The Spirit and Assurance (Romans 8:15-17)

Paul in this set of verses continues to explain what it should mean for believers to have the Holy Spirit in their lives. Today there is a great interest in some aspects of the blessings of the Spirit, particularly the gifts of the Spirit. In previous periods in our background many Christians were concerned with the work of the Spirit in connection with the experience of divine assurance, and Paul does focus on features of this concern here. So we can say that this sermon will be about the assurance of personal salvation that believers can have.

The reception of the Spirit 

Paul here says that the Christians in Rome ‘received’ the Spirit. The word ‘received’ raises the question as to when the Spirit came to them in this way. There are three possible ways of considering this reception, and we can think about each of them briefly. We can ask when, how and why the reception occurred.

The first is the suggestion that Paul has in mind whenever the Spirit commenced working in the life of sinners. In other words, they would have received the Spirit when he convicted them of their sins before their conversions. This is not the time that Paul has in mind because that we know that usually the Spirit’s work in conviction is resisted to some degree by unconverted people, even although it ultimately leads to their conversion.

The second suggestion is that Paul is referring to a post-conversion experience when the Spirit comes in a fuller or deeper manner than previously. Obviously there have been occasions when some Christians have had very profound encounters with the Spirit, encounters that they can only describe as heavenly, and which are very hard to explain to those who have not experienced them. Nevertheless, this suggestion is not what Paul had in mind because this reception of the Spirit was the privilege of every Christian in Rome to whom Paul was writing.

The correct way of interpreting the time of receiving the Spirit is to recognise that every Christian receives him at the time of conversion. We can see several stages in the work of the Spirit in the experience of a believer at that time in his life. First, the Spirit convicts him of his sin; second, the Spirit enlightens him about Jesus and his work; third, the Spirit regenerates the sinner and he is enabled to repent of his sins and trust in Jesus; and fourth, the Spirit comes to indwell that sinner for ever.

This leads to consider the ‘how’ of this experience. All new Christians receive the Spirit, but from whom do they receive him? Who sends the Spirit into the hearts of the new believers? The Spirit does not send himself, nor do other Christians through a religious ritual send him into their hearts. Instead, the Spirit comes to them as a gift from the Father and the Son (as Jesus explained to his disciples in the Upper Room). Each believer has the Spirit, although none of them have the Spirit in his fullness. As Paul says in Ephesians 1, they have the firstfruits of the Spirit.

Receiving the Spirit is the first point that Paul mentions in the quest for assurance. We can see, I hope, that the willingness to receive him is evidence of a great change in the heart. Of course, in the joy of that moment of conversion we may not have been conscious of all that was happening to us. Yet we can look back at our conversion and see that we are glad that the Holy Spirit was sent into our hearts.

The Spirit of adoption

Paul contrasts two receptions here: one is the spirit of slavery and the other is the Spirit of adoption. We need to ask what Paul has in mind here. Here are some relevant questions. (1) Does ‘spirit’ in both uses refer to the Holy Spirit? (2) Who had the experience of slavery marked by dread? (3) How strong is the sense of having the Spirit of adoption?

With regard to how to translate ‘spirit’ in this verse, we know that the original language does not distinguish between words by using upper case for divine persons as we do. So it is possible to say that the term ‘spirit’ could refer once to the human spirit and once to the Holy Spirit (which is how our version translates) or it could refer twice to the human spirit or it could refer twice to the Holy Spirit. We can see that Paul personalises the second reference and also distinguishes the ‘Spirit’ from believers, so the second reference clearly refers to the Holy Spirit.

The debate here has mainly concerned itself with the person and experience referred to by ‘spirit of slavery’. When would a Christian, who now has the Spirit, have had a period of conscious slavery in a spiritual sense? I doubt if Paul has in mind the period when the Christian was an unconcerned sinner. Instead he has in focus a period when that Christian became a concerned sinner, which he describes in Romans 7 in part, when he writes that a believer finds himself sold under sin (which is a graphic picture of slavery). So it looks as if Paul could mean by ‘spirit of slavery’ the time when the Holy Spirit was convicting the then unbeliever of his sin. And he assures the Christians that they don’t receive the Holy Spirit in that manner.

(Another possible interpretation, which is connected in some ways to the one just mentioned, is that Paul is referring to the Spirit’s work in the old covenant as the time of spiritual bondage when God’s people did not possess the spiritual degree of knowledge as they now have.)

