We are in a series of messages about the Holy Spirit, whose powerful presence among us is the chief characteristic of this age in history that the Bible calls “the last days.” We live on the other side of the climactic moment in history, the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. When he ascended to the Father’s right hand to take up his position as the sovereign over his kingdom which has been inaugurated on earth as it has always been in heaven, he sent his Spirit to live within and among his people to implement the realities of his kingdom rule and reign. That is what our lives as Christians is really all about. We are here to be his witnesses, to show and to tell the world about another world—a world redeemed and restored and submitted to the authority of the true God, Jesus of Nazareth.

If you suspect that that vocation for Christian disciples is quite a tall order, you would be correct. If I were God, I think I would have found a different way rather than entrusting this massive work to human beings like us. To be sure, some of us have more self-confidence than others. But even the most competent disciples of Jesus among us will not be able to pull this off by their own power. We have enough church history to see that we Christians are still pretty good at making a mess of things. But this appears to be the plan of God regardless of our failures, “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things,” Paul says in Ephesians 3. The plan is, Paul tells us, “that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:9-10). God is going to get his job done. He is going to get it done through us, his church. If you are a Christian, you are signed up for this plan. This is not an optional part of the Christian faith for those who are so inclined.

Needless to say, we’re going to need some help. Divine help. And the Scripture is clear that that is precisely what we’ve been given. The Holy Spirit of God himself is right here with us, within us, among us. The Spirit is here to help us in our weakness to be true and faithful witnesses of our Lord Jesus. Yes, the Spirit of God helps believers, ordinary believers like you and me, strong believers, weak believers—all of us—he helps us represent God and his love to all creation. He does this by empowering our witness, inspiring our prayers, and causing our growth.

The Holy Spirit Empowers Our Witness

First, the Holy Spirit helps us represent God and his love to all creation by empowering our witness.

You Will Receive Power

Let’s go back for a moment to the beginning of Acts. After Jesus’s resurrection, his disciples are brimming with excitement, anticipation, and hope. For forty days Jesus appeared to them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a phrase that sums up everything the disciples had been waiting for. It refers to the God of Israel ruling the whole world through his chosen people. Jesus told his excited disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, explaining that while John baptized with water, they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).

It is at this point that the disciples ask Jesus if this is now the time in which he is going to “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6).  Surely that is what this would all mean, with this baptism of the Spirit now just days away. All the messianic expectations to which the disciples were holding were all about this. The Messiah has been victorious. He is going to reassert the reign of God now over all other world powers. And they who have been the Messiah’s closest companions are sure to find their own promotion in that moment. Jesus had promised them that when he sat on his throne, they would “also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28).

Jesus’s answer in Acts 1:7 is interesting. They had asked if this was the time; Jesus says it is not for them to know the time. When you’re talking about something as massive as the kingdom of God, you can’t really get hung up about precise times. “Are we there yet” is still the annoying question it has always been when you are on a journey.

Again, let’s be clear. The scriptures tell us that yes, this is the time. The kingdom of God is here. It is now. We’ve got way too many Christians who don’t seem to know this or understand this.

Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, giving the Confederate States warning that he was going to free all enslaved people on the first day of the New Year if they did not surrender and rejoin the Union. On New Years Day, 1863, Lincoln followed through, declaring that all enslaved people were now, in fact, free. But, of course, that did not immediately change the real-life experience for all enslaved people. Even after Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, and the formal surrender of the western Confederate Army on June 2,  not everyone was free. There were about a quarter of a million enslaved people in Texas by 1865, and word of their freedom did not reach the last of them until Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and announced:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.

The date was June 19, 1865, now commemorated in the federal holiday Juneteenth which was celebrated just two days ago. But of course, the implementation of freedom, true freedom, takes a lot of time and effort.

That’s how it works with the kingdom of God. Is it here? Yes. Is it fully implemented? We’re not there yet.

Becoming Witnesses

And we who are citizens of God’s kingdom have a job to do, a job which we must depend upon God’s Holy Spirit to see through. “You will receive power,” Jesus said, “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” Whatever success the Christian gospel will have, it will have because of the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through the lives of ordinary disciples of Jesus, like you, like me.

