The Witness of the Sprit

Contemporary Christianity spends itself far more in posing questions and pondering problems than in maintaining and promulgating the faith. The habit of the early Church was otherwise. It leaned hard on the reality and power of the Holy Spirit for vitality, assurance, and direction. Perhaps the modern Church needs a fresh look at Pentecost to see the folly of relying mainly on human organization and skills. Not to seek the Holy Spirit, not to thrust open our souls to his illuminating, purifying, and empowering light is to invite gloom and tragedy into the work of the Kingdom. To substitute the clatter of ecclesiastical machinery for the quiet penetration of the Spirit’s teaching and transforming power spells uncertainty and failure; not because of him but of ourselves we become straitened and weak.

The teaching of Paul and of our Lord himself indicates that the most vital doctrine of our Christian faith is that of the Holy Spirit. Yet far more is said and read about the Fatherhood of God and Christ’s sacraficial life and death than about the Person and power of the Holy Spirit. This is not wholly bad, of course, for to glorify the Son is to glorify the Father; yet even this requires the Holy Spirit’s glorification of the Son. With so much emphasis on the Holy Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments it seems strange that Christians should have neglected this doctrine so long.

Eighteenth-century deism proclaimed an absolute Deity. Its God was mighty enough to fashion the universe and to announce laws for its regulation, but it had no Father whose measureless love provided a Redeemer-Son for sinning humanity. For men of that deistic age God was simply Sovereign Ruler, Mighty Architect, All-wise Judge. Such faith furnished a creed for the intellect, a law for conduct, and purpose for the world. But it offered man no help in realizing God’s abounding love manifested in the saving grace of Christ.

Perhaps the tremendous concentration these days on man’s own energy and activity has deceived us into forgetting that the triune God is the source and sustainer of life.

The Spirit’S Work

It is the Divine Spirit who makes known our adoption into the family of God and imparts the needed strength for daily service. He fills us with the knowledge of God’s will in spiritual wisdom and understanding. The Holy Spirit reveals our partnership in the divine nature; he evidences the fact that we are in God and God in us. He reveals Christ, by whom the tangle of our sinful nature is quieted. The Spirit invigorates our wills, delivers us from the law of sin and death; assuring us of our eternal sonship, he enables us to live in daily, unbroken fellowship in the household of faith.

Through Joel God declared this prophetic promise: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh …” (2:28). Peter’s sermon at Pentecost reverts to Joel’s prophecy; in fact, the redemptive experiences of that day were in no sense alien to Jewish thought. On that day, according to each person’s power to receive and the work entrusted to him, leaders and followers, men and women, young and old, shared in the outpouring of the Divine Spirit. Their spiritual training had deeply impressed the people of Israel with the close relation of God to his people, and thus prepared them to receive and to appreciate the baptism given at Pentecost.

This revelation in the Old Testament is essential for understanding the New Testament message. From the first chapter of Genesis through the prophetic books, the Spirit of God appears in many places and in many lives. In nature he broods over chaos and brings faith, order, light, fertility, and fragrance. The origin of life itself is the divine breath of God which he breathes into man. Across the Old Testament pages we see Judges introducing order; Elijah dares to act, Daniel dreams, Ezekiel writes, and Isaiah preaches—all work under the Holy Spirit’s direction.

But notice this mystery! While the Divine Spirit illuminated and empowered writers, warriors, and statesmen, his intimate presence and energizing power he does not seem to have entrusted to all of God’s people for day-by-day possession and practice. The Spirit directed certain leaders and manifested his power on certain extraordinary occasions, but clarified vision, victory over self and sin, and a close walk with God were not the conscious experience of all believers. Joel’s promise, therefore, becomes all the more significant, for he declared a day would come when God’s Spirit should consciously engulf all believers. This promise, which hovers over the closing pages of the Old Testament, burns like a star before the eyes of God’s people. The faithful seem to stand on tiptoe, waiting not alone for a Redeemer but for the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. Pentecost became the fulfillment of this promise; what happened on that day justified all expectations.

The Spirit’S Witness

Of all the doctrines of Christian theology which may be verified by experience, none requires more careful and discriminating study than what we call the witness of the Spirit or assurance of faith. If we believe in what we call “experimental religion,” we must believe that the living Christ is made present in our lives through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Christianity is a religion of redemption! It affirms that all men are sinners; that Christ died for all men; that all men can be saved by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It declares, further, that by the witness of God’s Spirit all men can know they have been saved. Christianity presents the plight of man and proffers the power of Christ. Through disobedience man lost his place in God’s favor and family and therefore needs a new relationship to God, a renewed personality, a complete renewal of his nature. To secure a right relationship with God he must be reborn; this experience is apprehended by faith in Christ Jesus and ministered to the believing soul by the Holy Spirit. Paul spoke of being “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.” Thus the miracle of divine love frees the sinner from the law of sin and death.

