And the Holy Spirit also bears us witness [of it]; for after what was said
The chapter has just said that a single offering has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, and now a third witness takes the stand. The question is not whether Christ's work is enough, but how anyone can know it is — and where that knowledge is found.
This verse completes a sequence that runs through the chapter. It adds nothing to redemption. It says something about it.
Verses 15-18 give the testimony of the Holy Spirit. It confirms the standing that the sanctified have through the offering of Jesus Christ. The point here is not the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. It is the testimony He gives to the work of Christ, finished down here. Three things about grace stand out in what comes before. First, the will of God decided on the work to be done for us. Second, the sacrifice of Christ carried out this divine will. Third, the Holy Spirit gave His testimony to this will of God, accomplished by Christ.
Why bring in a witness at all, when the work is already finished?
Now the Apostle presents the witness of the Spirit as the One who brings us the knowledge of the truth with divine authority, so that we may hold it with divine certainty.
The small preposition carries the weight. Elsewhere the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. Here He testifies from outside us, and He does it on the written page.
But the Holy Spirit stoops to take the place of Witness, and He is completely reliable. It is not here His witness in us as in Romans 8:16. In our passage He is seen as testifying to us from outside, and at once we are pointed to what is written in Jeremiah 31. The words of Jeremiah were the words of the Spirit; his writings the writings of the Spirit. The witness of the Spirit to us is found in the written Word of God.
The verse points backward — "after saying" — to words spoken through the prophet Jeremiah centuries earlier. For readers raised on those Scriptures, that was not a weak argument but the strongest one available.
Here in Hebrews 10 the witness of the Spirit is the Old Testament Scripture, Jeremiah 31. The Spirit of God had dictated those words long before. To a Jewish reader they were therefore a conclusive witness. Under the terms of this covenant, the Spirit of God had promised the whole inward work in people's hearts and minds — the new birth. He had also promised complete forgiveness of sins. This being so, then the Old Testament itself indicated that offerings for sin would cease. This is inescapable. Had the Jews ever considered so plain a fact, set down in their own Scriptures?
The words of the testimony follow in the next two verses. One writer weighs their exact order.
God does not say, "I will not remember their sins and their lawless deeds," but "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." The simple statement that God would not remember our sins might imply that He passed them over. But when God says He will remember them "no more", it implies that they have all been remembered, confessed, borne and dealt with in judgment. Because they have been dealt with, God can justly say He will remember them "no more".
What, then, of a believer who still fears that God keeps a record of his sins?
And here is the secret of settled peace. If I think that God will ever remember sin, I am denying the will, the work, and the testimony of God. In short, if a believer in Jesus, it comes to being a sin to have the least thought of God's ever imputing a sin to me. It is just as much a work of the flesh as to commit the sin.
Many search their feelings for confirmation before they have accepted what is written. The order runs the other way.
We have the witness in us when we believe the witness to us. We have then received the Word into our hearts — and, remember, the Word is the witness.
The same warning is put in terms of where our attention lands:
People often look for the witness of the Holy Spirit in them while they have not believed the witness of the Holy Spirit to them.
- Willed. The chapter moves in three steps. God's will plans the work, Christ's sacrifice accomplishes it, and the Spirit testifies that it is done.
- Worked. The Spirit's subject is not His work inside the believer, but the finished work of Christ. He speaks to us from outside, not only in us.
- Written. His testimony sits in Scripture. The words of Jeremiah were the words of the Spirit, so an old promise answers a present fear.
- Wiped. The wording is exact. Sins are not overlooked. They were remembered, borne in judgment, and so remembered no more.
- Welcomed. Believe the witness to you and you gain the witness in you. To doubt God here is not modesty. It denies the will, the work and the testimony together.
This [is] the covenant which I will establish towards them after those days, saith [the] Lord Giving my laws into their hearts, I will write them also in their understandings;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.