CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 8:15.—The Chaldee and Greek words for “father” are used so as to affect both Jews and Gentiles. “Abba,” like “papa,” can be spoken with the mouth, and properly, therefore, characterises genuine childlike disposition and manner (Olshausen).
Romans 8:18. For I reckon.—As the result of deliberate calculation. On the one side suffering, on the other grace and glory. Season sets forth the transitory character. The glory which is about to be revealed in us, towards us, with regard to us, as Alford puts it.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:15-18
Romans 8:16-18. The inheritance of sonship.—The sin of the world is a false confidence; the fault and sorrow and weakness of the Church is a false diffidence. The true confidence, which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence, which is utter distrust of myself, are identical. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit.” It is that there is one testimony which has a conjoint origin—the origin of the Spirit of God as true source, and the origin of my own soul as recipient and co-operant in that testimony. The substance, then, of the evidence on which a Christian has a right to conclude that he is a child of God does not bear directly on his own state or condition at all, but upon God’s feelings to him and God’s relation to him. Our own souls possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out unto God; our own spirits possess them, but our own spirits did not originate them. Your sense of fatherhood—that sense of fatherhood which is in the Christian’s heart, and becomes his cry—comes from God’s Spirit. This passage, and that in 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 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.
This divine witness in our spirits is subject to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.—The Spirit’s witness comes from God—therefore it is veracious; but the Spirit’s witness from God is in man—therefore it may be wrongly read.
No inheritance without sonship.—In general terms, spiritual things can only be given to men who are in a certain spiritual condition. Even God cannot bestow certain blessings and gifts until there be in me a capacity or organ to receive them. No inheritance of heaven without sonship; just because all the blessings of that future life at last come down to this, they are of a spiritual character.
No sonship without a spiritual birth.—Fatherhood involves the communication of a life and the reciprocity of love; it involves a divine act and a human emotion; it involves that the Father and the child shall have kindred life. Drop that figure, and simply rest on this—the children of God, or the children of sin; sons because born again, or slaves and “enemies by wicked works.”
No spiritual birth without Christ.—He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out; and whithersover that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death.
No Christ without faith.—Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us. Christ is everything to a man that trusts Him; Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to a man that trusts Him not.
Then sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him.—We “suffer with Him”; not, He suffers with us. The death of Christ is a type of the Christian’s life. It is a dying to sin; it is a dying to self; it is a dying to an old world. That crucifying of the old manhood is to be repeated by the power of faith.
“Our sufferings are His.” “His sufferings are ours.” Oneness with Christ involves a fellowship and community on both sides, of suffering. This community of suffering is a preparation for the community of glory. It is not the discipline that fits; the thing that fits goes before the discipline, and the discipline only develops the fitness.
That inheritance is the necessary result of all suffering that has gone before.—The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. Trials have no meaning, unless they are means to an end. The end is the inheritance. What must be the end of that blessedness which is the counterpoise and consequence to the sorrow and pain of this lower world!—Maclaren.
Romans 8:16. The witness of the Spirit.—Take these words in whatever sense we may, they contain a truth of unspeakable importance. The moment we hear them we feel that we are dealing with a matter which concerns our soul’s life. And the two points requiring our attention are—first, who are the witnesses to be inquired of? and, secondly, what is the testimony to be elicited?
I. And first, in reference to this question of our spiritual sonship, let us see who are the witnesses who are to decide upon the matter.—There is evidently nothing in the text to favour a notion entertained by some, who would resolve the witness of the Spirit into some supernatural intimation from above—some mysterious whisper to the ear of the inner man, speaking to us, and addressing us as those who belong to the family of God. The text rather suggests to us that we are entering upon a calm, judicial process, in which the hoped-for verdict can be obtained only by the testimony of two distinct and agreeing witnesses—witnesses of tried competency to speak, and of proved faithfulness to be heard—namely, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and the consenting testimony of our own hearts. Chiefly, however, must our confidence stand in the first of these witnesses, the testimony of our own hearts being only derived and secondary, subscribing to that which has been given by the Spirit of God. And the importance of having this Holy Spirit as the chief witness will appear from the nature of the facts to be witnessed to—namely, that we are the children of God, are received into a state of adoption and grace, are at this moment reconciled to God, and know that He is reconciled to us. Our adoption is one of the things of God, and He must be of God, and in God, who shall bear witness of it to us. He must know when the act of grace went forth, and when the wandering spirit turned, and when the weak and subjugated heart surrendered, and when the signet ring was fixed to that covenant of mercy and forgiveness which made of the outcast rejoicing, and of the slave a friend and child. And these are things which must be known to the Holy Spirit, because of Him, and through Him, and by Him, are all these effects wrought.
