John 16:5-15
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
On the night in which our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed He tells His disciples He is going away. Naturally, this news saddens the disciples, for they had spent the last three years of their lives travelling with Jesus, listening to Jesus, and learning from Jesus. Jesus answers their sorrow. He says, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.” Jesus goes to His Father, and the apostles will go into all the world, to preach the gospel of Christ. For that they will need the Helper. The word Jesus uses is paraklētos. A paraclete is someone who is called to be on your side, to be your advocate, who comforts and guides you. The Helper whom Christ will send is not a created helper, but the Spirit of truth, God the Holy Spirit.
How will He help them? “He will guide them into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell them things to come.” God the Holy Spirit will inspire these men’s preaching by giving them Christ’s words to speak, so that they speak the very words of God to men. The Holy Spirit will glorify Christ in this way, by taking the things of Christ—which are the things of the Father—and giving them to the apostles, so that the apostles will always have the things of Christ, the words of Christ, the teaching of Christ, to preach to men. They are to have no doubt that what they are preaching is God’s Word. Because Christ sends them the Helper, the Spirit of truth to takes the things of Jesus and give it to them, they are to have no doubt that their preaching pleases God.
They’ll need that comfort because the work the Holy Spirit will do through them is the work of convicting, or rebuking, the world. When the Helper has come, Jesus says, “He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” With these words Jesus shows us that the world and all that is in it, has the wrong idea about sin, righteousness, and judgment. If the gospel of Christ is to take effect in people’s hearts, the Spirit of truth must first open their eyes so that they everything world and their own flesh teaches them about these three things is false.
What does it mean that He will convict the world of sin? Jesus says, “Of sin, because they do not believe in Me.” Typically, the world thinks of sin as only the outward act. The world disapproves of insurrection, murder, adultery, theft, and slander. It doesn’t acknowledge that the inward desire to rebel or speak ill of others is sin. The world is incapable of admitting that the inward lust to commit adultery or take what belongs to someone else, is sin and should be corrected. These are natural impulses, the world says, and if a person doesn’t act on them and fulfill them, they’re still good people. But the Helper—the Spirit of truth—will convict the world for this lie. The inner desire is sin, and it all comes from one source: unbelief. The world does not believe in Christ. That’s why the world can go about setting up sliding scales of sinfulness based on human convention. Sin is not defined by what God says, but by what man says. And as you well know, man can change his mind, so that if enough people agree that what was previously viewed as sinful is no longer sinful, then what they previously viewed as sin, they now come to celebrate. The Spirit of Truth rebukes the world’s lies and condemns it for the chief sin, the fountain of all actual sins: unbelief. Because the world refuses to believe in Christ and hear His word, the world cannot do anything but sin.
What does it mean that He will convict the world of righteousness? Jesus says, “Of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more.” This is a cryptic saying. But when we consider that “going to the Father” is Christ completing His work and ascending, it becomes a bit clearer. Christ, by His perfect life and His innocent suffering and death earned perfect righteousness, and then goes back to the Father. Christ’s work was to live the perfectly under God’s law so that He might redeem those who are under the law. He shows us what true righteousness is. It is to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22.37 ,39). Since we cannot do this by our own natural powers, since they are tainted with sin, Christ does this for us, so that who put their trust in Him, God counts as righteous with the righteousness of Christ.
The world has an altogether different opinion about what righteousness is. The world has always thought of righteousness as doing righteous things. Until recently decades, the righteous things the world praised happened, for the most part, to coincide with God’s moral law: Be a good person and treat others with respect. But in recent years, the righteous deeds the world praises are entirely different. In fact, it’s not even deeds so much as it is having the right opinion or this or that social or political issue. People judge the righteousness of others based on whether the support abortion, illegal immigration, homosexuality, and transgenderism, endless wars, and the like. The world has its sinful, godless agenda, and those who speak well of that agenda—even if they don’t lift a finger to advance it—are praised as righteous, good, and God-pleasing. Self-righteousness—based on God’s law or on man’s opinions—is the righteous of the world that the Helper rebukes as false and a lie.
What does it mean that He will convict the world of judgment? “Of judgment,” Jesus says, “Because the ruler of this world is judged.” The ruler of this world is the devil. He rules, not by right but because he usurped God’s rule by taking humanity captive through sin. The ruler of this world pronounces judgment on the things of God—the things of Jesus—calling the things of Jesus sinful, hateful, and unloving, while calling his things—sin and self-righteousness—good, empowering, and loving. The world—with its ruler—makes the wrong judgment and can only make the wrong judgment because both are enmity with God. The Holy Spirit rebukes the devil and the world’s judgment as false and deceptive. The Spirit of truth shows the world that it is driven by the spirit of error, and for its unbelief, false righteousness, and satanic judgments, must be convicted.
The apostles would need the Helper, the Spirit of truth, to preach the very Word of God to the world, to write the New Testament scriptures by the Spirit’s inspiration, and to stand firm under the world’s hatred at being rebuked. He promised them, “If I depart, I will send Him to you.” He fulfilled His promise on Pentecost, ten days after He went to the Father. The Holy Spirit worked in men’s hearts through the apostolic witness and He continues to work in your hearts, and the hearts of all believers, through the preaching they left behind in their written witness. The Holy Spirit still works to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and ungodly judgments because He can only comfort those who have been convicted. He can only reconcile those who repent at His rebuke.
How does He comfort? How does He reconcile? By taking of what is Jesus’s and announcing it to you: Jesus’ perfect righteousness, Jesus’ atoning death for the sins of the world, Jesus’ having gone to the Father to fill all things and rule all things for the benefit of His Church—those who believe in Him. We are in the world, no longer of the world, because we have been baptized and believe. But because the sinful flesh remains in us, we still, at times, believe the world’s lies and submit to its unbelief, self-righteousness, and false judgments. And when we do, the Holy Spirit convicts us of the unbelief, the self-righteousness, and the desire to agree with the world’s judgments. By this He shows us His love, as well as the love of the Father and the Son, for the Triune God does not want us to be swept away with unbelievers, but that He wants to convict us so that He might comfort us with the all the blessings Jesus has earned for us. And so that we remain in this comfort, and fight against the world and our flesh’s unbelief, false righteousness, and unjust judgments, Christ gives us the Helper to help us live in godliness. The Spirit—the paraclete—is sent to you for your help, for your comfort, and to guide you, not with world’s things, not even with His own, but with the things of Jesus. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds Christ Jesus. Amen.
