5-3-26 Cantate

Bible Text: St John 16:5–15 | Preacher: Rev. Andrew Richard

The time draws near for Jesus to depart to His Father.  Ascension is in eleven days, at which time Jesus finishes His course and returns to His Father.  It is good that Jesus ascended into heaven.  When Jesus ascended into heaven He brought human flesh before the Father’s throne, and God and man were face to face as at the beginning.  When the Father received His Son into heaven, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2, “he raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  The Ascension of Jesus is His pledge to us that we will live eternally with God in our glorified human bodies.

Therefore it is a good thing that Jesus departed to His Father.  But He mentions another benefit of His Ascension in today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus says to His disciples, “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.”  This Helper is the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.  If Jesus did not ascend, we would not have the Holy Spirit.

It is difficult to imagine what the Church would be like without the Holy Spirit.  I suppose, first of all, there wouldn’t be a Church without the Holy Spirit.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  If the Holy Spirit had not come, no one would confess that Jesus is Lord, and thus the Church wouldn’t even exist.  Jesus also promised that the Holy Spirit would “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”  We’ll examine exactly what this means in just a minute, but for now notice that the Holy Spirit does the work of convicting and convincing.  If the Holy Spirit were not here, at work through the Word of Christ, then the only way to make a Christian would be by human persuasion, which is insufficient for the task and there wouldn’t be any Christians.

Furthermore, Jesus promised His apostles that the Holy Spirit “will guide you in all the truth… declare to you the things that are to come… take what is Mine and declare it to you,” and as Jesus says elsewhere, “bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”  If Jesus had not fulfilled this promise and sent the Holy Spirit, the apostles would not fully know the truth, would not know the future of the Church, would not understand the Word of Jesus, and would not remember what Jesus had taught.  If the apostles set out to write the New Testament under those conditions, we would have a murky book of half-truths, misunderstandings, and false witness.  In other words, without the Holy Spirit, the Bible wouldn’t be much better than the Koran or the Book of Mormon.

But thanks be to God, Jesus has ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit!  Now people do confess that Jesus is Lord, and there is a Church, and people become Christians by the power of God, and the apostles have faithfully recorded the full truth and the words and works of Jesus, and we have the New Testament.  “It is to your advantage that I go away,” Jesus said, “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.”  And now we understand what He meant.

Now in today’s passage Jesus talks specifically about a certain work of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit will convict the world.  “Convict” does not mean “condemn.”  The Holy Spirit desires people to be saved, not condemned.  When the Holy Spirit convicts, he gives a knowledge of the truth that cuts to the heart.  When the Holy Spirit convicts, his conviction leads men to confess, “I have been wrong, and the Lord is right.”  When the Holy Spirit convicts, he does so with the goal of creating faith in Christ.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit will convict the world, which refers to the unbelieving inhabitants of the earth, as Jesus says, “they do not believe in Me.”  Yet we Christians also continue to benefit from this convicting work of the Holy Spirit, because our sinful nature constantly needs to hear the same things the world does.  We don’t need to be constantly reconverted, as if we slip back and forth between being saved and not being saved.  But we do constantly need to be brought to repentance, and this the Holy Spirit continues to do as He convicts.

The Holy Spirit convicts concerning three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment.  We’ll take these in turn.  First, the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin.  The world believes that there is such thing as sin, that is, certain actions that are out of line, crimes and offenses worthy of punishment.  The world even properly understands what some actual sins are.  Paul writes about this in Romans 2, “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”  God’s law is written on the human heart, and thus by nature we have a general knowledge of what is sin and what isn’t.

Yet, when we suffered corruption because of our fall into sin, that law of God written on the heart became blurred.  It’s as if original sin were a sort of acid that corroded the imprint of God’s law on our hearts.  So everyone knows that murder is a sin.  Yet abortion and euthanasia are tolerated, and even have very vocal activists in our society.  Many sins against the Sixth Commandment are no longer called sins in America.  While everyone acknowledges the value of being content with what one has, advertisers openly and publicly stir people up to covetousness.  The sinful heart cannot ever rid itself of God’s law.  But suffice it to say, God’s law, as it stands written on the human heart, has become rather muddled.

