1 John 5:9-10
9 If we receive the testimony of people, the testimony of God is greater;
The role of the Spirit is to bear witness to the truth about Jesus. The Holy Spirit is within us, convincing us of the truth of what we have heard from Jesus, and that by following Jesus, we will have eternal life. And we have no better teacher than the Holy Spirit within us, testifying to the truth. And so, if we receive as true things testified to by multiple eye-witnesses, then we should absolutely consider the witness of the Holy Spirit, and the Word of the Gospel as truth.
the testimony of God is greater;
But, how does someone who is originally spiritually blind come to see Him for who He really is? Our natural eyes are insufficient to reveal God’s Glory to us. Jesus said “Seeing they do not see,” in Matthew 13:13, The apostle Paul says you must have “the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know” in Ephesians 1:18. The “heart” is the real us.
We have a choice: to give Him honor and glory, or not. Most choose not to get to know God on a deeper level, but instead ignore the knowledge of Him that He has put in their hearts: Rom 1:21 “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” Everyone knows that there is a God deep down, but most refuse to serve Him.
Another clue to the link between vague knowledge of Him, and serving Him is found in Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. It is understanding that He is God, and we are not; that He can run our lives better than we can. We can either choose to believe the wisdom of the world, or the wisdom of God, but not both. 1 Cor 1:19-25 18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Each time someone refuses the call to believe; each time they choose worldly wisdom over Godly wisdom, it’s not because God’s glory is not shining to illuminate their lives, if they would let Him, but instead their hardness of heart, and their mindset against God causes them to reject God. As Ephesians 4:17b-18 walk, in the futility of their minds, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves up to indecent behavior for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. And the continual hardening of the heart against the things of God has made them callous to God, and His plan for their lives. This hardness is a deep aversion to God, and a corresponding love for self-exaltation—putting themselves on the throne of their lives, and dedicating themselves to the lusts of the flesh, lusts of the eye, and the pride of life. That’s hardness of heart. 1 Cor 1:22 22 For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, But, for those of us who are called, we find the awesome power of God in the Cross, and the beautiful plan that He has used to save us.
The testimony of God is greater.
God planned it out this way, so that those who want to fool themselves can, but are warned beware, the Lord is not mocked, as a man sows, so shall he reap. And for those who are saved, He gives us testimony from Him that we are saved. Rom 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, And, we feel this not from our intellectual mind imposing it’s opinion into the heart, but from within in our Spirit, bearing witness with the Holy Spirit, and then outward to our mind. As Paul says in 2 Cor 1:12 For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you. In other words, we can look at the evidence of our spirit bearing witness, of our conscience agreeing, and our conduct toward other believers in love bearing witness that our relationship with Jesus is real; that we are in Christ, abiding with Him, and that He is abiding with us in the communion of the Holy Spirit with our spirit.
We should be able to look back to a time when God has conducted a supernatural work to remove that old heart of stone, and give us a new, soft, pliable heart of flesh that He can work with. He removes that old, hard, idolatrous heart that is always seeking for substitutes for God, always seeking to get glory for ourselves instead of God, and gives us a heart for Him, that wants to see Him glorified, that loves Him from the bottom of our heart.
because this is the testimony of God that He has testified concerning His Son.
The testimony of God of the reality of the work that Jesus has done is understood best by each of us in our own experience of Salvation, as witnessed to by the Holy Spirit. We are changed now, and this difference can only be attributed to the new heart that we received when we believed in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Romans 8: 9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. We have the witness of the Holy Spirit. We have the witness of a changed life. We have the witness of our conscience bearing witness, we have the witness of walking in the Spirit, and not the flesh, we have the witness of our confession of Christ, we have the witness of the blood and the water as central facts of our lives, we have the witness of our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. God has made all of this possible by changing our hearts in the first place, and has testified concerning His Son in power, by removing our heart of stone, and giving us a heart of flesh. God’s testimony of the effectiveness of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, speaks to us continually by the evidence of our changed life. And so,
10 The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. “He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in him.” Our abiding, remaining relationship with God, as our changed life is the witness of God the Father makes us the walking in the spirit, living for Jesus, breathing out love for the brothers and sisters evidence, as our lives point to Jesus. As we serve one another in love, as we demonstrate Christ’s love to the world around us, we walk in obedience to Jesus.
He who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony which God has testified concerning His Son.
Sadly, not everyone will make the choice to really believe in Christ as Lord and Savior. And, in fact, not everyone who professes a belief in Christ is really “in Christ” with a changed heart, living for Him. And what is their witness to everyone around them. Those who are just “professing Christians”, or “Sunday Christians”, but nothing more are ignoring the commandments of God. They may not carve little idols for themselves, but their priorities, their calendar and their pocketbook speak volumes. Their placement of money, power, status, fame, reputation, status, sex, substances, and other things before God are the true witness to the reality of their hearts, and when they then claim to be Christians, they break the next commandment 7“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. They claim the name, but are in reality Christians in Name Only, and thereby make the transforming power of the Gospel seem like a lie to everyone around them. When they affirm, “I believe in Jesus, I’m a Christian”, but then live any old way that their flesh wants, it denies Christ to the world, and leads many to hell. The one who rejects God’s testimony thereby calls God a liar. People cannot reject Jesus and say they believe God. As John has said in 1 John 2:22-23 22 Who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. The reason one does not believe God is because he or she has rejected God’s testimony. Believing God involves putting one’s trust in what God has said about His Son. His testimony about His Son is complete. He has nothing more to say. Either we believe the witness of God concerning His son, or we don’t. Which have you chosen? Which do you choose now?