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John Calvin and the Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit 191
“testimony” or “witness” means in the phrase “testimony [or witness]
of the Holy Spirit.”
Rather, the testimony of the Spirit is the work of the Spirit to give
us new life and, with this life, eyes to see what is really there in the
self-attesting divine glories of Scripture—the meaning of Scripture. In
other words, this chapter has confirmed what we saw already from the
apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:4–6 and 2 Timothy 2:24–26. The light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ is visible in
the word of God only to those into whose hearts the Creator of the
universe says, “Let there be light.” This is virtually the same as the lifegiving
witness of 1 John 5:11.
Knowing that our ability to see the self-authenticating glory of God
in Scripture depends on the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit should
make us humbly and joyfully prayerful that the Spirit would come with
his life-giving, light-giving power and cause the truth and beauty of
God’s word to shine in our minds and hearts.
What has emerged over the course of our study is that the glory of
God is of supreme importance in the process of seeing the Scriptures
as the word of God. We turn now to focus on this central reality as
the “scope of the whole”—the whole of God’s world and the whole of
God’s word. The comparison between seeing God’s glory in his world,
and seeing it in his word will confirm and clarify the importance of
that glory in convincing us of God as creator of the world and inspirer
of the word.