II. How this important testimony is to be elicited—in what language does the Spirit speak, and in what signs does the heart make answer?—And in the general elucidation of this point the first ground to be taken is that the joint witness of the text, and consequently the scriptural evidence of sonship, is to be looked for in this—namely, an impression of inward peace arising from the discovery of certain tendencies and dispositions answerable to the state of sonship, and referred in Scripture to the agency of the Holy Spirit of God. And it is properly called a joint witness, because the same Spirit who forms these tendencies in us also manifests their existence to us. We can only know that we are adopted children when the Spirit of God reveals to our minds, with growing light and distinctness, the existence of those moral dispositions which prompt us to act as children act, and to feel as children feel. Do we inquire further, “How do the children of God act and feel?” the answer is, “We find these only in the written word.” But this still makes the Spirit of God the chief witness to us, because, until the Spirit shines upon the word, it is a sealed book to us, a dark and meaningless record, telling us nothing of our spiritual state, because the eyes of our understanding are not opened. But let the Spirit open our understanding, and we find that the entrance of God’s word giveth light—light to the promises, light to the threatenings, light to the rules of duty, light to the evidences of our hope. We understand better both the rule and that to which we are to apply the rule; and it is just the agreement between these two—the Scripture calling and the heart answering, the Spirit insisting on certain commanded feelings and our own spirits testifying that we have such feelings—that constitutes our double witness, that meets the judicial demands of a twofold testimony, that enables us to say, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”—P. Moore.
Romans 8:16. Concerning the witness of the Spirit.—This passage is something difficult, and commonly not rightly understood; for the clearing of which there are four things to be done:—
I. To show what is meant by the Spirit.
II. What is meant by the children of God.
III. What is meant by the Spirit’s bearing witness with our spirit.
IV. How, or in what sense, the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
By the Spirit here is undoubtedly meant that Holy Spirit which our Lord promised He would send upon His disciples after He was ascended into heaven, and which accordingly came upon them on the day of Pentecost, and which from thenceforth was to continue with the Church to the end of the world. This Spirit is here in the text called the Spirit itself, to represent Him as a person, because in the verse before the apostle had used this word “spirit” in another sense—viz., for a state and dispensation.
But, secondly, What is meant by being the children of God? To this I answer, that to be a child of God, in the Scripture phrase, is to be an heir of immortality, or to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven—that is to say, either in actual possession of it, or in a right title to it.
