The Apostolic Witness and Testimony

1 John 4:14-16
“And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he in God. We have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love. He that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.”

“A correct belief means the acceptance of and agreement with the apostolic witness and testimony. I know no Christ apart from the Christ I find in the New Testament. I cannot find Christ directly. I find Him in the scriptures. The men who wrote the first gospels believed and understood that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. They saw and testified. In other words, they saw and they expounded: … Jesus had never been to the schools, yet He taught as one having authority and not as the scribes … He rebuked the waves and they were still … He spoke a word and the dead arose … He mastered the elements. He controlled everything – life, death, all things were subservient to His supernatural power … At the top of the mountain, they saw Him transformed and transfigured … They saw him rising and ascending into the clouds and back into Glory. That is the record. What makes men and women Christians is that they confess that. We have their record and witness and testimony. If we accept and see it and give our assent to it from the heart, there is only one reason we do so – because the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes.

John is dealing with the essence of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. His argument, in a sense, is that if we confess that Jesus is the Son of God, we do so because the Holy Spirit is enabling us to do so. That means the Holy Spirit must be in us. If the Holy Spirit is in us, then we are in God and God is in us. A correct belief is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit.”