<p>8:16&nbsp;<i>The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God</i>- See on 8:15&nbsp;<i>spirit of adoption</i>. The Greek can be read as &ldquo;The Spirit himself bears witness&nbsp;<i>to</i>&nbsp;our spirit, that we are the children of God&rdquo;. But the idea seems to be of a joint witness- our spirit is in fact<i> the</i>&nbsp;Spirit, and bear witness in a legal sense that we are really God&rsquo;s children. As we have observed several times, there is only essentially one Spirit- God&rsquo;s, Christ&rsquo;s, the believer&rsquo;s, are all the same spirit. Paul uses the same idea in Rom. 9:1, where he asserts that his conscience and he may as well have said his spirit, for the idea of essential, inner personality is the same bears joint witness s.w. 8:16 with the Holy Spirit. God&rsquo;s personality, His Spirit, is congruent with the person who has a spirit / heart for God. This meeting of minds between God and the believer is what confirms to us that we really are His children. Being His beloved children isn&rsquo;t dependent upon our moral perfection- we must keep remembering that we are reading the words here in their context as the extension of what Paul was saying throughout Romans 7:15-25.</p><p>Paul here reverts to the image he used in chapter 3, of us for a moment acting as the judge (3:4), deciding whether God&rsquo;s promises and claims about us are in fact true, or lies. Our own spirit and God&rsquo;s Spirit bear legal witness- to whom? To us as the judges. They both testify, that really we are the children of God. Not only is the spirit of Christ, His righteousness, counted as ours; but God&rsquo;s spirit / mind really is ours in experienced reality. Thus we are joint witnesses in the box together, and v. 17 will develop this theme- joint heirs, joint sufferers, and thus jointly glorified together. All because of our connection with Him, we are counted as Him. Note how Paul seems to be aware of the huge doubt there would be about these things in the hearts of the baptized believers to whom he writes; and such doubt is with us today. Hence the enormous relevance and power of what he writes, and the need he felt to appeal to detailed intellectual argument in order to prove his point time and again.&nbsp;<br />Imputed righteousness is given us on the basis of our faith. This means that insofar as we can believe all this is true, so it will be. In this sense &ldquo;The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God&rdquo; (Rom 8:16). We are His dear children (Eph. 5:1), the pride and joy of Almighty God, counted as wonderful and righteous by Him. Personal Bible reading and reflection are so important; for there the individual finds the essence of God&rsquo;s will and strives to make it his or her very own. This is how we can come to understand Rom. 8:16, which says that in prayer, God&rsquo;s Spirit bears witness with our spirit that is within us. Thus even although &ldquo;we do not know how to pray for as we ought, the Spirit himself intercedes for us&rdquo; (Rom. 8:26). The Spirit of the Father and Son speaks in us when we pray (Rom. 8:15), if our will / spirit is theirs. To put this in more technical but I think very telling terms: &ldquo;The subject-object scheme of &lsquo;talking to somebody&rsquo; is transcended; He who speaks through us is he who is spoken to&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s perhaps the thought behind Mt. 10:20: &ldquo;It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you&rdquo;. This is why Paul can thank God that he finds himself praying constantly for Timothy (2 Tim. 1:3)- because he recognizes that not only can we influence God by our prayers, bur He influences us in what we pray for.</p>