27 Oct Testimony

“Testify” and “testimony” can be challenging words. Most people in American society would associate them with courts of law. They are important words in the economy of Jesus Christ. Your testimony is your story of how Jesus changed your life. When you share that story, you are said to be testifying. The Apostle Paul included a very challenging use of the word “testifies” in his letter to believers in Rome:

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.  And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Romans 8:15-16 (NIV)

I found three interesting analyses of this passage that I will share with you before I share my own take:

1. There is a spiritual instinct in the newborn believer that he is a son of God. The Holy Spirit tells him that it is so. The Spirit Himself bears witness with the believer’s spirit that he is a member of God’s family. He does it primarily through the word of God. As a Christian reads the Bible, the Spirit confirms the truth that, because he has trusted the Savior, he is now a child of God. (Believers Bible Commentary)
2. Not only does the Spirit confer on us this status (adoption to sonship), he also is the one who, testifying with our own spirits, gives us the inner certainty of knowing that we truly are God’s dearly loved children. (NIV Application Commentary)
3. “Why isn’t the Spirit testifying with my spirit?” you ask. “Why doesn’t God reveal himself to me?” The answer is that he won’t, not as long as you are in his way, refusing to abandon yourself to him. The instant you do abandon, God begins to testify to himself. He can’t testify to you—that is, to your human nature. Rather, he testifies to his own nature inside you, the nature you received when you were baptized by the Holy Spirit. (Oswald Chambers)

Of those three, my take tracks most closely with Chambers’, that the Spirit is testifying to His own nature inside me. I take that one step further. I believe the testimony of the Holy Spirit in me is the flowing of the fruit of the Spirit from me: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. The testimony of the Spirit that He is in me, is the fruit He produces through me.

As a young child, I saw this question posed in a newspaper ad for a local church: “If you were arrested for being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I didn’t understand it then. I understand it now to be asking if the fruit of the Spirit is evident in your life.

Whichever interpretation you favor, I think the passage is a powerful reminder of what it is to look like to others when the Spirit dwells in us. That includes in verse 15: “And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

Dependent on God and flowing with the fruit of the Spirit. Powerful testimony indeed!

Pastor Jerry Bader