3. To this state belong, freedom from a servile spirit, for we are not servants but sons; the special love and care of God our heavenly Father; a filial confidence in him; free access to him at all times and in all circumstances; a title to the heavenly inheritance; and the Spirit of adoption, or the witness of the Holy Spirit to our adoption, which is the foundation of all the comfort we can derive from those privileges, as it is the only means by which we can know that they are ours.
4. The last mentioned great privilege of adoption merits special attention. It consists in the inward witness or testimony of the Holy Spirit to the sonship of believers, from which flows a comfortable persuasion or conviction of our present acceptance with God, and the hope of our future and eternal glory. This is taught in several passages of Scripture:--
Rom. viii, 15, 16, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” In this passage it is to be remarked, 1. That the Holy Spirit takes away “fear,” a servile dread of God as offended. 2. That the “Spirit of God” here mentioned, is not the personified spirit or genius of the Gospel, as some would have it, but “the Spirit itself,” or himself, and hence he is called in the Galatians, “the Spirit of his Son,” which cannot mean the genius of the Gospel. 3. That he inspires a filial confidence in God, as our Father, which is opposed to “the fear” produced by the “spirit of bondage.” 4. That he excites this filial confidence, and enables us to call God our Father, by witnessing, bearing testimony with our spirit, “that we are the children of God.”
Gal. iv, 4–6, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons; and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Here also are to be noted, 1. The means of our redemption from under (the curse of) the law,--the incarnation and sufferings of Christ. 2. That the adoption of sons follows upon our actual redemption from that curse, or, in other words, upon our pardon. 3. That upon our being pardoned, the “Spirit of the Son” is “sent forth into our hearts,” producing the same effect as that mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, viz. filial confidence in God,--“crying, Abba, Father.” To these texts are to be added all those passages, so numerous in the New Testament, which express the confidence and the joy of Christians; their friendship with God; their confident access to him as their God; their entire union and delightful intercourse with him in spirit.