The crucial thing is to see that Jesus did not say that the Holy Spirit would come upon his disciples and that they would then go and witness. That is what they did, of course. But Jesus promised a noun, not just a verb, witnesses not just witnessing.

The promise is that, because of the power of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus, they will themselves be witnesses of Jesus and his kingdom.

God’s Home

What is it that witnesses, just by its very existence, even when it is not saying anything? One answer to that question is a house. The structure in which someone important lives is a powerful witness. We Americans might consider the White House, a powerful witness because it is the home of the President. But we can also think of a stadium and the team that calls that stadium home.

Israel’s temple, like other ancient temples, was understood in the same way. It was the place where God himself lived, or at least, was supposed to live. And the night in which our Lord was betrayed, he said this to his disciples:

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (Jn 14:23).

God the Father and Jesus the Son “will come to” a person and make their home with him? How might that happen? Jesus tells us.

The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (Jn 14:26).

The giving of the Holy Spirit to all Christian disciples means that “we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Cor 6:16).

I just don’t think Christians today have really come to grasp this. We need to hear this good news over and over again, and then we need to learn to live in its freedom as witnesses of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit Inspires Our Prayers

Second, the Holy Spirit helps us represent God and his love to all creation by inspiring our prayers. I know the word inspire is an important word. I am not going to suggest that our prayers occupy the same authoritative space as the Holy Scriptures. But that God, by his Holy Spirit, means to speak through his people, and especially through their prayers, now that I do want to suggest to you this morning. And I want to argue that this is an important aspect of our witness.

Indebted to the Spirit

Last week we focused our attention on the first twelve verses of Romans 8. We saw how God has acted unilaterally on our behalf in Jesus to free us from the power of Sin so that we can see “the righteous requirement of the law” fulfilled in us as we live our lives “according to the Spirit.”

Now take a look at verse 12. “So then, brothers, we are debtors.” If you are a Christian, if you have been set free from the power of Sin by the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus on the cross, then you are under obligation. The Christian life that is expounded in the following verses is not an option for Christians. It is an absolute requirement. Let no one say, “I am saved by grace, now I can go live however I want with impunity.” You are under obligation, and there simply is no excuse.

Can’t you see that this is not in any way adding our own merits to our justification before God? We are talking about the Christian life, the life we must now live because we already are Christians, saved by the unilateral grace and mercy of God in Christ for us. But if we ask, “Well, what happens to me if I choose not to live “according to the Spirit,” the answer is stated here as black-and-white as it could possibly be: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13). A recent commentator puts the matter before us starkly, urging us to “not eviscerate this warning; Paul clearly affirms that his readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh” (Moo, 517).

Assured by the Spirit

But despite this clear warning, Paul’s aim here is not to disturb the consciences of sincere Christians. It is exactly the opposite. He wants to assure them. Verse 14: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” How do we know that we are being led by the Spirit of God and so have the confidence that we are God’s children? Verses 15-16 are key. Verse 16 says that God’s Spirit “bears witness with our spirit.” The verb used here tells us that there is a cooperative effort between God’s Spirit and our own spirit, both “bearing witness” to the same reality of our rightful relationship with God as his beloved children.

Some of you may be disturbed because, try as you might, you can’t seem to hear, to sense, to feel, to know the witness of God’s Spirit, telling you, assuring you, urging you to know that you are God’s beloved child. But verse 15 tells us that it is only by the Spirit of God that we cry, “Abba! Father!” Paul says something very similar to this in Galatians 4:6, only there it is the Spirit who utters the “Abba! Father!” cry, while here it is we who do it. Here’s the important point:

The testimony of the Spirit of sonship is therefore not something existentially distinguishable from this testimony of our own spirits. It is distinct from it, but it cannot be distinguished by an introspective analysis of our consciousness . . .[1]

And the cry itself, the “Abba! Father!” cry, is the instinctual cry of a child for his or her father. Sinclair Ferguson explains the importance. An unbeliever simply doesn’t have this instinct.