We need to be told what the law of God is, since we no longer know it perfectly by nature.  We need the Holy Spirit to come along with commandments that are perfectly written, in stone, and re-imprint the law of God in our hearts through the external preaching of the Word.  When the Holy Spirit does this, He not only more clearly defines the Fifth Commandment, or the Sixth Commandment, or the Ninth and Tenth Commandments.  But Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts “concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.”  When the Holy Spirit convicts of sin He makes us know that the chief and root of all sin is unbelief.

Now this is not something that we could figure out by nature.  Man can figure out that there is a God, or gods, and that this God is to be worshiped.  But man cannot figure out by himself that Jesus is God, and that believing in Jesus is the only way to be saved, and that not believing in Jesus is the gravest sin.  Left to our own devices, we are quick to believe in ourselves and trust ourselves, or trust any number of other things that can’t save us, whether money or power or fame or luck.  But when the Holy Spirit convicts, He says, “Stop believing in all these things that don’t save you.  That is a false faith.  Repent; you have not trusted the One who is truly trustworthy.  Trust in Jesus.  That’s a right and proper faith.”

This is how the Holy Spirit convicts concerning sin.  Second, the Holy Spirit convicts concerning righteousness.  The world has its own ideas about righteousness, same as it has its own ideas about sin.  In the world’s eyes, whatever it does is righteous, even when it commits abominations in God’s sight.  When the Holy Spirit convicts concerning righteousness, He teaches us the truth of Isaiah 64, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”  When the Holy Spirit convicts there is no room left for self-righteousness, because the Holy Spirit points to a righteousness that is not from ourselves.

Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict “concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.”  Jesus spoke these words at the Last Supper, and what follows the Last Supper is Jesus’ departure to the Father.  His going to the Father is His journey to be crucified, to rise from the dead, and finally to ascend into heaven.  This going of Christ―His death, resurrection, and ascension―is true righteousness.  By His death Jesus blotted out our unrighteousness with His blood, by His resurrection He lives to declare us righteous with His perfect righteousness, and by His ascension He proves that His saving work has made us acceptable and righteous in the sight of God.  When the Holy Spirit convicts us concerning righteousness, He says, “You have no righteousness of your own.  You cannot make yourself acceptable to God.  But Jesus is righteous, and in His grace He counts His righteousness as yours.  He has clothed you with Himself, and now the Father in heaven sees you as holy and righteous and good for the sake of His Son.”

And third, the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning judgment.  Judgment here means condemnation, being sentenced to punishment and death.  Again, the world thinks it has a handle on this, just as it presumes to know about sin and righteousness.  The world thinks that it has the power of judgment, and attempted exercising this power in condemning Christ to death.  Yet the world does not have the authority of judgment.  The Father raised Jesus from the dead, showing that the world’s verdict was false and illegitimate.  Jesus is the one who has the power and authority of judgment.  He says in John 5, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.”

And what does the Son of God do with His judgment?  He says in John 12, during Holy Week, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.”  As much as the world thought it was condemning Jesus when it crucified Him, Jesus was the one at work on the cross condemning the devil and casting him out.  And thus Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world “concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”  Jesus is not condemned, but the devil is.  This means, on the one hand, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” as it says in Romans 8.  And on the other hand this means that our adversary the devil is condemned.  He has been forever found to be in the wrong, and Jesus has sentenced him accordingly.  And so the Holy Spirit preaches, “The devil is condemned, so do not go along with him in the world.  But in Christ there is no condemnation.  The devil may hurl his accusations, but nothing is right, and nothing will stick.  You are innocent in Christ, and the devil is guilty.  Rejoice and be glad in the forgiveness of sins!”