Romans 8:16

THE WITNESS WITHIN

‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’

Romans 8:16

Let us look at the facts to which the spirit of a child of God bears witness proving his adoption.

I. The first great fact which the spirit of every converted man will bear witness to is simply the fact of a change, for the spirit of a Christian man will be able always to see more that condemns him than that acquits him.

II. Another thing a Christian’s conscience witnesses to, that he often longs now for some higher power; he wishes to bear the image of God; his affections reach out to something higher than that attained by a worldling. His conscience also tells him that there is a struggle now, where he used to sleep quietly, that if he is not settled in grace he cannot rest in his sins.

III. Then there is the literal witnessing of the Holy Spirit within, and some of us know that his testimony has seemed at times more plain and palpable than at other times, for we have felt as it were the very eye of God upon us, and must confess that the Spirit’s testimony is clearest when belief is greatest. But I suppose, generally, no person who is in the life of grace but has been made sensible of certain strong, surprising convictions of the mind, which he has felt at the time to be the hand of God.

It is a fact, and we cannot escape from it, that in every child of God ‘the Spirit of God beareth witness’ that he is ‘a child of God.’

Now, how do you stand?

Illustration

‘Recently there came under my ministerial care a man of culture, education, refinement, who had been restored to liberty after a period of penal servitude. He told me that in his youth he had been converted, the affirmation of sonship had stirred within him, and that he had never been able to silence its witness. He said that when he began to wander from the path of right he strove with the whole power of his intellect to become an unbeliever; that he came to London and placed himself under the training of Mr. Bradlaugh, in the eager desire to prove his religion to be a lie, but in vain. Out of the lowest depths the Spirit ever bore tormenting witness to him that he was a child of God.’