John 16:7–8

The sorrow was right, but they were taken up with themselves — with their own grief — instead of seeing how God was working and what His purposes were. The real truth was that the Son was going back to the Father. We may lose God's purpose of blessing for our own souls by not seeing His mind in what grieves us. The disciples were shut up in their own sorrows and thoughts, instead of asking where the Lord was going. But He would comfort them despite this weakness of faith, and He gives them the promise of the Comforter.

The coming and indwelling of the Spirit was of enormous importance. That is why our Lord tells His disciples it was profitable, an advantage, for Him to go away so that the Spirit might come. If He had not said it, who could have imagined any privilege greater than personal contact and company with the Lord Himself? Before Pentecost the disciples had partial, earthly ideas. Compare them with the same disciples after the Spirit came down, and we see how true our Lord's words were.

He must go away so that the Comforter, the Spirit of God, would come (v. 7). The Spirit comes to dwell in the Church as the result of two things: redemption accomplished, and Christ raised and glorified at the Father's right hand. Only then would He send the Spirit to them.

The Holy Spirit was now to work as He had never worked before in the children of men or in the children of God. More than that, He was to come in person and take over the entire charge and business of the disciples. That is the meaning of paraclete, which our word "Comforter" only partly captures.

This word presents the Holy Spirit as the One who stands by believers and takes their matters in hand. We are not left as orphans (John 14:18) but supported by the Comforter.

He would send the Spirit, and the Spirit would testify of Him as the glorified Lord. That would let the disciples enjoy a deeper relationship with Him and the Father. The Lord was with them, but the Holy Spirit would be in them. That would give them a fuller understanding of the truth than they ever had when the Lord was on earth.

He has ascended, and so we are immensely better off than if He were on earth. If He were on earth now — say in Jerusalem — He would not also be in Edinburgh. But He is in glory. So the Holy Spirit has come down to dwell among us, and to remain in each believer. He gives us the sense of the Lord's presence no matter where we are.

The Lord had told the disciples (John 16:7): "If I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you." He had gone, and so He sent the Spirit. Peter told them facts — facts no one could question.

The Lord tells us that when the Spirit comes, He will elegxei the world. It is hard to bring across the true force of that word. "Reprove," as the King James Version has it, is too narrow, if not simply wrong. "Rebuke" is out of the question here. "Convict" barely fits the first clause, and does not fit the second and third at all. It also assumes an effect on people that may not be there at all. "Convince" does not satisfy either, unless it means giving proof by His presence rather than by His action. By coming and staying in believers, apart from the world, He gives the world proof by demonstration of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

The law dealt with Israel as those under it. But now it is the Spirit who shows the world its "sin." The reason is not that people break the law, that divine measure of a man's duty. The reason is that they reject the Son of God: "concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me." He had come in grace; to reject this was fatal. It is not merely failure in obligation, but contempt for God's love.

The Comforter shows the sin of the whole world as the one that has rejected God: "He will convict the world concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me." There are plenty of other sins, but the Holy Spirit would say to the world, "Where is Christ? What have you done with Him?"

Jesus was going through death and resurrection, and then going up into the glory of the Father. That is how divine righteousness would be proved and displayed. The point here is not forgiveness of sins and justification for us, as it is in Romans 3. It is righteousness set up in the open, in every sphere that sin has touched and spoiled. Christ's death was the world's supreme act of unrighteousness. His glorification was God's supreme act of righteousness, and the guarantee that righteousness will win everywhere in the end... To show sin alone would not have been enough. Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and the thing that will abolish it in the end, so righteousness must be shown too.

This world has refused Christ and has no righteousness of its own. Righteousness now sits on the throne, and that is the proof of the world's guilt. So one thing only is left: judgment. So the last convicting work of the Spirit is to bring home the fact of judgment to the consciences of men. He does this not only by warning of a judgment still to come — "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment." He also brings home that judgment has already been passed and carried out, in the mind of God, on the prince of this world.

The judgment on the prince of this world has come already. He is judged in the cross of Christ.

"He will convict" does not necessarily mean that men will accept the conviction. The guilty do not necessarily admit that their sentence is right. The world certainly does not admit it. Still, God has demonstrated the guilt of the world, and placed men under responsibility to receive His sentence. That is the way into blessing beyond imagining: the salvation for the guilty that the gospel proclaims.

Had this world received the Son, the Spirit would not be here in His present testimony dwelling in our hearts. I have no doubt the demonstration comes first to us, and then through us to this world. We seek to bear witness to the Son, and to the sin of this world in rejecting Him. But it is the presence of the Spirit which brings this demonstration, not so much what the Spirit has to say.