THE WITNESS WITHIN AND THE WITNESS WITHOUT
‘He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.’
The foundation-stone laid by God is Jesus Christ. It is on Him that our faith rests, and the text warns us how we are to build on this foundation. Jesus Christ is not a dead but a living foundation.
I. The witness within.—We rest upon a living Person, not on a string of facts nor a string of events. We believe, as a matter of fact and of history, that our Lord Jesus Christ lived upon earth, died, rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven. But a man might believe all this just in the same way in which we believe that Pontius Pilate lived and died, or that Herod lived and died. He might say, ‘It is all true, I have no doubt, every word of it, but it is of no use to me. It does not help me, when I am tempted to do wrong, to know that the four Gospels are all true, every word of them. Here is the temptation. Here are my strong passions. What is the use of events that happened long ago to stem the flood of my sins? You might as well try to keep back the Atlantic Ocean with a few decayed beam ends of wrecked vessels as stay my sins with Bible stories. The power of sin is within me. To resist it I must have a stronger power within me also.’ This want is met by the words of our text. ‘He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.’ God the Father, God the Son dwelling in us through God the Holy Spirit, this is the witness in oneself. God in us—this is the power, the only power strong enough to stem the flood, to stay the corruption within. ‘He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.’ This is just what the world cannot understand. And so is fulfilled our Lord’s prophecy that He would reveal Himself to His disciples, but not to the world. The man who does not love Jesus Christ hears the same Gospel and reads the same Bible as the true believer, but he can see nothing in it. He brings his body, his eyes, his ears, his quick intellect, all his reasoning powers to church, but not his heart. He does not know what it is to love Christ. The witness is all outside him.
We may perhaps understand more clearly the witness within if we go back to the saints of old and think of their faith. Enoch walked with God before a line of the Bible was written; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all knew, loved, and feared God before the first chapter of Genesis was put in writing. St. Paul believed in Jesus Christ before one of the Gospels was penned. For more than two hundred years the Christians in different places probably knew only parts of the New Testament. But why go so far back? How many devout and humble Christians, full of love to Jesus Christ, have sat in church, and lifted up prayer and praise from the very depths of their hearts, though they could not read a page of their Bibles, and only knew portions here and there! What was the reason? They had the witness in themselves, Jesus Christ dwelling in them by His Holy Spirit. This is the only foundation. Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. God can dwell in us by His Spirit as He pleases. But He has been pleased to send us for confirmation of the voice within us to the written Word, to the testimony of apostles and prophets (see Illustration).
II. The witness without.—This is the first and great use of Scripture. It makes us sure that the voice which speaks within is no mere fancy, no delusion of the brain. There are and always have been false prophets, spiritualists, and hundreds of others, who tell us that God has spoken to them. But when we bring them to the test of the record of apostles and prophets, when we try them by the witness of revelation, they fail. The voice within agrees not with the voice without. The more sure word of prophecy of which St. Peter speaks condemns them. It is not so with those who really hear the voice of the good Shepherd. With them the voice within answers to the voice without. Deep calleth unto deep. When conscience is burthened with the sense of sin, and the teaching of the Holy Spirit upon the darkened soul obliges them to cry, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ then the witness without, the Scripture, answers. This is no melancholy, no brain disease, no morbid imagination. Sin is real, and God’s anger against sin stands recorded in His revelation. The witness in yourself is the witness of God. So when God speaks to the soul of his love, when He says, ‘Go in peace,’ the voice of apostles and prophets answers to and confirms the voice within. It tells us how God reconciled the world to Himself in Jesus Christ, how He bare our sins in His own body on the tree, and how with His stripes we are healed. Yes, and when sin returning clouds the conscience, and raises up once more a barrier between God and the soul, once more Scripture without confirms the witness within. It tells us how we are grieving the Holy Spirit. It puts words of repentance in our lips. ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.’ We are built on the foundation of God Himself dwelling in us, but we are built also on the foundation of apostles and prophets.
III. The Scripture stands out from all other books.—It is to us the voice of God, the only pure and unadulterated voice of God, answering to the voice within, and assuring us that we are not listening to cunningly devised fables. Again, it binds all believers in a real unity of spirit, binds us with one another and with our living Head. Therefore we cannot trifle with the authority of the Word of God. Now that miracles are removed it is the confirmation of our faith, the sure ground and foundation for our belief, that God dwelleth in us and we in God. There is a great temptation in these days to think that we can either do without the Bible altogether or else with selections from the Bible. People judge it, as they imagine, by the voice within; if it does not square with their idea of what God is, and of how God governs the world, then they smooth and plane down the Bible to suit their own opinions. But it was not for this work that God gave us His holy Word, nor for this that He spake to us. The Bible and the Spirit of God are one witness after all, and the witness within must answer to the witness without. God does not speak to us that we may judge His written Word, but that we may recognise it as His Word, and may receive it and obey it. Otherwise we make Him a liar. ‘He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in Himself.’ ‘He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.’
—Bishop E. A. Knox.
Illustration
‘Daniel Quorn, the old cobbler, sits hard at work in the still midnight, when he can hear no sound but the sound of his own tools and the ticking of the old clock. Presently the tick of the clock seems to him to shape itself into words, and each time that the pendulum swings backwards and forwards he hears the solemn question: For ever—where? for ever—where? At last it becomes unbearable. He gets up and stops the clock. But he cannot even so keep that question from sounding in his ear, For ever—where? for ever—where? The more he thinks of it, the more terrible does the answer seem; until at last, in an agony of despair, he falls upon his knees and prays God to have mercy upon a miserable sinner. He prays until in some way peace and light dawn upon his troubled soul. The voice that spoke pardon to sinners 1800 years ago, by the waters of Galilee, says to him, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.” He has the witness in himself, for he has believed on the son of God. But is not all this mere excitement and sensation? Have not many persons deluded themselves just in this very way? The heart is deceitful above all things. No doubt such self-deception is possible. No doubt it has happened. But hear the story out. Daniel Quorn begins from that day to study the old, worn, dusty Bible, hitherto roughly used. On the cover are scribbled calculations, notes of bills due, all sorts of memoranda. No other use had been found for it before. Now the voice within drives him to the witness without. He reads the record of prophets and apostles, the testimony that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God. As he finds in page after page the hunger of his soul satisfied, the Bible becomes a new book to him. The words are the words of apostles and prophets, but the voice is the voice of God. The witness without confirms and enlightens. It strengthens the witness within. The foundation of his faith is Jesus Christ, but he receives instruction about Jesus through apostles and prophets, and so he is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone.’