16: Common Ways the Holy Spirit Manifests Himself in All Believers – Affirmation of Sonship

What does the Holy Spirit’s entrance into, and permanent indwelling of, our lives mean for us? Paul mentions a very important way in which the Spirit shows Himself in us – the affirmation of our sonship with God, that is, of our permanent and secure family relationship to the Trinity.

^{Romans 8:12} So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵ For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

A true believer, one who is genuinely converted, a member of God’s family, will be putting to death, by the Holy Spirit, the sinful deeds of the body, and so will live or have eternal life. True sons of God are led by the Spirit into holiness of life. Being a son of God inevitably means I bear a likeness to my Father. The Spirit’s work in my life gives me an affirmation that I am a son or child of God because I see my spiritual progress in Christlikeness which was totally absent before I came to know him.

Before I was adopted into God’s family I lived in bondage to my sinful nature. I could not move toward God, and the law-keeping I tried to make me worthy of Him was motivated by fear. But when I became a legally adopted son of God, the Holy Spirit’s motivation in me was not fear but the freedom and joy of sonship. If I choose to fall into fear that God might not accept or receive me it is not a failure of the Holy Spirit, because He moves me to acknowledge God as my Abba, my Father. Even in my doubts I cry out to Him as my heavenly Daddy.

In my spirit I know I know God as Father, but the Holy Spirit adds His testimony to my own spirit’s testimony that I am a child of God. I am a son by legal adoption, a child by regeneration. Children and sons are automatically heirs of all the Father has. And as Jesus Christ is our fellow heir, that makes him our Brother, a relationship made specific in verse 29 and elsewhere (Hebrews 2:11; Romans 8:29; Mark 3:34). Family affirmation is the work of the Spirit in our lives.