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gender of the word "head" has no possible connection with the person of Christ, the Man
at God's right hand. When, therefore, the word pneuma is followed by the neuter
pronoun "it", the grammatical construction has no bearing upon the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. If the grammatical rule were broken, and the masculine pronoun used with the
neuter word pneuma, then this departure from the normal sequence would have a special
meaning. The reader may not know that such a departure does occur in John's Gospel,
where the speaker is the Son of God. In John 14: 26 and John 16: 13 we have two
passages where the word ekeinos, emphatic and masculine, is used, contrary to the
grammatical rule. If the antecedent in the second passage is parakletos, the Comforter,
then it is clearly a testimony to the personality of the Holy Spirit that the Lord should go
back seventy words in order to find a word in the masculine gender rather than use the
simple neuter.
The word ekeinos is used in John's Gospel quite frequently, and in many passages
emphasis upon the person spoken of is intended. Take, for example, the following:--
"He hath declared Him" (John 1: 18).
"He it is that loveth Me" (John 14: 21).
Or the passage in John 4: (very similar to that in John 16: 13):--
"When He (ekeinos) is come, He will tell us all things" (4: 25).
"When He (ekeinos), the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth" (16: 13).
It is quite clear that personality is intended by this usage of ekeinos, and every lover of
the truth would do well to test the faithfulness of any literal translation of the Greek N.T.
on these passages.
Coming back to Rom. 8: it is evident that, if we are not going to mislead, we must
translate the passage: "The Spirit Himself."
The word "to bear witness" in the original is summartureo and occurs also in
Rom. 2: 15 and 9: 1, where the conscience is referred to. Although it would require
pages of writing to analyse what takes place when the conscience "bears witness", every
reader must be familiar with it as a fact of experience. If, then, the conscience can bear
witness, how much more may the Holy Spirit Himself impress with unquestionable
conviction the truth that "we are the children of God".
In the physical realm, children can trace some measure of likeness with their parents,
and discover certain family characteristics. These things are true also in the spiritual
realm. The "children of God" have "received" and "believed" (John 1: 12), and exhibit
marked family characteristics (John 8: 39; I John 3: 1, 2, 10).
Moreover, fellowship with the Father is in itself an ever-abiding witness, though
impossible of demonstration.