But I have a witness!

The Bible, God’s Holy word, his message to all people, is a rhetorical book among the other adjectives and titles that define it. Today we will be asked a question and how we answer determines who we really are and who we say He is. Before we get to the question, think about kids who for whatever reason end up in the principal’s office. Even before the principal can speak, the kid speaks up many times and says or rather announces, “I have a witness!” In a matter of speaking, they are right, they do have a witness if they are a born again believer in Jesus Christ.

In Romans, we are told that The Holy Spirit makes intercessions on our behalf when we do not know how to speak. Jesus instructed the apostles as well as all believers to be a witness to the entire world spreading the Gospel message of hope and salvation through Him alone. Christians today know more about what is on in primetime, batting averages, when the next hit movie premiere is compared to their knowledge or lack thereof where The Holy Spirit is concerned. Let us go and examine The Holy Spirit based on God’s word. Let’s go.

I intend to keep this simple not for you, but for myself. The Holy Spirit is the finale, part three of the trilogy that completes the Godhead. If you have never heard of that, it is God The Father, God The Son, Christ, and God, The Holy Spirit. The three are one. Jesus stated this in the NT by saying, “The Father and I are one.” Before He spoke about The Spirit, Jesus again informed the disciplers that the time was approaching when He would be gone from them. So what does Jesus say about The Holy Spirit? Look at John 14:16-17:

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

The Greek word for comforter is (Parakleton) and is rendered “advocate” in 1 John 2:1.
The word means “one called alongside” for protection or counsel. Jesus is our advocate before God The Father. The Spirit does a couple of things that we need to look at in the lives of God’s children.

First, The Spirit comes in to a person that professes Christ as Savior and for lack of a better term, lives within, sets up shop. The Holy Spirit comes to take up permanent residence in a believer’s heart and life. Thus the body of the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, a truth of immense importance. How can we be sure of this? I mean you may not be a believer and you think all this is just stupid. All scripture coherently fits together without the first contradiction. Here are some scriptures that continue to state Jesus’ claim.

1 Corinthians 3: 16, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

1 Corinthians 6:19, 20, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Romans 8:9, “ But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”

Second, The Holy Spirit fills believers. What? Wait, you said that already. No, I didn’t. There’s a difference I feel between one and two. The Spirit comes into a person’s soul when they profess Christ, but that person is continually filled by constant growth in The Spirit.

Third, The Holy Spirit Insures and Assures the Believer. Let us look at verses 18-20:
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

The Lord Jesus is in his Father; we are in him; he is in us. This marvelous interlock of persons and personalities absolutely guarantees the eternal security of the believer, as well as the transformation of our lives in him by the transmission of his life through us. The Holy Spirit Insures the Believer. Several New Testament passages teach that the Holy Spirit is the “earnest” of our salvation. If we could lose our salvation, the Godhead would have to forfeit its down payment of the Holy Spirit. In addition, according to verse 20 we are all wrapped up together in this thing called life. This insurance package provides us with the assurance of our salvation.

Romans 6:16 “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:”

Fourth, The Holy Spirit Enables the Believer. We have the power at our command. There is power in the blood and power in prayer, there is power my people at our disposal! Here’s the next set of scripture:

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

22Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?

23Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

24He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Notice: This teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. The three persons of the Godhead are equal and if you have one you have them all. If you are indwelt by the Spirit, you are indwelt by the Father and the Son as well.

Love is the only power that can draw a person to keep the Lord’s commands; they are too foreign to fallen human nature for it to be otherwise. Love is the only power that can draw a person to keep the Lord’s commands; they are too foreign to fallen human nature for it to be otherwise. Further, disobedience to the Lord is rebellion against God. Jesus said, “The word which ye hear is not mine but the Father’s.” Therefore, not to do what Jesus says is not to do what the Father says. That rules out all the world’s Christ-rejecting religions as false. If they do not love our Lord Jesus, whose voice was the voice of God, they are a deception and a lie. The next piece I’ll post will be about faith.