But, thirdly, What is meant by this expression of the Spirit’s bearing witness with our spirit? I conceive that which the apostle here meant is this: that the Holy Spirit by the visible, sensible operations which He wrought in and amongst Christians, that God owned them for His people, and as such would glorify them with His Son Jesus at the last day. First of all, I say, the Spirit gave an undeniable proof to Christians that they were the children of God in descending upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. The fulness of the evidence we have for the truth of the matters of fact wrought by the Spirit in the ancient times for the confirmation of Christ’s doctrine, and the new arguments that the same Spirit hath given us since; we, at this day, have as much reason to say with St. Paul, as any in those days had, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God”—that we are Christians, in contradistinction to men of all other religions, are the very people of God, and heirs of eternal life, if we do not forfeit our title to it by a loose and wicked life. It ought to be a matter of unspeakable comfort and rejoicing to us that we have such an infallible witness as the Spirit of God to bear testimony to our minds that we are in a right and sure way to eternal happiness. The Spirit’s bearing witness to our minds thus effectually that we are the children of God should be an argument to us above all others that we should never depart from our Christian profession, but that we should hold it to our lives’ end without wavering—nay, and be zealous for it. For where can we have eternal life but in the faith of Jesus Christ? We are always to remember that, when the Spirit gave His witness to the Christians that they were the children of God, it was to the Christians as professing the true faith of Christ. Though it be here said of all Christians in general that the Spirit bears witness to them that they are the children of God, yet it is to be remembered that no benefit will hereby accrue to any particular person that professeth Christianity if he does not lead his life according to the precepts of it. Secondly, if it be asked what this private witness of the Spirit is to the minds of particular persons, that they are the children of God, or wherein it doth consist, I answer very briefly, as far as we can gather from the apostle’s discourse, both in this place and in others of his epistles, it consists in this—viz., in the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in the hearts of particular Christians, and enabling them to mortify their lusts, and to lead a holy life, in all sobriety, righteousness, and godliness. Now this indwelling of the Spirit, and these fruits therefore, wherever they are found, are to those that have them a seal of the Spirit of God upon their souls, “whereby they are sealed to the day of redemption,” as the apostle expresses it (Ephesians 4:30). They are an earnest or a pledge of their future happiness, as the same apostle in other places calls them (2 Corinthians 1:22; 2 Corinthians 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14). Lastly, they are a testimony or evidence to their spirits that they are the true sons of God, and shall be glorified with Jesus Christ in another world, which is the tenor of his expression in my text. Now that this is the true meaning of the Spirit’s witnessing with our spirit that we are the children of God, so far as that witness concerns particular persons, will appear evidently from what goes before in this chapter. The main design that the apostle is pursuing is to encourage and animate the Christians of his time against the sufferings and persecutions they were likely to meet with in this world upon account of their religion; and this he doth chiefly from the consideration of the great rewards that were laid up for them in the other world. And to this purpose he tells them in the tenth verse, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10)—that is, your body is indeed obnoxious to all sorts of outward calamities, and even to death itself, which is entailed upon the sons of Adam, upon account of sin; but yet the Spirit of Christ, which He hath given to dwell in you, will procure you a glorious life in another world, upon account of that inward spiritual righteousness which He worketh in you.
And, first of all, from this account that has been given, we learn what the true marks are of a child of God, or upon what grounds any person can rationally assure himself that he is in God’s favour and shall go to heaven. For as the miraculous operations of the Spirit in the days of the apostles were the public testimony of the Holy Ghost that the Christian Church in general was the people of God and designed to everlasting happiness, so the Spirit’s dwelling in the souls of particular Christians is His private testimony to particular persons that they are effectually the children of God and shall be actually raised up to everlasting happiness. Since all the evidence we can give to ourselves that we in particular are the children of God is that the Holy Spirit dwelleth within us, how infinitely doth it concern us, both to endeavour that the Holy Ghost should take up His habitation in our hearts, and also, after He hath so done, to be careful that we do not by our ill treatment of Him give Him cause to depart from us! Would we invite and prevail with the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within us? The way is to forsake our sins and to devote ourselves entirely to God’s service, and to solicit Him most earnestly with our daily prayers that He would purify our hearts, that they may become a temple fit for Him to dwell in, and withal to encourage and improve every good motion and every opportunity that He puts into our hands of growing in virtue and goodness. By this means we shall allure the good Spirit of God to take up His lodging in our hearts. And when once it is our happiness to have received so illustrious a guest, oh, with what zeal should we endeavour to preserve Him!—Archbishop Sharpe.
Romans 8:17. Sons and heirs.—Law and gospel. There was a law: “This do, and ye shall live.” It tended to keep us in fear.
There is a covenant. In Christ we become adopted sons. It tends to keep us in peace. God is our Father. “Abba” term of affection = “dear Father.”
Sequence of thought. Sons? Sons are generally heirs. Are we heirs? To what? With whom?
We find that we are heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14); righteousness (Hebrews 11:7); a kingdom (James 2:5); everlasting life (Matthew 19:29); a blessing (1 Peter 3:9); all things (Revelation 21:7).
Roman law allowed equal division among sons. We are heirs equally with each other, and all with Christ. God is impartial; He loves and gives to all alike.
The Lord’s supper. When we meet as children at our Father’s table, with His Son presiding, most striking reminder of our sonship, our fellowship, and our heirship.—Dr. Springett.
