John 16.5-15
Cantate, the 4th Sunday after Easter
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
On the night in which Jesus was betrayed, He speaks to His disciples about His going to the Father, His suffering, death, and burial. In today’s gospel lesson Jesus encourages His disciples’ hearts by telling them it is a good thing for them if He departs and goes to the Father. “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 the Father so that He might send this Helper to them. The Helper whom He promises to send is another person—not a human person—but the third person of the Godhead, God the Holy Spirit. But He doesn’t call Him that now. He calls Him, in Greek, the παράκλητος. Our translation renders the word “Helper,” which is a fine translation. παράκλητος means “one who is called to someone’s aid.” It can be rendered “Comforter” or “Intercessor.” It can also mean “Advocate,” as in a legal advocate, what you and I would call an attorney. With these words, Jesus promises to send His Holy Spirit to the disciples who will help them, comfort them, come to their aid, as well as prosecute the world.
Jesus tells them of the Spirit’s prosecuting work first. He says, “When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” What does this mean? It means the Holy Spirit will rebuke and reprove the world about these things through the apostles’ preaching. The world needs to be rebuked because the world’s opinion about concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment is wrong, dead wrong, completely backwards.
The world judges acts like murder and theft, adultery and slander as wrong, at least in most cases. That’s because everyone has God’s law written on their heart. Every knows within themself that there is right and wrong and good and evil, it’s just that sin has obscured God’s law in their heart and darkened their conscience. And because the conscience of mankind is darkened and that the knowledge of God’s law obscured, the world can only render judgment about matters of the second table of the law. The world can—unless it chooses to turn a blind eye—rebuke sinful behaviors that are harmful to others. But the world cannot rebuke anyone as to the chief sin.
Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin “Because they do not believe in Me.” The world thinks that belief in Christ is a personal option at best and ridiculous at worst. It scoffs at the idea that Christ is the eternal Son of God who has come into the world. The world despises Christ, thinks little of Him, so little, in fact, that it crucifies Him. But the Holy Spirit, when He comes, will convict the world of its unbelief—its lack of faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit has a far keener eye than any human judge. He sees the heart of man and that unbelief is the fount and source of all the sins which it can see and judge, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies (Mt 15:19). The Holy Spirit convicts the world that the carnal mind—the mind that is not renewed by faith in Christ—is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be, as St. Paul writes in Romans 8:7.
The Holy Spirit will also convict the world “Of righteousness,” Jesus says, “Because I go to My Father and you see Me no more.” This seems cryptic until we remember what Jesus means by His going to the Father. It means His suffering and death, which He endures willfully to make satisfaction for the sins of the world. This, Jesus says, is true righteousness because in His innocent, suffering and death He earns perfect remission for all sins and perfect righteousness, so that all who believe in Him receive the forgiveness of all of their sins and are counted righteous with the perfect righteousness of Jesus.
The world does not see Jesus’ “going to the Father” as righteousness. The world sees only the outward life. The world judges by what it sees, and it judges those who are relatively good people as righteous. Since sin has obscured God’s law in peoples’ hearts and darkened their consciences, they don’t even imagine people rise to a level of morality above the average are righteous, they believe everyone who is average is righteous by their own virtue, or the virtue they signal on social media. The world’s view of righteousness is dead wrong. It’s satanic, for Scripture says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Ro 3:23). The only true righteousness is Jesus’ going to the Father to acquire perfect righteousness and apply to those who believe in Him through His word and through His sacraments.
Finally, the Spirit will convict the world of judgment. The world at denies there will be a final judgment of the living and the dead. It teaches everyone who dies will be happy and at peace, if it teaches anything all past death. Others, with their knowledge of God darkened and obscured, imagine a judgment, but only for the really bad people, people worse than themselves. Because the world refuses to believe that its unbelief is sin, and that righteousness is faith in Christ, the world has to come up with an alternative scheme for judgment. But Christ tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment, “because the ruler of this world is judged.” The ruler of this world is Satan. He is not the ruler by right, but by usurpation. Yet the apostles will convict the world that its ruler, the one from whom it takes it’s cues and learns its doctrine, is judged. And if the ruler of the world is judged, the entire sinful kingdom of this world—with its priorities and ways of thinking, especially about spiritual things—is judged along with him. When the Helper comes, He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and He will do so through the apostles.
This is a lot for the disciples to take as Jesus tells them He’s leaving them. He still had many things to say to them. He would teach the disciples those things through the Holy Spirit. “When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth.” After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit would guide the apostles in remembering the words of Jesus, understanding the Old Testament prophecies about Him, and even inspire them to write the New Testament. All this guidance wasn’t for things ancillary or other than Christ had taught them already, for “He will glorified Me,” Jesus says, “for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” The Spirit would help them in this way so that they might convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
The Holy Spirit still does this. He guides His Christians into all truth. He doesn’t speak directly to you, in your heart or intuition. Nor does He lead the church into new doctrines which Christ didn’t give. That is the spirit of antichrist, which invents new teachings and tries to pass them off as if they were Christ’s. No, the Holy Spirit guides you into all truth by the teaching of the apostles, written in pages of the New Testament and preached to you. He guides you into all truth by convicting you of sin, righteousness, and judgment. You need this because you still have the sinful flesh in this life with its lusts and evil desires. Unbelief still tempts you heart as often as it tempts you to sin. The Holy Spirit convicts you of sin and the unbelief of the flesh so that He might then lead you further to the truth about righteousness, that God forgives the sins of all who repent and clothes them with Christ’s perfect righteousness, the righteousness Christ earned by going to the Father. He leads you into the truth that the ruler of this world is judged! Although the devil tempts, his kingdom flexes its influence, and the world persecutes you, you have nothing to fear. The devil is judged already. He can harm you none because you stand in Christ’s kingdom, covered in Christ’s righteousness. The Holy Spirit continues this work in you to keep you in Christ’s kingdom, lest the devil, the world, and your own flesh lure you back to the reign of the ruler of this world. The Holy Spirit continues this work in you so that you might be convicted, that you might be helped, that you might be comforted, not once, but each day. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