If that is the case, then in what way does the Spirit come? Paul tells us that the Spirit enables us to cry ‘Abba, Father!’ The word ‘cry’ points to a very strong cry, to a shout in our souls. We could say that the strength of the cry points to gladness, and that the use of ‘Abba’ points to a combination of intimacy and respect. It has often been said that ‘Abba’ is what a Jewish child would call his father, often forgetting it is also how an adult Jewish child would address his father. There is no hint of childishness in spiritual things here. The point that Paul is making here is that the height of spiritual ecstasy, while remaining the norm for Christian living, is to address the great eternal God as Father.

The witness of the Spirit (v. 16)

Paul then refers to another activity of the Spirit in verse 16 when he says that ‘the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God’. Again, we can use three brief words to understand this – where, when and how. The question of where concerns to whom the Spirit is witnessing when Paul says that the Spirit witnesses with our Spirit. Does the apostle mean that the Holy Spirit tells God in heaven that a person is a believer? Or does the apostle mean that the Holy Spirit informs us on earth that we are believers? Obviously it would be comforting to know that the Holy Spirit remains faithful to his people before God’s throne, but I don’t think that is the type of witnessing that Paul means. Instead, he is describing a work of the Spirit in the human heart that strengthens and stimulates our assurance.

When does the Holy Spirit do this? Since Paul is addressing the entire Roman church, it means that he is describing a common Christian experience. By the witness of the Spirit the apostle does not mean a profound occasion when something unusual happened to a Christian. Instead he writes in such a way that he expects his readers to know what he is talking about. The witness of the Spirit is a frequent event we might even say it can be a continuous activity of the Spirit.

How does the Spirit do this? The answer that has helped me the most with this question is the illustration of a three-legged stool to depict Christian assurance. One leg is the promises of God, a second leg is the deduced changes a person sees in his life as a Christian, and the third leg is the witness of the Spirit. It is possible for a Christian to have assurance connected to the first two legs – after all, sometimes a two legged stool will stand if the legs are thick enough. Yet in the spiritual life, it is the case that the devil can attack a Christian with regard to those two legs. The devil can tell the Christian that the divine promises are not for him and that the changes he sees in his life are not that great. And the Christian’s assurance begins to waver if that is all that he has. Fortunately, it is not all. In addition, the Holy Spirit comes and confirms the divine promises in the believer’s mind so that he sees they are his (the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that they are true and relevant for him) and the Spirit also enables the believer to use self-examination as source of strong assurance by witnessing with him that indeed a great and wonderful change has taken place within his soul.

What happens when the three legs are functioning? We could look at them in different ways, but the way of delight is sufficient for the moment. The Spirit is delighted to strengthen the faith of his people out of his Word and the believers are delighted that he does so. Therefore such delight marks the experience of assurance and is an expression of God-strengthened joy.

The inheritance of believers (v. 17)

Paul then mentions a third aspect of Christian assurance and it is an aspect that is deduced from being members of the family of God. The apostle points out that God’s people are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus, the royal Son. Obviously this sounds a wonderful experience, but what does it involve? Paul will say something about the spatial nature of the inheritance in the next few verses of this chapter, but he mentions three other aspects of it in this verse that we can note briefly.

First, there is only one inheritance, which means that it is a shared inheritance. Obviously Jesus shares it with his people, which is an act of amazing grace on his part because they do not deserve it. Yet we can easily deduce that sharing the full inheritance should cause them to love now those with whom they will share it and to delight to be with those now with whom they will share it then.

Second, the experience for the full inheritance is described as glorified with Christ. Whatever this will mean, we can say that it will be sublime and satisfying. All of them are going to be like Jesus. Often we think of eternity and wonder what it will be like to be sinless. But the eternal experience is not just the absence of what is wrong and ugly, it is also the presence of what is right and beautiful. Since we are going to be like Jesus then, we should be becoming increasingly like him now.

Third, how do we recognise the joint-heirs with Jesus now? They are suffering with Jesus. Prepositions can carry a lot of meaning. Paul could have described the joint-heirs as those who suffer for Jesus and that would have been a true description of them. But in addition to suffering for Jesus, they also suffer with Jesus. He is there to help, comfort and guide them by his Spirit as they make their way to the inheritance. They are described as suffering, which calls for sympathy and identification. Suffering here does include illness, but it also includes suffering because of serving Jesus. This would have meant a great deal to those Roman Christians a few years later when Nero inflicted great suffering on them. But their sufferings became the road from which they exited into the presence of the Saviour and now they are waiting in heaven to receive their inheritance.