Romans 8:15-16. The Spirit of adoption.—Let us consider first the respective offices of the two witnesses here mentioned—that is, the Spirit of God and our own spirit. Let us notice, then, the subject of their testimony. It is “that we are the children of God.” The Holy Spirit gives some witness to the great fact that our sins are forgiven, and that we, being reconciled to God, are now adopted into His family. The Spirit is the only witness who can give direct evidence of this. He is not only a competent witness, but the only competent witness. To this fact of our reconciliation to God, considered as a fact, our own spirits neither do nor can give testimony. Our own spirits have nothing to do with it. He alone can do this to whom it is perfectly known, and that is the Spirit of God. There are various ways, no doubt, by which the knowledge of this testimony is communicated to the soul, answering to the different modes of speech which we find in Scripture on the subject. There is the lifting up the light of the divine countenance upon the soul; the shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts; the crying, “Abba, Father”; the giving testimony to our spirits that we are the children of God; but all come from the Spirit and produce some persuasion and assurance that I am now a child of God, through His mercy in Christ. Next, we have the witness of our own spirits. Why is the testimony of our own spirit introduced and conjoined with that of the divine Spirit? Though there can be no delusion where the Spirit of God dwells and shines, yet there may be impressions not from Him, and which we may mistake for the sacred testimony which He bears. Against a delusion of this sort you must be most carefully guarded. Where the Spirit of God dwells as the Spirit of adoption, He dwells as the great Author of regeneration, as the source of all holy principles and feelings. Our justification and our sanctification are thus inseparable.
There are a few errors connected with this doctrine which ought to be noticed. The first is that there can be no certainty of our being now in a state of salvation; that, in fact, it is an unattainable blessing. If it be not attainable, the state of good men under the New Testament dispensation is far inferior to the state of good men under the Old. The first man of whom we have any record that he offered a sacrifice in faith obtained the testimony, the witness of his acceptance. And if ours be a dispensation much more glorious, and if we know that the Spirit of God has this particular office, we are not to conclude that we are placed in circumstances inferior, but superior to those of the saints of the Old Testament dispensation, with respect to the assurance of acceptance with God. This notion is contrary to all the words of Christ and the apostles. Here is the promise of Christ Himself, “I will give you rest”; and that rest is vouchsafed by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter who reveals to us the mercy of God in Christ, removes from our conscience the burden of guilt, and witnesses to us that we are no longer strangers but children and heirs. We notice another error, that this assurance and persuasion of our adoption is the privilege only of some eminent Christians. This blessing is as common as pardon; and the whole of this objection is grounded upon some secret idea of moral worth. None of these gifts are bestowed under any other character than as the purchase of the blood of Christ, and they are all parts of the great salvation held out to you, however unworthy, without money and without price. Some persons confound this assurance of present acceptance with an assurance of final salvation. The one is distinct from the other. I find no authority for the last in the Book of God. We are called upon to live in the assurance of this divine favour, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God; but this conveys to us no certain assurance of final salvation. We are still to walk by the same rule and to mind the same things. The faith which brings us into this state must maintain us in it. We must still watch and pray, still lay aside every weight and easily besetting sin, still fight the good fight of faith, ever feeling that only to those who are faithful unto death shall the crown of life be given.—R. Watson.
Romans 8:12-17. From present life to future glory.
