One of the most precious passages in the Bible regarding the work of the Holy Spirit is found in Rom. viii. 15, 16, R. V., “For ye received not the spirit of bondage¹ again to fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption², whereby we cry Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” There are two witnesses to our sonship, first, our own spirit, taking God at His Word (“As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,” John i. 12), bears witness to our sonship. Our own spirit unhesitatingly affirms that what God says is true that we are sons of God because God says so. But there is another witness to our sonship, namely, the Holy Spirit. He bears witness together with our spirit. “Together with” is the force of the Greek used in this passage. It does not say that He bears witness to our spirit but “together with” it. How He does this is explained in Gal³ iv. 6, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth⁴ the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” When we have received Jesus Christ as our Saviour⁵ and accepted God's testimony⁶ concerning Christ that through Him we have become sons, the [pg 137] Spirit of His Son comes into our hearts filling them with an overwhelming sense of sonship, and crying through our hearts, “Abba, Father.” The natural attitude of our hearts towards God is not that of sons. We may call Him Father with our lips, as when for example we repeat in a formal way, the prayer that Jesus taught us, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” but there is no real sense that He is our Father. Our calling Him so is mere⁷ words. We do not really trust Him. We do not love to come into His presence; we do not love to look up into His face with a sense of wonderful joy and trust because we are talking to our Father. We

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