It Starts Small

 ⁸ When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: ⁹ About sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; ¹¹ and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
¹² “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.

John 18:8-15

As we continue in our journey through scripture, today we rest upon these scriptures. Jesus is giving His final teaching to His disciples. He announces that another is coming after Him. That He is sending us the Spirit of Truth. What is Jesus revealing to us?

John 16:8-11 The Spirit of Truth Convicts

Jesus says, the Spirit of Truth will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment. This leads us to evaluate, what do we use to convict us of wrong? Is it the world or the Holy Spirit? Do we rely on the world’s standard of moral right and wrong, or do we rely on the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit convicts us from the Word of God. When we read the Word of God we are given the truth about sin and what it means to practice sin. When we sin, the Holy Spirit convicts our hearts that we have done wrong.

The Greek word used here is elegchō and it means to convict, refute, confute, to find fault with, correct, by deed to chasten or correct.

The Holy Spirit shows that all people are guilty. No one will look for salvation from sin until they are convicted they are a sinner. Jesus says that the Advocate will come and reveal and convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgement.

The Holy Spirit convicts the sinner that he is a sinner. God has to teach us what sin is. Without God revealing sin, we would never know what God’s law is or that we have violated His law. Sin is not just law breaking. In verse 9, Jesus tells us that sin comes from unbelief. Jesus gives us this picture: God sent Jesus into darkness, calling for reconciliation to the Father and then declares the cost of reconciliation. But we are unwilling to respond to God’s love. The problem was clearly stated in John 3:19 where the verdict was the decree:

This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

John 3:19

This is the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. Show the world that they are in the darkness and guilty regarding their actions. People have rejected Jesus, loving the darkness rather than believe in Jesus.

Next, the Spirit will convict the world in regard to righteousness. God has to teach us that our righteousness is totally insufficient. It is hard for people to recognize that our righteousness amounts to nothing but dirty rags before God because we do not possess righteousness within ourselves. We do not have good works and right living apart from conforming to the will of God. Paul tells us:

What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin,

Romans 3:9

Our goodness is nothing when referenced to the depths of our sins. Jesus declared this truth earlier in this gospel in John.

The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

John 6:63

 We must be convicted of the gravity of our sins and see the complete insufficiency of our actions before God. The standard of righteousness is God, not ourselves. We want to compare our righteousness to other people for then we think we are fairly righteous people. But we must compare our righteousness to the righteousness of God and then we will see the infinite gap between us and God. Then we can see how woefully short our actions measure up to God. The work of the Spirit is to show us that our righteousness is totally insufficient.

Next, the Spirit will convict the world in regard to judgment. The world’s judgments are profoundly wrong and morally perverse. Our judgments, values, and discernments are all based on the wrong standard. We make false evaluations all the time. The world defines life by all the wrong things. We try to find importance and value and pass judgments based on wealth, appearances, status, standard of living, success, career, and so many other things. Paul plainly declared that we are corrupted by deceitful desires and darkened in our understand and must be renewed in the mind and put on the new self (Ephesians 4:18-23). God is the standard for judgment. Satan is already condemned for his false judgment and evaluation and all who follow in his ways and in his lies are also condemned. The Spirit would come to set the standard for proper, right judgments.

John 16:12-15: The Holy Spirit declares Jesus

Jesus says He has many things to teach his apostles. But he is not personally going to do this because they cannot handle his teachings yet. Truth is the heaviest element in our world. If we were imparted with all truth we would be crushed. This is why the life, journey of a Christian is to continually seek truth. The Holy Spirit will be the one who will guide these apostles (and us) into all the truth. This is a very important promise.

Now look what the Spirit of truth is going to reveal in verse 14. The revelation of the Spirit will show the glory of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is going to glorify Jesus. How is the Spirit going to do that? The Spirit is going to reveal all truth and the truth is that Jesus is glorious. The scriptures reveal the glory of Jesus. The Spirit will declare everything about Jesus.

As we ponder upon this scripture today we need to do a deep holy introspection on what truly guides and convicts us? Are we allowing the world and its corruption to dictate our lives, or are we allowing the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives to convict us according to God’s standard.

If we want to continually pursue God’s Righteousness, we need to toss everything we lean upon as worldly truth to be tossed out with the trash and lean upon the Holy Spirit to guide us in God’s Righteous living. We are so blessed to have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us to reveal to us truth about ourselves. Pray today for that guidance. Pray for revelation of things within you that are not righteous. Pray for help in overcoming unrighteousness to receive the Righteousness of God that covers.

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