I. The argument starts from that practical influence of the Spirit of God upon daily conduct with which St. Paul has lately been dealing. This he describes as being “led” by the Spirit. The phrase is a short and easy one. It accurately describes, not simply the ideal of Christian life, but even in a fair degree its actual condition. For the word “led” must be admitted to suggest something more than spiritual direction as of a guide to duty who may or may not be followed. It is true enough that the Paraclete is given to shed light on the path of right conduct across the perplexing situations of life. But so outward and formal a conception fails to exhaust the functions of the indwelling Spirit. The word “led” implies that our Leader moves us along whither He would have us go, so that we yield ourselves to His reasonable and righteous impulses (ἄγονται, Romans 8:14). For this is His manner of leading. He is the inspirer as well as the suggester of conduct. He persuades and enables us to walk in the way, as well as points out where it lies. If we are “led” by the Spirit, that means that to some extent we are day by day amending our ways, exerting ourselves successfully to do right, and making substantial progress in virtue. Nor is it foreign even to the word itself, far less to the nature of the case, that I should speak thus of a Christian’s own exertion and active progress in spiritual life. Unquestionably the word “led” describes the attitude of the believer as in some sense or to some extent a passive one. It means that he lets himself be acted upon. He submits to the operation of a superhuman force. That is true; and without some such force from above, it is impossible to see how human beings are to be led aright. All the same the phrase hints that a man is not merely passive under the action of the Spirit. To be “led” is a state proper to a rational and self-determining creature. It is not to be pushed like a machine or driven like dumb cattle. God acts upon us as one moral agent who is mighty and the source of influence can act upon another moral agent who is feeble and open to influence—that is to say, by secretly instigating or persuading the will to choose freely what is good. No doubt, this cannot be said to exhaust the mysterious operations of the Spirit of life; since being our Maker and Re-Maker, He has His peculiar divine sphere of action behind conscious choice, among those hidden tendencies, powers, and aptitudes which constitute human nature itself. Of this we can say little to purpose. But, so soon as the life reveals itself in consciousness, it is obvious that the Spirit’s leading is so far from shutting out the man’s own activity or freedom that on the contrary it implies it. That the apostle recognised this active side of Christian experience is clear enough from the hortatory cast into which this first paragraph is thrown at its opening. He tells the Romans how they owed it to the blessed One who stooped to be their leader that they should “mortify the deeds of the body.” They were to this extent His “debtors,” as he puts it. Since God has in His grace approached and entered into man to be his guide to everlasting life, it is, so to say, the least thing man can do to give himself heartily up to such celestial guidance. The practical issue in every real Christian must be, as a matter of fact, open to observation, that his conduct does move on the whole along lines which are laid down by God in His word. Explain the mechanism how you please, here at least is the ascertainable result.
II. On the basis of this simple matter of fact, St. Paul moves forward to the second point in developing his transition from “life” to “glory.” It is this: wherever you find submission to divine guidance you have evidence of a divine birth. We have, in fact, no other mark of that sacred and lofty relationship, the noblest belonging to our nature, save character. With such sober, homely, and solemn teaching as this it is easy to see how the gospel erects a barrier against devout delusions such as may readily spring out of religious enthusiasm. It frequently occurs that persons persuade themselves they are the favourites or the children of God on the ground of some vivid experience they have undergone which they take to be “conversion,” or because they have been the subject of a surprising vision, a bright light beheld in prayer, or a sudden calm of mind which they feel certain could only have had a heavenly origin. Nothing can well prove more perilous to character than the security which arises from such a source. For a man to turn away from the severe moral test of obedience in duty in order to build his confidence on emotions, dreams, mental impressions, or any other non-ethical evidence of piety, is to desert the safe guidance of truth and run grievous risk of spiritual shipwreck. The shores of religious experience are strewn thick with the shattered reputations of men who perished on this sunken rock. On the other hand, when a devout person is actually walking closely in the steps of Christ, being led by His Spirit to maintain a godly and watchful temper in daily behaviour, there is a certain internal witness to his divine birth from which he may legitimately take comfort. Wherever such a persuasion as this is found within the breast it is a secret possession for him who has it. No stranger may intermeddle with it. No outsider can ever be made aware of it. It justifies itself only to the soul in which it dwells. It is the witness of God within the man; not the same thing as an inference of the judgment based on the evidence of conduct. True, it needs, as I said, to be sustained or corroborated by a most scrupulous behaviour, else what is called the “witness of the Spirit” may be nothing but a self-imposition. Still, where it is genuine, it is simply a matter of immediate personal consciousness. It is the heart of the son becoming conscious of itself and of its Father as united in one act of mutual trust and love. From a heart so near to God, so open to Him, so humbly bold in its access to Him, so reverently affectionate in its embrace of Him, why may not words of childlike familiarity well out with a happy unconsciousness of their own daring? To its lips may there not come without blame a spontaneous cry like the “Abba!” of Jesus Himself?
