Wednesday, November 9

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Wednesday

This week we have been examining Jesus’ words to His disciples from John 16 about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’  Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.  – John 16:5-11

Jesus is telling His disciples that He must go away so that the Holy Spirit can come and expand the redemptive work of God in the world.  This would have been difficult for the disciples to understand since they had sacrificed everything to follow Jesus.  Although we live with the benefit of hindsight, I think most Christians today also struggle with the notion that we are fortunate to be living in what the prophet Joel calls the “Last Days”…

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.  Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.  – Joel 2:28-29

This means that if you trust Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and for your eternal security, then the Holy Spirit of God has been poured out into your life.  Jesus says that this Spirit is at work in you to transform your life, and to show the world its need for a savior.  This is what Jesus means when He says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin because it does not believe in Him.  Now there are plenty of people who believe that Jesus existed, but that doesn’t make them genuine Christians.  There are even people who believe that Jesus was a great teacher and a divine being, but that still does not mean that they believe in Him as Savior.  To believe in Jesus is to believe in Him as Savior and Lord.  The problem is that most people are willing to accept Jesus as teacher, role model or guide, but they are not willing to accept Him as their Savior.  What Jesus is saying is that the world does not believe in Jesus as Savior because it does not recognize its need for one.  

The German philosopher Frederich Nietzche said that Christianity claims to liberate people, but it must burden them first.  Nietzche believed the Christian message invented the idea of sin in order to liberate people from false burdens.  In other words, Christianity makes people feel lousy in order to make them feel good.  He said “Christianity must burden the heart before it can lighten it, and for this reason it will not last.”  Well, Nietzche is dead and gone, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is still changing lives.  But Nietzche was at least partly right, Christianity does point out our sin and our need for a Savior, because it is honest about the human condition. Sin is the corruption of God’s will for humanity, and it lives in each one of us.  We may not like to think or talk about it, but every one of us has the sense that we are not and the world is not as it ought to be.  We carry around a sense of shame and guilt deep in our hearts.  We have all done and said things that have added to the brokenness of the world.  The work of the holy Spirit is not to invent burdens, but to point out the truth that each of us already feels deep inside.

Here in John 16, Jesus is telling us that the Holy Spirit is at work in us to bring us to the point of confession and repentance so that we can experience forgiveness and the liberating grace of God in our lives!  Do you see that your experience of God’s grace is a message to the world? This is how God wants to convict and convince the world – by redeeming people!

Jeff Frazier