1st John chapter 4 verses 1 through 6.

Beloved do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God.

Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.

And every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming,

and now it is in the world already.

Little children, you are of God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater

than he who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore what they say is of the world and the world listens to them.

We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us.

By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of air.

I'd like to direct your attention to verse 24 of chapter 3 to set the stage for our meditation upon verses 1 to 6 of chapter 4.

Verse 24 of chapter 3 says, Chapter 4. V. V.

V.

And by this we know that he abides in us, by the spirit which he has given to us.

So evidently that verse teaches that in some which he has given to us.

So evidently that verse teaches that in some way the fact that we've been given the

Holy Spirit can give us an assurance, a knowing that we have God within us.

There is a kind of testimony of the spirit, as Paul calls it, in Romans 8, that assures us that we belong to God

and that God is in us and that he is working through us.

And so the question I pose at the outset is, what is that testimony of the Holy Spirit?

What does the Holy Spirit do whereby he presents evidence to our conscience and to our community that we are of God.

...