III. If on solid grounds a believer has made sure Paul’s second arch in this brief bridge which spiritual logic builds from earth to heaven, then he is prepared to go on to the third and last: “If sons, then heirs.” There is no need to institute any curious inquiry here about either the Hebrew or the Roman law of inheritance, as if the apostle’s argument turned upon such niceties. A lawful and beloved son shares his father’s estate all the world over. He who belongs to God’s family may with safety leave the question of his future inheritance in the hands of a parent who is too generous and too opulent to leave any child without a portion.—Dr. Dykes.
Heirs.
I. Then the Christian is going to a rich home and a glorious future.—Therefore he ought not to be too much elated or depressed by the pleasures or privations of the journey. An eye to the rest and glory at the end should keep him from getting weary of the way.
II. Then the Christian should not debase himself by an undue attachment to the things of time.—How unreasonable to see an “heir of God” so swallowed up in the world that he has neither taste nor time to pray, or make suitable efforts to get ready for his heavenly inheritance!
III. Then no man should speak of having made sacrifices in becoming a Christian.—Any person making such a declaration should blush to the roots of his hair, and ask God to forgive him for an utterance so untrue.
IV. Then an heir of God should be made “meet for his inheritance.”—Without a meetness for it, the inheritance would be a burden rather than a blessing. Our business here is to cultivate the manners, to learn the language, and acquire the tempers of our future abode. May we not forget our errand!
V. Then, in securing this meetness, the Christian may confidently expect divine aid.—As soon doubt the rising of the sun as that God would fail to aid and bless the man who is struggling to be pure and Christlike.—T. Kelly, D.D.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:15-17
All may be heard.—This is much for their comfort, that from whomsoever and whatsoever corner of the world prayers come up to Him, they cannot want acceptance. All languages, all countries, all places, are sanctified by Jesus Christ, that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord from the ends of the earth shall be saved. And truly it is a sweet meditation to think that from the ends of the earth the cries of souls are heard, and that the end is as near heaven as the middle, and the wilderness as a paradise, and that they who understand not one another have one living and loving Father that understands all their meanings. And as the different dialects of this body make no confusion, no Babel, but meet together, the crysent up by the Catholic Church, which is here scattered on the earth, ascends as one perfume or incense.—Binning.
Proof of sonship is holiness.—From these verses we may remark that the only infallible test of our being genuine disciples of Christ is our having that mind in us which was also in Him, and that the proof of our being “sons of God” consists in our living habitually under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in studying to discharge conscientiously all the duties to which we are called, and to avoid every sin against which we are warned in the Holy Scriptures. This we are enabled to accomplish by means of the aids of the Holy Ghost; for “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” It may be observed further that the dispositions with which the gospel calls us to worship God do not imply a slavish dread of His displeasure, but that filial reverence and confiding thankfulness with which the unspeakable mercy of the great Father of the universe ought to inspire all who are permitted to draw near to Him through the one Mediator between God and man.—Ritchie.
Concurrence of two witnesses.—How do the Spirit of God and your conscience bear witness together that you are the children of God? I reply, first, by the harmony of the dictates of conscience in the soul with the dictates of the Spirit in the Bible. It was enacted in the law of Moses that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word should be established. It is evident that in the case before us a single witness would be insufficient to prove you the children of God, and that a concurrence of the two is indispensably necessary. The concurrence of those two witnesses appears in the harmony of the dictates of conscience with the fruits or work of the Spirit in the soul. Now as the fruits of the Spirit are His witnesses—for by His fruits ye know Him—so conscience, discerning these fruits in itself and in all the faculties and affections of the soul, bears witness with the Spirit that you “in whom these fruits appear” are the children of God. The concurrence of these two witnesses appears in the harmony of the dictates of conscience with the dictates of the Spirit as living witnesses. The language of the text conveys the idea of living personality in the Spirit of God as well as in our own spirit. It is not a mere indirect or passive testimony that is given by conscience, as of Abel’s faith or sacrifice, “by which he being dead yet speaketh,” but the direct testimony of a living witness.—Parlane.