At best such a person may (and often does) cry out, “O God!” but not instinctively, “O Father!” That cry is the fruit of the ministry of the Spirit; it is his co-testimony with our spirit; even in the hour of darkness the believer possesses an instinct, a testimony: he or she knows him- or herself to be a child of God![2]

Go ahead and ask yourself the question, “What instincts do you have when you find yourself at your lowest point?” “Even at its lowest ebb the believer’s consciousness differs by a whole diameter from that of the unbeliever.”[3]

Praying by the Spirit

Go ahead into Romans 8 and you’ll see that this instinctual cry of help is not only true for the believer in his or her individual life. It is also true for the believer as he or she looks outward and wonders what to do.

Once again, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness,” verse 26 says, “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words.” And when we get to verse 28, that well-know verse has to be considered in light of another verb of cooperation: “works together.” It is not a verse that defends some positive outcome of fatalism (“Don’t worry. Everything will all work out.”) The Revised Standard Version, has, I think, the clearest translation of this verse: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”

God accomplishes his good “in everything” as he works “with those who love him,” precisely in the sometimes-frustrated-but-always-hopeful prayers of us who know that somehow, “the sufferings of this present time” will not be “worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).

The Holy Spirit Causes Our Growth

Finally, the Holy Spirit helps us represent God and his love to all creation by causing our growth.

Costly Vocation

If you and I want to see the Christian faith and its life in all its fullness, we are going to have to think in line with the Spirit who dwells within us, and who is always pointing us to Jesus and his way. We might wish for an easier life, and we might expect that the God of our own imagination owes us one.

But God’s purpose all along “was to create a Christ-shaped family, a renewed human race modeled on the Son.”[4] See it there in verse 29? “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” No surprise then, if like his Son we are called to Gethsemane, to sweat, as it were, our own great drops of blood. Yes, God is working with us for an inconceivable good, but that good involves our own transformation into the image of his Son. This is how we can not only witness for our Lord and his kingdom but also be witnesses of our Lord and his kingdom. It’s a tall order, a high calling. But “reflecting God into the world is a matter of costly vocation.”[5] Not everyone will accept the call. How about you?

Developing Relationship

And again I have to say that for those of us who are saying “yes” to Jesus and his kingdom, we need to embrace the whole scale and scope of what it is he intends to do through us. Back in John 14 Jesus speaks of those who love him as those who keep his commandments (Jn 14:15, 21), and he says that those who keep his commandments will find themselves secure of his love (Jn 14:21; 15:10). It is important that we see the circularity here, because Jesus is not giving us a formula but “the pattern for a developing relationship.”[6]

You know how that works. Relationships do not grow by formulas but through entering and staying in the mystery of knowing and loving. Better: the mystery of knowing by loving. Anyone who has been married long enough will know what I mean. Anyone who has committed and stayed in a church community will know this same kind of mysterious growth.

This is exactly what the early church experienced, and it was the work of the Holy Spirit who brought it all about. “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” (Acts 9:31). The Spirit who calls us to abide, to stay, will be the Spirit who comforts and causes us to grow.

Magnetic Holiness

This is how this theme of witness is tied to the theme of holiness we talked about last week. The two are absolutely inseparable. “Trying to do mission without holiness is like cooking rice without water,” says one Bible scholar. “Holiness is neither a retreat into individual piety, nor isolation from a scary world, nor a battle against a wicked culture. Biblical holiness, in contrast, is magnetic, contagious, and invitational.”[7]

So, let’s go for it, shall we? Let’s embrace all that Jesus has done for us, yes; but let’s also embrace all that Jesus, by that same grace, has given for us to do, has given us to do together.

We can be confident that the Spirit will help us in our weakness.

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[1] Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 208–209.

[2] Ferguson, Whole Christ, 209-210.

[3] John Murray, cited in Ferguson, Whole Christ, 210.

[4] N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians, The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 601.

[5] Wright, “Letter to the Romans,” 602.

[6] Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Baker Academic, 2012), 1:972.

[7] Dean Flemming, “Caught Up in What God Is Doing: Recapturing a Biblical Understanding of Mission,” Didache: Faithful Teaching 25, no. 2 (2026), www.didache.nazarene.org/index.php/filedownload/didache-volumes/vol-25n2/1551-didache-25n2-03-caught-up-flemming.