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How many, not understanding what they spoke, have wrested this scripture to their great loss! How many have mistaken the voice of their own imagination for this witness, and presumed that they were the children of God while they were doing the works of the devil! These are the enthusiasts. Who, then, can be surprised if many reasonable men seeing the dreadful effects of this delusion should regard this witness as exclusively an extraordinary gift of the apostolic age? But we may steer a middle course, and keep a safe distance from enthusiasm without denying the privilege of God's children.

I. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT WITH OUR SPIRIT.

1. The witness of our spirit.

(1) The foundation of this is laid in those scriptures which describe the marks of the children of God. Every man applying these marks to himself may know whether he is a child of God. If he know —

(a) "As many as are led by the Spirit of God" into all holy tempers and actions, "they are the sons of God."(b) I am thus "led by the Spirit of God"; he will easily conclude "therefore I am a son of God," Agreeable to this are all those plain declarations of St, John in his First Epistle (1 John 2:3, 5, 29; 1 John 3:14, 19; 1 John 4:13; 1 John 3:24).

(3) But how does it appear that we have these marks? I would reply, How does it appear to you that you are alive, and in ease, not in pain? Are you not immediately conscious of it? By the same consciousness you will know if your soul is alive to God; if you are saved from the pain of proud wrath and have the ease of a meek and quiet spirit.

2. The testimony of God's Spirit is an inward impression on the soul whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses with my spirit that I am a child of God; "that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given Himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God."(1) That this testimony must needs be antecedent to the other appears from the fact that we must be holy of heart and life before we are conscious that we are so. But we must love God before we can be holy, and we cannot love Him till we know He loves us, which we cannot know till God's love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.

(2) Not that the operation of the Holy Spirit is to be excluded even from the testimony of our own. He not only works in us every manner of good, but also shines upon His own work and clearly shows what He has wrought. Accordingly one great end of our receiving the Spirit is "that we may know the things which are freely given us of God.

(3) If it be inquired how the Spirit bears witness, such knowledge is too wonderful for us. "The wind bloweth where it listeth!" But the fact we know, viz., that the Spirit of God does give the believer such a testimony of His adoption, that while it is present to the soul, he can no more doubt the reality of his sonship than he can doubt of the shining of the sun while he stands in the full blaze of his beams.

II. HOW THIS JOINT TESTIMONY MAY BE DISTINGUISHED FROM —

1. The presumption of the natural mind. The Scriptures abound with marks whereby we may distinguish the one from the other; and whoever carefully attends to them will not put darkness for light.

(1) Repentance precedes this witness (Acts 2:38; Acts 3:19), but the natural mind is a stranger to this. The being born again — that mighty change from darkness to light, death to life, etc. (Ephesians 2:1, 5, 6), must also precede; but what knoweth he of this? It is a language he does not understand. He has always been a Christian, and knows no time when he had need of such a change.

(2) Humble joy in God accompanies it, and meekness, patience, gentleness, etc. But do these fruits attend the supposed testimony in the presumptuous man? The more confident he is of the favour of God the more does he exalt himself. It is also accompanied with the love which rejoices to obey (1 John 5:3; John 14:21). But this is not the character of the presumptuous pretender to the love of God. But how may one who has the real witness distinguish it from presumption? How do you distinguish day from night? or the light of a glimmering taper from that of the noonday sun? In like manner there is an essential difference between spiritual light and darkness, and between the light wherewith the Sun of Righteousness shines upon our heart, and the glimmering light which arises from "sparks of our own kindling." To require a more minute and philosophical account is to make a demand which can never be answered, or else the natural man would be able to discern the things of the Spirit of God.

2. The delusions of the devil. By the same fruits. That proud spirit cannot humble thee before God, or melt thy heart into filial love, or enable thee to put on meekness, etc. As surely, then, as holiness is of God and sin of the devil, so surely the witness thou hast in thyself is not of Satan but of God.

(John Wesley, M.A.)

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KJV: The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

WEB: The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God;