Miraculous interceptions not now to be expected.—But it may be asked, Was the witness of the Spirit limited to that age? and have Christians in the present period no reason to look for it? To these questions we cannot hesitate in replying that the witness of the Spirit is common to all ages. But it must appear somewhat presumptuous to expect, in the present state of the world, those visible and miraculous communications of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which were necessary for promoting the first establishment of the Christian religion. The witness which we are now entitled to look for is therefore so far different from what it then was, that, generally speaking, it does not consist in a special revelation to individuals, intimating their adoption into the family of Christ; nor in Such sensible communications as were common in the apostolic age, and which were perfectly intelligible and obvious to others, as well as to the persons receiving them. But it consists in the inward and unseen co-operation of the divine Spirit, which manifests itself by its effects, producing the filial temper, or what, in the preceding verse, the apostle calls “the Spirit of adoption.” We presume not indeed to limit the operation of the Spirit, or to maintain that this is now the only method in which His influence is imparted; but we are entitled to think that miraculous interpositions for satisfying the minds of individuals do not constitute the usual way in which God deals with mankind, and that those silent and unostentatious influences which promote the sanctification of our nature, without abridging our free agency, are the common methods by which “the Spirit now beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”—Ritchie.
God’s sons have emanations of God’s love.—The communication of God Himself, not that we shall ever acquire God’s infinite attributes, or that He will cease to be God alone, but such emanations of His love and wisdom and glory will flow into our souls as to fill us with the fulness of God, or with Godlike wisdom, holiness, love, and blessedness. “What comes nearer to a communication of Himself into us or to our having a portion in the divinity than our being made like unto Him? It would look as if the circumstances of our seeing Him led, by a sort of causal or influential energy, to the circumstance of our being assimilated to Him—as if we gathered, by a sort of radiation from His glory, the reflection of a kindred glory upon our own persons—as if His excellences passed unto us when ushered into His visible presence, and became ours by sympathy, or ours by transmission. He does not part with His character; but He multiplies His character by the diffusion of it through all the members of the blest household that is above; and they may be most significantly called heirs of God—may be most significantly said to have God for their portion, God for their inheritance, when not only admitted to the full and immediate sight of Him, but when the efficacy of that sight is to actuate and inspire them with His very affections, to cover and adorn them with His very spiritual glories.”—John Howe.
“For the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”—Here the apostle shows the ground of our union and communion with Christ, because, having His Spirit, we are of necessity His. What ties and makes one things far asunder but the same Spirit of life in both? So that Spirit which is in Him, a full, running-over fountain, dropping down, and being also infused, unites us unto Him; yea, that Spirit doth tie me as fast unto Christ as any joint ties member to member, and so makes Christ dwell in mine heart. So that now by this means we are inseparably united unto Him. For, I pray you, what is it that makes a member to be a member to another? Not the nearness of joining, but the same quickening spirit and life which is in both and which causeth a like motion. By the same Spirit I know I am conveyed into Christ and united unto Him. “The testimony of our spirit” I conceive to be when a man hath taken a survey of those excellent things belonging unto justification and sanctification, when according to the substantial truths which I know in the word belonging thereunto I observe and follow as fast as I may what is there commanded. This is the groundwork of the witness of our spirit. If a man be in the faith, and do believe the word, and if in this case the Spirit come and fill the heart with joy, then all is sure and well.—Sibbes.
A real participation.—It is a real participation. It is not a picture, but a nature: it is divine. God doth not busy Himself about apparitions. It is a likeness, not only in actions, but in nature. God communicates to the creature a singular participation of the divine vision and divine love: why may He not also give some excellent participation of His nature? There is a nature, for there is something whereby we are constituted the children of God. A bare affection to God doth not seem to do this. Love constitutes a man a friend, not a son and heir by generation. The apostle argues, “If children, then heirs.” He could not argue in a natural way, If friends, then heirs. And the Scripture speaks of believers being the children of God by a spiritual generation as well as by adoption. So that grace, which doth constitute one a child of God, is another form whereby a divine nature is communicated. Generation is the production of one living thing by another in the likeness of its nature, not only in the likeness of love; so is regeneration. Were not a real likeness attainable, why should those exhortations be, of being holy as God is holy, pure as He is pure? The new creature receives the image of God: not as a glass receives the image of a man, which is only an appearance, no real existence, and though it be like the person, yet hath no communion with its nature; but as wax receives the image of the seal, which though it receive nothing of the substance, yet receives exactly the stamp, and answers it in every part. So the Scripture represents it: “Ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13). Something of God’s perfections are in the new creature by way of quality which are in God by way of essence. In a word, it is as real a likeness to God as the creature is capable of—laid in the first draughts of it in regeneration, and completed in the highest measures in glory.—Charnock.
