Holy Spirit is Witness to Christ
by G. Campbell Morgan
We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince, and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
"And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him."
— Acts 5:32"The Spirit is witness to the things of Christ," writes Morgan. Jesus said, "He shall bear witness of Me. . . He shall glorify Me." As Morgan notes, "He declared that the mission of the Holy Spirit would be the interpretation of Himself. . . . The Holy Spirit witnesses of Jesus only, never to Himself.
. . . The Holy Spirit witnesses of Jesus only. How we forget it as Christian people! Christian people constantly pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit, and wait for His coming. In their minds there seems to be the idea that when the Spirit comes to them in fullness they will be conscious of the Spirit. There is no evidence of any such teaching in Scripture. If the Spirit comes to us in all fullness, He will make us conscious, not of Himself,but of Christ. "He shall not speak of Himself. . . He shall take of Mine and declare it unto you," said Christ.
. . . The Spirit comes to witness to Jesus only. . . The Spirit comes to reveal Jesus only. He has no other message, no other work than the unveiling of the face of Christ, in which we see the unveiling of the face of God.
. . . "No man calleth Jesus Lord save by the Holy Spirit." I cannot make you call Him Lord. . . . You never can look into His face and say, "Lord," save as the Spirit of God has unveiled His glory and captured your heart. It is the Spirit of God Who first reveals to the soul the Lordship of Jesus. . . . Have you seen Him? It is only by the Spirit's unveiling of the face of Christ that He is ever seen, or that men become His witnesses.
When once the Lord has been seen and crowned there is a progressive operation of the Spirit in the life of the believer. The Spirit reveals the Christ to you in some new aspect as you read His Word, as you meditate upon Him, and the moment you see Christ is some new glory, that vision makes a demand upon you. What are you going to do with it? Answer it, obey it, and the Spirit realizes in you the thing you have seen in Christ. Disobey it, and the Spirit has no other message to you until you return to that point of disobedience, and you become obedient. . . . A vision like that. . . is a clarion call, a trumpet blast! (G. Campbell Morgan, The Westminster Pulpit, Vol. 2, pp. 278-279).
So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:41-42).