The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
John 16:5-15
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
John 16:7 (Jesus said) “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.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… In today’s Gospel Jesus is preparing His disciples for the fact that He will soon be leaving them and ascending into heaven. In a short time, He will no longer be with them visibly. As we make our way through this Easter season, we also are preparing to observe the Ascension of our Lord in eleven days. We are living in the age of the Ascension, when Jesus is no longer visibly present on earth as He was for 33 years. Therefore, it is most fitting that we too give our careful attention to these words of our Lord.
Jesus tells His disciples that He is going away to the Father who sent Him. When He says this, the disciples are sad. They had been with Him and followed Him for three years, and now all that was going to change; and they did not want it to change. They are convinced that things are better just the way they are: “Don’t leave us, Lord! Why do you have to go?”
But the apostles’ sorrow is also our own, for sometimes we think we would be better Christians if only we were alive back then rather than now. That same sorrow arises within us when we think that we would be stronger Christians if only we had Jesus walking around in our life like the apostles did – to see His face and hear His voice firsthand. But the truth is that Christ’s departure was to the apostles’ benefit, and it is to your benefit, too. That, in essence, is what Jesus says in today’s Gospel.
He declares, “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.” It is to your benefit that Christ ascends to the Father. You are better off because of it – not only because Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father ruling over all things for the sake of His church, not only because He is praying for you before the Father’s throne, not only because he is preparing a glorious place for you in heaven – you are also better off because had He not ascended the Holy Spirit would not have been sent to you.
So why is that better? It is better because the Holy Spirit brings to you and to the church in every land the special, saving presence of Christ. No longer is the risen and ascended Jesus present in only one place, as He was before His resurrection. Now Jesus fills all things in heaven and on earth and is specifically present for His people wherever they are gathered in His name. By the working of the Holy Spirit Jesus is fully there for you as true God and true man in His Word and in His Sacraments.
It is indeed to the church’s advantage that Jesus depart visibly and send His Holy Spirit. For now, Jesus does not have just one voice but thousands of voices as He speaks through His faithful preachers throughout the world. The risen Jesus is present and accessible throughout the world, wherever the Holy Spirit is ministering His words and His gifts, giving His eternal life to His people.
This is what Jesus meant when He said, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” Christ comes to you by sending you His Spirit to work through His Word and His gifts. Just as God the Father made Himself known to mankind through the sending of His Son, so now God the Son makes Himself known to you through the sending of the Holy Spirit, who, as we confess in the Creed, “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Jesus said that the one who sees Him sees the Father. And now Jesus says that the one who hears the Spirit hears Him, for they are three in one, the Holy Trinity. Jesus comes to you and is present with you by the Holy Spirit.
Christ calls the Holy Spirit “the Helper.” That word can also be rendered as “Counselor” or “Comforter” or “Advocate.” Literally, it means “one called alongside to help.” That is what the Holy Spirit does. He is the third person of the Trinity who in your baptism was called alongside you to be with you and in you on your journey to your heavenly home. On the way there, He counsels you with the wisdom of the Scriptures, He comforts you with the forgiveness and the life of Christ, He speaks the saving Word of God to you, and then, through that Word, brings your prayers to the throne of heaven. Truly, the Holy Spirit is your Helper.
Jesus speaks more about what the Holy Spirit will do when He comes. He says, “When (the Helper) has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”
First, the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. This is a part of the Spirit’s work that most people don’t like to think about. For especially today, the world does not like to think of much of anything as being sinful, unless it is something really extreme. Sinful mankind likes to believe that morality is relative, something that people can make up for themselves; they can decide for themselves what is right and wrong. But then the Spirit comes, and through the Word He calls sin what it is; He exposes our rebellious hearts and the evil we have become so adept at covering up and explaining away. He lays your soul bare before God and shows you that you cannot save yourself. You are at the mercy of a just and holy God. This is the first way that the Helper helps you – by bringing you to realize and admit the full extent of your sin.
And notice what Jesus identifies as the root of all sin: unbelief – a lack of faith and trust in Him. That is the ultimate sin: trusting in yourself, trusting in your own goodness, your own wisdom, your own possessions, your own abilities, your own works. The Scriptures say, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” That means that even the most upright, clean-cut, nicest person in the world who does not have faith in Christ is under God’s judgment. All his good works are like filthy rags before God. Only faith in Christ and the good works which flow from it are pleasing to God and are received by Him.
And faith is nothing else than to rely on Christ and His Word, to stake your life and eternity on His good works, His wisdom. The true worship of God is the faith which clings to Christ alone to be saved, a faith which seeks out the blessings His Holy Spirit gives. Jesus said in John 3, “He who believes in the Son [of God] has everlasting life; and he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
Second, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness; He will make true righteousness known. And Jesus says that the Spirit will do that “because I go to My Father and you see Me no more.” That is a very clear signal as to where true righteousness may be found. Usually, righteousness is thought of as a quality within a person, that a good and moral person is more righteous than others. But the Spirit says in the Scriptures, “No one is righteous; no, not even one” (Rom. 3:11). True righteousness, then, is not to be found in any ordinary person but in Christ alone. The source of your righteousness is He who is seated at the right hand of the Father.
That is why St. Paul declares, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. . . For in it the righteousness of God is revealed” (Rom. 1:16). It is through the Gospel that the Spirit reveals and gives to you Christ’s righteousness. He speaks His righteousness into your ears so that God the Father no longer sees your unrighteousness but only the holiness of His Son. Jesus gave up His glory as God and descended to this earth in order that He, who is entirely without sin, might take your sin upon Himself and utterly destroy it in His body on the cross. By His victory over sin and death on the third day He earned unlimited righteousness for all people who, by God-given faith, trust and believe in Him. Christ has now ascended on high to pour out that righteousness on His people by His Word and Spirit.
Therefore, when you believe in Christ, your sin is exchanged for His holiness; you are made right with God. You do not have a righteousness of your own from inside of you, but that which is through faith in Christ from outside of you.
And third, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment. However, it is not YOUR judgment that He makes known but the judgment of the devil. For Jesus declares in v. 11 of our text, “The ruler of this world is judged.” The ruler of the world in its fallen state is Satan. He governs the world with lies and deception which seek to turn you away from the ways of God. He leads the world to hate and cause trouble for God’s faithful people. He seeks to lure you away from Christ and into false religion and artificial spirituality.
But although Satan is the prince of this world, his fall from power has already been secured. For it is written, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil, (I John 3:8). Jesus took on your flesh, your human nature, in order to release you from Satan’s power. He defeated the devil in the wilderness for you by fighting off all his temptations. And then, in a marvelous turning of the tables, Jesus used a device of the powers of darkness – namely death – to crush Satan’s head and bring down his kingdom. The resurrected Christ has now opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Therefore, although the devil may still buzz about like a wasp trying to frighten you and take away your faith, be assured that his doom is certain and that in the end he cannot cause you any harm. For Christ has taken away the sting of death and the devil, and has given you to share in the abundance of His divine life. Believe these words of Christ and know that they are true: “The ruler of this world is judged.”
All of this, dear fellow redeemed, is how the Spirit brings glory to Jesus, by leading you into the truth of sin and the truth of the righteousness of Christ and the truth of His judgment of Satan. The Holy Spirit takes the eternal gifts of Christ and declares and delivers them to you, in order that they may become your own. The Helper preaches into you Christ’s forgiveness and life and salvation, that you may never be separated from your Lord and His love.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