Spirit of adoption.—The Spirit received is more than the spirit of mere freedom: it is the spirit of “adoption”—the dearest, the most intimate, the most delightful of all kinds of freedom, that of a child under a kindly indulgent, a loved and loving father. This the Spirit imparts by means of the truth—making known to our minds the character of God as it appears in the gospel, as the God of love, “in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,” “delighting in mercy.” It is by leading the mind into this view of the divine character and relation to the guilty that the Spirit overcomes the enmity of the carnal mind, and fills the soul with love to God, with desire after, with joy and confidence in Him. It is thus that “by the Spirit we cry, Abba, Father”—not merely using the words, but being inspired with the dispositions and tempers of mind that belong to the endearing relation. It is the language of affection, of liberty of conscience, of confident expectation, of filial intimacy, of happiness unfelt before. The words are nothing. Alas! how many have hundreds of times used the form of address whose hearts have been strangers to the spirit which the use of it implies! How often has the invocation of the Lord’s prayer been used, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” while there has been nothing but the moving of the lips from the power of habit and of association with time and place—nothing of the heart of a loving, confiding, expecting child! In using both the Syro-Chaldaic word and the Greek for the same relation the apostle probably meant to convey the idea of the union of Jew-and Gentile under the gospel, in addressing the same God by the same endearing appellation. Or else he uses the Syriac, and simply explains it by the Greek—“We cry Abba[which is] Father.”—Dr. Wardlaw.
Gratitude to the divine Spirit.—We owe much, in one sense we owe everything, to the Spirit’s influences. To Him we owe our regeneration. To Him we owe our perseverance in faith and holiness. To Him we owe all the present joys and all the future hopes, as they exist and are experienced in our hearts, of God’s salvation. The spiritual life in its first elements, and in all its variety of subsequent exercises and enjoyments, is His work. He commences it. He maintains, and forwards, and perfects it. We are too apt to confine our gratitude to the Father and the Son, probably from two causes:—The work of Christ in assuming our nature, and suffering and dying for us, and as commissioned by the Father so to do, has in it something more external and palpable, something on which the mind can more readily realise to its conceptions, than the work of the Spirit, which, in as far as regards the personal application of that work, is inward and spiritual; imperceptible except in its effects, and frequently undistinguishable in our consciousness from the ordinary operations of mind. This is the case with the manner in which He helps our infirmities in prayer, and with all His other operations in the soul. We see it not, we hear it not. It does not even in imagination embody itself to any of our senses; and even when most conscious of the effect we are not sensible of the influence which produces it. And, moreover, we justly regard the Spirit as the gift of the Father and the Son, and are in danger of forgetting the personality and the perfect voluntariness of the Spirit Himself in the whole of His part in the work of our redemption. It is to the work of Christ we are instructed to look for a sense of pardon, for peace and hope and joy and all spiritual excitement; and while that is the object of our contemplation, we are in danger of forgetting the necessity of the Spirit’s influence to our deriving from it any saving benefit. The Father sent and gave the Son; the Son came and gave Himself; the Spirit, though sent by the Father and the Son, performs His part, as regenerator and sanctifier, with the same personal delight and satisfaction. Let us cherish gratitude to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—ONE GOD.—Dr. Wardlaw.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Romans 8:16. Confidence.—The celebrated Philip de Morney, prime minister of Henry IV. of France, one of the greatest statesmen and the most exemplary Christian of his age, being asked, a little before his death, if he still retained the same assured hope of future bliss which he had so comfortably enjoyed during his illness, he made this memorable reply: “I am as confident of it, from the incontestable evidence of the Spirit of God, as I ever was of any mathematical truth from all the demonstrations of Euclid.”