SPIRITUAL RADIANCE COMES FROM AN INNER WITNESS
“…And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us”
(1 JOHN 3:24)
One distinguishing mark of the earliest Christians was their radiance, for the sun had come up in their hearts and its warmth and light made unnecessary any secondary sources of assurance.

They had the inner witness!

Great power and great grace marked their lives, enabling them to rejoice to suffer shame for the name of Jesus.

It is obvious in our day that the average evangelical Christian is without this radiance. The efforts of some of our teachers to cheer our drooping spirits are futile because those same teachers reject the very phenomenon that would naturally produce joy, namely, the inner witness. Instead of the inner witness we now substitute logical conclusions drawn from texts. There is no witness, no immediacy of knowledge, no encounter with God, no awareness of inner change.

Where there is a divine act within the soul there will always be a corresponding awareness. This act of God is self-validating. It is its own evidence and addresses itself directly to the religious consciousness.

Charles Wesley in a triumphant hymn wrote: “His Spirit answers to the blood, And tells me I am born of God!”

To the salvation-by-logical-conclusion devotees such language is plain heresy. If it is heresy, I run to join such a glorious heretic, and may God send us many more!

A. W. Tozer