The Witness of the Spirit

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. ROMANS 8:16

A week after her conversion, Amanda Smith was singing over her work. She was so happy she hardly knew what to do with herself. And then, as she tells it, the enemy whispered to her: “There, you are singing just as if you had religion.” She answered that the Lord had converted her. The voice went on: how did she know? She did not want to be a hypocrite, did she? And then the decisive thrust: “But you have no evidence.”

She did not know the word. “Evidence, evidence, what is that?” she asked herself. Then she remembered that the old people used to speak of the witness of the Spirit, and she wondered whether that was what was meant.

Holding the point

She decided she would not sing and would not pray, in her usual happy way, until she had the witness. Instead she prayed one prayer for a whole week: Lord, I believe Thou hast converted me, but the devil says I have no evidence; give me the evidence, so clear and definite that he will never trouble me on that line again. God, she says, helped her to hold the point. At the end of the week He gave it. And from that day, through many sorrows and much buffeting by Satan, she never again had a question about her conversion.

Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. 1 JOHN 4:13

This was not a technicality to her. “This witness of God’s spirit to my conversion has been what has held me amid all the storms of temptation and trial that I have passed through,” she wrote. When she later came under deep conviction for holiness, she was grateful that this one point was already settled, because otherwise, she said, the struggle would have been much worse. A soul unsure of its pardon cannot seek anything further with a quiet heart.

Two kinds of conviction

One of the most careful passages in her Autobiography distinguishes two very different inward states. When she was convicted of sin, she was under condemnation; she felt herself a lost and wretched sinner. When God pardoned her, He took all condemnation away. Later, when she began to long for a clean heart, it was, she wrote, “a deep conviction of want—an indescribable want; not condemnation.” It was like the hunger of someone who has worked hard all day and longs for supper.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROMANS 8:1

That distinction matters more than it looks. Many earnest Christians who long for more of God mistake the longing for guilt, and conclude they were never saved at all. But hunger for God is not condemnation before God. A child who is hungry for supper does not doubt that she belongs to the family.

A privilege, not a luxury

She taught that the clear witness of the Spirit is the normal privilege of every believer, not a rare luxury for the advanced. It is, she wrote, “their privilege to have the clear, distinct witness of the Spirit to both justification and sanctification.” She was realistic that it does not come to everyone in the same way. But she observed, from long experience at the altar, that those who never come to settled assurance “are unsettled in their Christian life, often waver and falter, and are more easily turned aside to new isms and doctrines.”

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. 1 JOHN 5:13

That is sound pastoral wisdom. A believer who does not know whether she belongs to God is easy prey — for the accuser, for every new teacher with a scheme, and for a religion of anxious effort. The New Testament was written that we might know.

Where to be careful

There is something here to be weighed. On one later occasion, when the devil told her she had no witness to her sanctification, she asked God for a sign, and the sign she was given was the conversion of a particular sick young woman she had prayed with. She prayed that the woman would be converted before Sunday, and on Sunday morning a friend crossed the church to tell her that the woman had received the blessing the afternoon before. Amanda Smith took it as God’s direct evidence, and she never doubted again.

We need not doubt that God answered her. But she was wise enough to add that everybody does not receive their witness in that way, and her readers should be wiser still. The witness of the Spirit, in Scripture, is the Spirit’s own testimony within the heart, confirmed by His fruit in the life and by the promises of the Word. It is not normally a matter of asking for outward signs, and a believer who makes her assurance hang on such signs has built on sand. If the sign had not come, would the promise have been any less true? Her own deepest assurance, in the cellar and the week after, rested on the plain word she had believed. That is where ours must rest too.

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. 1 JOHN 5:10

Settled once for all

What she wanted for every believer was a settled, humble certainty that could not be argued away. Satan might buffet her and feelings might come and go; but the question of whether she belonged to Christ had been answered, and she could say, as she later did in a very dark hour, that whatever else was true, she belonged to Jesus.

For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. 2 TIMOTHY 1:12

It is a strange thing that the Christians most afraid of assurance are often the most sincere. They fear presumption, and they are right to. But there is a deeper presumption in doubting what God has plainly said. She liked to close an account of God’s dealings with a phrase from Hosea: ye shall know, if ye follow on to know the Lord.

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD. HOSEA 6:3

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Do you know that you belong to Christ? Write down, in a sentence, what your assurance rests on. If it rests on feelings, find a promise of Scripture to rest it on instead.

2. If you have never settled the question, do what she did: set apart time to ask God plainly for the witness of His Spirit, and hold the point until He answers.

3. Distinguish in your own heart between condemnation and hunger. If what you feel is longing for more of God, thank Him for it instead of fearing it.

4. Notice where your uncertainty has made you restless for new teachers or new methods. Return to the plain promises of 1 John 5:10–13.

5. Think of a believer you know who is tormented by doubt. Read 1 John 5:13 with them this week.

A PRAYER

Father, Your Word was written that I might know that I have eternal life. Let me not live in the fog when You have offered me the light.

Let Your Spirit bear witness with my spirit that I am Your child, clearly enough that the accuser’s arguments lose their hold.

Teach me the difference between the guilt You have taken away and the hunger You have given me, and let me follow on to know You.

Settle me, keep me, and let me say in every storm: whatever else is true, I belong to Jesus. Amen.