Paul often used the word “flesh” to describe the perishable sinful condition of the natural man. He insisted that apart from God’s grace and left to himself man is not only frail and mortal but wayward, selfish, and evil; not only has he broken God’s law, but he has also placed his trust in himself. He is a sinner who must be changed and converted. He must believe on the only begotten Son of God. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal his need for pardon and give him an awareness of its abundant provision in the Saviour.

The Holy Spirit takes the initiative in this miracle of awakening and renewal. We can be sure that God has left no man without the leadings and strivings of the Holy Spirit, though man so often disregards and stubbornly resists them. Man cannot apprehend nor remedy by his own effort the sense of guilt in his heart. Any one who denies the need for a life hid with Christ in God will never rise above the level of the natural man. But anyone born of the Spirit experiences a veritable miracle. To be in Christ is to be a new creation—ruled, directed, and controlled by the indwelling Spirit of God.

Wesley emphasized both what he called the “direct” and what he called the “indirect” witness. The former, which he identifies with the work of the Holy Spirit, he defines as an inward impression on the souls of believers whereby the Spirit of God directly testifies to their spirit that they are the children of God. He calls the “indirect witness” the testimony of a good conscience toward God which, strictly speaking, is a conclusion drawn partly from the Word of God and partly from personal experience. The Bible affirms that everyone who has the fruits of the Spirit is a child of God. These two witnesses, the “direct” and the “indirect,” are never disjoined in normal and ideal experience but always united. Experimental religion is evidenced by a conscious knowledge of sins forgiven; it is this same Spirit that convinces us of guilt and assures us of pardon. When this witness is absent, a professing Christian is constantly on the defensive and continually attempts to prove he is a child of God. The Bible promises that “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”

We must not limit the witness of the Spirit to the assurance of salvation. His indwelling presence kindles aspirations to lay hold on things divine, and to grow as loyal and resolute servants of righteousness. Christ promised that the Spirit would lead us into truth, that by his illumination we should be able to discriminate between the raucous voice of the world and the still small voice of God. The Holy Spirit exalts the Christ and makes known what he offers us and the world; he stirs our emotions and minds to new quests. Habitual yielding to the guidance of the Spirit increases our confidence, joy, and fruitfulness, for his indwelling brings spiritual enrichment, greater victory over self and sin, and deeper intimacy with him whom having not seen, we yet love. Elevating and broadening our interests and sympathies, he makes us increasingly alive to all the great realities. Observing life as the Spirit reveals it, we discover how impertinent it would be to limit the blessings of the Gospel to any one race, class, or nation. “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth …” (1 Cor. 2:12, 13). To be filled with the Spirit is to accept and walk in the truth of God; to be guided by the will of God; to surrender the whole man in loving loyalty to the service of Christ.

The Spirit’S Fullness

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, which contains much of his ripest teaching, Paul prays that the Church be clothed with might by the Spirit in the inward man. He exhorts all believers to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18). This does not mean to “become full” like an empty vessel that is replenished. It means, rather, that the believer finds his fullness, the true realization and fulfillment of his highest being, by and through the presence of the Holy Spirit. If the Church is to rise to its fullest stature in God, if it is to enjoy the abundant life, if it is to meet all foes in the spirit of triumph, it must rely not upon its numbers or its human skills, but upon the power of the Holy Spirit. To accomplish the mission of the Church by trusting only earthly means spells failure, even in the midst of what the world calls success.

We need to be quickened. We need to resort once again to the sources of power. The Church is hindered and the Kingdom thwarted not so much by the non-Christian influences in the world, but rather by the tepid, stoic religiosity of Jesus’ professed followers. Christ desires not our polite deference but the total strength of our lives. The enormous forces unleashed in the world today only God can govern and direct. They challenge our courage. While the world wistfully awaits the Christ, can we so present a Church which incarnates Christianity effectively, redemptively, and relevantly to all of life, that men must say in truth: “Here is hope, here is salvation”? To share in such a ministry of redemption is a veritable baptism into immortality, the beginning of a more radiant, vigorous, and joyous life than was ever dreamed possible in these shadows of our present existence.

The symbol of the Gospel is neither an isolated cross, nor a distant crown of proud, despotic aloofness. Rather both together symbolize the Gospel: the cross lying within the crown, the crown haloing and encircling the cross.

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