Convicted By The Spirit
John 16:5-15
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 16:7-10 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. And 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; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Again today we hear Jesus speaking to His disciples on the night of that very first Maundy Thursday. And again this week we hear Him state that He will be departing from them. And it is not so much His crucifixion and death that He is speaking about when He says He is departing, but His ascension, which would take place 40 days after He had risen from the dead. As He said: “But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.”
Indeed, apart from Christ, all that mankind can hope for is sorrow – sorrow over being separated from God, sorrow over sins that attack us from without and from within, and sorrow over death and decay. The disciples may not have been thinking about these things exactly, but this is the reality that separation from Christ, who alone delivers the grace of God, who alone saves, means.
The disciples, were, of course, reacting with sorrow because of their personal ties with Jesus. I suspect all of us would react the same way had we been in their sandals. We would react the same way if we heard that our Lord whom we had followed for three years, whom we had seen work miraculous things, who had taught us and others about God and His kingdom, whom we believed to be the Messiah and Son of God, spoke of departing.
And, of course, Jesus saw the sorrow in the disciples’ hearts. He understood exactly what they were feeling and thinking. But He wanted them to know and understand something else when He said to them: “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.” Jesus wanted His disciples to know that His departure was to be a good thing. They would not understand it to be a good thing at the time, but they would certainly discover later on that Jesus was right. For after His departure, the Helper, who is the Holy Spirit, was going to come to them. Jesus said: “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”
From the time of Jesus’ Baptism, the Holy Spirit had been with the disciples, but He had been attendant upon Jesus and was active primarily in the preaching and acts of Jesus. Yes, our Lord had, for a time, sent His disciples forth with the power of the Spirit upon them, and they had preached and worked miracles; but that was only temporary. The Spirit’s work was centered in Jesus Himself, not in them. After all, the work of the Spirit is always and only to point to Jesus, to gather people to Jesus, and to give to people that which Jesus has accomplished: His salvation, His life, His holiness, His status before God, and His inheritance. Jesus said this about the Spirit: “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is mine and declare it to you.” In that declaration, Jesus is actually present and gives His gifts.
And soon, Jesus said to the disciples, the Spirit, would come to them. And through them Jesus will be declared not just in Palestine where He was physically present; but having ascended into heaven, He would be declared by the Spirit through the apostles’ preaching throughout the whole world. He, the Spirit, would be attendant upon them as He had been attendant upon Jesus Himself, so that they would do the miraculous works of Jesus, and would preach as Jesus gave them to preach, receiving such works and words from the Spirit, who received them from Christ, who received them from the Father. As Jesus said, “However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak… He will take of what is mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine…”
And just what will the Spirit do through this preaching of Christ’s Word? According to Jesus, the Spirit will convict: “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment…”
Now what does it mean to convict someone of something? We usually hear this term in the court room, where a criminal is convicted of his or her crimes, meaning that he or she is proven to have done something against the law, and is, in fact, a criminal. In Greek the word for “convict” means to expose, to show to be guilty. So, this is the Spirit’s work – to expose and to show that the world and all those who dwell in it is guilty in regard to sin, in regard to righteousness, and in regard to judgment.
And the Spirit does all of this through the Word of Jesus. Convicting or declaring or showing someone to be guilty involves words. The words do the job of driving home the evidence. And here the Spirit’s conviction of someone is unlike that of another person. We can only merely attempt to describe and reveal what already is. The Spirit, however, creates that which He declares to be in this conviction.
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This of course, is what God intends to do through the Law: to put us to death, or, as the Lutheran Confessions teach so well, the Law kills, condemns, and destroys. We must die to ourselves; we must give up any illusions of righteousness in ourselves if we are to receive the salvation of Christ. We cannot hang on to nor can we point to any of our own works and expect God to love us a forgive us on account of them. For the natural man, Paul says (Romans 8), is “enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh [meaning the natural man without faith in Christ] cannot please God.” Our works amount to nothing before God. Our old man must be killed and a new man brought to life.
And this also is done by the conviction of the Spirit. For Jesus says the Spirit will also convict of righteousness. Again, the encounter with Christ’s Word is not only intended to kill, but to make alive. Through the Word, specifically through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection for all mankind, the Holy Spirit gives faith in Christ. And by God-given faith in Christ’s death which has paid the penalty for all sins, He declares us sinners to be righteous. Jesus took on our sins. Now He, through the Spirit, gives us His righteousness.
Again, by the Word, the Spirit creates something that was not there and makes it so. This is the power of the Gospel. In our Epistle this morning we heard James say, “Of His own will He [the Father] brought us forth by the word of truth.” That Word, through baptism and through preaching, gives life where before there was no life.
In and of our sinful nature, we were dead in our transgressions and sins. In and of our sinful nature we were blind to the things of God. In and of our sinful nature we were enemies of God. But God in Christ took our sins upon Himself on the tree of the cross. He bore the full divine punishment for all of our sins, and then He died, paying the divine price for our sins. And through the Gospel preached and the Sacraments rightly delivered, we receive forgiveness, life, salvation, and the strength to continue living our lives to the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.
Finally, through the Word of Christ, the Spirit convicts the world of judgment. And a judgment, as you know, can be either favorable or unfavorable toward a person. In this case, it all depends on where a person stands in relation to the Word of Christ. Do you close your ears to it and reject it, or do you believe and receive it? That is the basis of the judgment. Jesus said in John 12 (47-48): “And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him – the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.”
Dear friends, in every encounter with the Word of Christ, the Spirit is always active; He is doing His work of convicting us. And there is no escaping this conviction. The question for us is not whether the Word of Christ is effective, for it always affects something in us. The question is, do we receive it with faith or do we reject it in unbelief? If we reject it, then we invite God’s judgment against us and receive that judgment by the Spirit’s power. If, however we receive it in faith and believe, then the Spirit judges us righteous in Christ, just as He has declared us to be according to the Gospel.
And so, you see, it was to the Church’s advantage that Christ go away. For through the Word of Jesus and the work of the Spirit in that Word, God works our salvation. He kills us with His Law, showing us our sins and our inability to merit heaven or approach His majesty. And He gives us Christ who has paid for our sins completely and by His grace alone makes us worthy to enter heaven and dwell before the face of God. We are not judged on the basis of our works, but on the basis of God-given faith.
Hear again the words of James in today’s Epistle: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” Here are the marks of the Christian: they are swift to hear. They have open ears to the Word of Christ and seek out that word. As a result, they are slow to speak, not trusting in their own ideas, philosophies or opinions, but holding firm to the Word of Christ.
They are also not swift to judge, knowing that they themselves escape judgment only by Christ’s grace. Therefore, they seek His grace even more, receiving again and again the Word that God implants which both kills the old sinner, and brings life to the new man made in the image of Christ.
So let us also be swift to hear God’s Word, to seek out His grace, and to dine at His table. For here, in the Divine Service by the power of the Spirit, Christ comes to us with all His gifts. We receive His Absolution from the pastor as from Christ Himself, we remember our Baptism in the Invocation and Benediction, we receive into our ears the saving Gospel preached, and we receive into our mouths Christ’s real body and blood for forgiveness and strength.
Here in the Divine Service and by the power of the Spirit we are given all that Christ has received from the Father: forgiveness of our sins, new life, salvation, sonship, aa place at the heavenly feast. Thanks be to our Lord Jesus Christ for His sending of the Spirit to us, that we may receive all of this and be declared and judged righteous, forgiven, and free.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
