carry the poor bit of glass out into the
sunshine. It will shine then, never fear. It is weary work to labour
at self-improvement with the hope of drawing from our own characters
evidences that we are the sons of God. To have the heart filled with
the light of Christ's love to us is the only way to have the whole
being full of light. If you would have clear and irrefragable, for a
perpetual joy, a glory and a defence, the unwavering confidence, 'I
am Thy child,' go to God's throne, and lie down at the foot of it,
and let the first thought be, 'My Father in heaven,' and _that_
will brighten, that will stablish, that will make omnipotent in your
life the witness of the Spirit that you are the child of God.