“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).
Biblically speaking, there is no mystery on how a person goes from being an instrument of unrighteousness to being a weapon of righteousness. The new birth of water and the Spirit comes when a penitent believer is baptized into Christ Jesus and His death and then raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-4).
The reason why there is no mystery on this matter is because God’s Holy Spirit—the Spirit of truth—has revealed plainly and precisely what must be done for you to be delivered from the power of darkness and conveyed/transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
Just as the crossing of the Red Sea (i.e., being baptized into Moses—1 Corinthians 10:2) made Israel’s redemption out of Egyptian slavery a fact of history, so your redemption through Christ’s blood from the tyrannical slavery of sin and death becomes a fact of history when you are raised from the waters of baptism. The Spirit Himself repeatedly bears witness to this profound and significant truth.
Your spirit knows with absolute certainty whether you have obeyed God’s revealed plan of salvation from the heart. Your spirit knows whether you were sincere and seeking to have a good conscience when your body was washed in the water of baptism. If your spirit affirms that you sincerely obeyed the gospel, you can draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22).
The witness of the Holy Spirit is found in what you must do in obedience to the gospel to be saved. When the witness of your spirit is that you have honestly and sincerely sought to obey the gospel as it is expressly stated by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, there is proof that you are a child of God.
Christianity is not a “better felt than told” religion. Rather, it is a passionately felt religion which obediently corresponds to what we are told in God’s Word.
