on bearing witness…
Acts 1.8: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Hebrews 2.1-4: Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For if the message declared through angels proved valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty, 3 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was confirmed for us by those who heard him, 4 while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will.
The baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit empowers our witness to Jesus. One would not be far from the mark if she were to suggest that the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to empower believers to be witnesses to Jesus Christ and the salvation that comes in His name. In other words, to be a witness to Jesus Christ, we first need a witness. In the New Testament, the empowered witness of the apostles was the second expression of the baptism of the Holy Spirit— the spiritual and tangible endowment of the Holy Spirit that came upon the upper room assembly. While no single experience or manifestation of the Holy Spirit should be projected as normative for all, we rightly celebrate the various and diverse experiences of the Holy Spirit believers bear witness to. Sometimes, He comes upon you gently, and other times, as a mighty torrent of conviction and strength. What is normative is that the Holy Spirit’s coming is a tangible, albeit frequently ineffable, experience in the life of a person because He comes to bear a living witness to Jesus. Jesus says, “You will receive power.” Powerless people know when they have been empowered. The baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit do not leave a person guessing! So what does the Holy Spirit bear witness to?
His witness brings a fresh awareness of the presence of God. The Holy Spirit makes real to us the things that we have believed by faith. His love, grace, majesty, and strength are not merely the lyrics of choruses and hymns— they become tangible realities arising from the Holy Spirit’s living testimony within. Faith is no longer merely the will to believe or a cognitive affirmation of doctrinal truth. Instead, faith becomes, through the witness of the Holy Spirit, like a living umbilical cord between the seen and the unseen, nourishing and sustaining our life in Him.
His witness provokes a fresh sense of awe in God's presence in us. The women and men of Scripture who meet God never refer to Him tritely or in overly familiar terms. Their intimacy with Him is never an excuse for presumptuous speech or behavior. Instead, the ones to whom the Spirit bears witness have a deep reverence for the Lord. They recognize the gravity of their sin, the duplicity of their ways, and the great disparity between their humanity and His glory, greatness, and majesty.
His witness brings the assurance of God’s love. The Holy Spirit’s testimony gives us the overwhelming knowledge of God’s love through Jesus Christ. The Spirit powerfully proclaims to the soul of the believer what He said to His own Son, “You are my beloved Son; in you do I take pleasure.” Paul simply described it this way, “The Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are sons of God.” (Romans 8.16)
Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan living in the 17th century, described it this way: A man walks with his little child. The child knows that he is the child of his father; he knows that his father loves him; he rejoices in that love and is happy in it. There is no uncertainty about his relationship with his father, but suddenly, the father, moved by some impulse known only to him, takes hold of his child and picks him up. He lifts him through the air above him and then lowers him so that their eyes meet. He tussles his hair, squeezes his arms, embraces him, and then sets him down, and they continue walking together. The child knew before that his father loved him, and he knew that he was his child. Nevertheless, this loving embrace, the serendipitous joy of being swung through the air, the meeting of their eyes, and the tussle of his hair all communicate this love in extraordinary ways. The relationship is unchanged, yet the child is assured in extraordinary ways. Such is the living witness of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit's witness is not a once-for-all experience. It is His continuing gift to us for all time. He is our witness so that we might bear witness to Him. Take notice of the world around you. Do you not think the world needs a Spirit-baptized church
whose witness is empowered,
whose testimony is vibrant and
whose heart has been flooded with the love of God
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5.5)?
May we all hunger for a fresh and tangible outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that we may be empowered by the Witness of God to be powerful witnesses to Him.
