What is "God's Witness"?

God's method of redemption in Christ includes an oft-overlooked, yet essential, element. This is the Witness, or testimony, which God gave to man as proof that the sacrifice of Christ took place and was accepted. For those seeking the truth, God has provided something which can be used as a clear sign showing the way, something which bears irrefutable record to the fact that the offering of Jesus' body, "as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" was accepted by the Father as propitiation for our sins and that He "hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36).

What is God's Witness? The Bible tells us. In 1John 5:6, we read, "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." In verse 10, John calls the Spirit "the record that God gave of his Son", and he states that anyone who refuses to receive the Spirit is calling God a liar, because he is rejecting the Witness which God gave. Jesus had told his disciples, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify [bear witness] of me" (Jn.15:26).

Man needed a Witness that Jesus' sacrifice was accepted by the Father because the event took place in heaven, where no man could see. The disciples, obediently waiting in Jerusalem, learned that Jesus had made his sacrifice and that it had been accepted only when the Father sent His Witness of it on Pentecost morning, "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4).

Speaking in tongues, said Paul, is the sign that God gave to men to help them find the way of life (1Cor.14: 21-22). With so many religions claiming to be the true way of God, the Father knew He would have to give us something concrete by which to judge men's claims. Thank God, we do not have to decide for ourselves who has God's Spirit and who does not. The Spirit gives its own witness when He washes a soul from sin, just as he bore witness through the tongues of those humble disciples in Acts 2:4. Referring to this divinely inspired utterance, Paul reminded the believers in Rome, "Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, `Abba, Father'. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Rom.8:15-16).

Another sobering thought to which all this leads us is that since "conversion" occurs when the Spirit of God is received (Rom.8:9), the disciples were converted, or born again, on the day of Pentecost when they received the Holy Ghost. The Spirit wasn't available to indwell them before Jesus ascended (Jn.14:17) because the sacrifice hadn't taken place. More than once, Jesus spoke to his disciples of the conversion, or new birth, which they would experience when the Holy Spirit came (Mt.18:1-3; Lk.21:31-32; Jn.16:20-22). Unfortunately, many teach that one is converted, or born again, before he receives the baptism of the Holy Ghost. But there is no scriptural support for that notion. Take Paul, for a prime example. How many among us, even ministers, thoughtlessly speak of Paul's "conversion" on the road to Damascus, as if that is what the Bible says. But the Scriptures clearly state that Paul received the Spirit three days later in Damascus, and that only then were his sins washed away (Acts 9:8-9, 17; 22:11-16).

Because animal sacrifice is no longer practiced by most of humanity, there are certain aspects of such sacrifices which are virtually lost to our understanding. Consider, for example, the very meaning of the word "sacrifice". To most people now, "to sacrifice" means "to kill". But in the Bible, "to sacrifice" never meant simply "to kill". The killing of the animal was only a part of the preparation for the sacrifice. It was not the sacrifice itself. "To sacrifice" meant to offer to God the animal that has been chosen, slain, and prepared for sacrifice.

On the Old Covenant's Day of Atonement, Israel's high priest entered with the blood of goats and calves into the temple built by men's hands to make an atoning sacrifice for the nation (Lev.16), but "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us", "neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in" (Heb.9:24,12).

If Jesus had ascended into heaven before his death, he would have had nothing to offer to God for the sins of the world. The sacrificial Lamb had to first be slain and then offered to God for sin. It was necessary that Jesus, as high priest, have something to offer to God for man's sin when he presented himself to God (Heb.8:3).

If the story of Jesus had ended with the crucifixion, no atonement for sin would have been accomplished. Only the Father's acceptance of Jesus' sacrificial death accomplished that. Jesus' death was made effective for the forgiveness of sin only after he arose from the dead and ascended into heaven to offer himself to God as a slain Lamb. There, in the holiest place of heaven, Jesus "appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb.9:26). It was this sacrifice of Christ, not simply his wonderful earthly life or his horrible death, which purchased our redemption.

God has left those who have faith, a glorious "Witness" that Jesus' sacrifice was accepted: "Whereof, the holy Ghost also is a witness unto us" (Heb.10:15). When one receives the baptism of the holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, he is receiving this "witness" in his own body: "he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself..." (1Jo.5:10). It is God's "witness" of the Spirit that is one's claim to true faith in Christ, and no other. We can trust it.

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