What does it mean that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment?

Here we have His present relation, not to the saints, but to that world which is outside. And the Lord tells us that, when come, He ἐλέγξει the world. It is difficult to convey justly the force of this. "Reprove," as in the Authorised Version, is too narrow a meaning, if not false. "Rebuke" is here out of the question. "Convict" hardly applies, even to the first, not at all to the second and third clauses; and supposes an effect produced which may not really be in any case. Nor is one satisfied with "convince," save in the sense of affording proof by His presence, rather than by His action. For by His coming and abiding in the saints, apart from the world, He gives it demonstrative proof of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

The law dealt with Israel as those under it. But now it is the Spirit Who demonstrates the "sin" of the world; and this not because they violate that Divine measure of a man's duty, but because they reject the Son of God: "of sin, because they believe not on Me." He had come in grace; to reject this was fatal. It is not merely failure in obligation, but despite of God's love. Such is the true and actual gauge of the world before God, Who tests and proves the guilt of the whole system which opposes Him by its unbelieving ignorance and refusal of His Son, spite of the fullest testimony. This is the sin demonstrated.297

Further, He affords demonstration of "righteousness." Where is this? In the race or first man? On the contrary, there is none righteous, no, not one. And as for the Righteous One, even Jesus, He, as we have seen, was despised and rejected of men, by none so keenly as by the Jews, but in fact and to the uttermost by the world. Where, then, is the Spirit's proof of righteousness? "Because I go to My (or the) Father, and ye behold Me no more." Righteousness is on God's part only. Man condemned and killed the Just One; God raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. The Son "going to the Father" is the standing witness of righteousness there, and not here. For man He Who came into the world in love is clean gone. They would not have Him, and "ye behold Me no more." He returns for the world as Judge; but this is a wholly different and most solemn affair. But He is lost to men according to His presence in grace as at His first Advent; all is closed with His mission to the world as He came. And the Spirit testifies and demonstrates only Divine righteousness in Him on high, and man lost in casting out Him no longer to be seen as before here below.298

But, again, the Spirit gives proof of "judgment"; and this, "because the prince of this world is (or hath been) judged." Here again it is not a question of the kingdom in power and glory when Jehovah shall punish the host of the high ones on high, as well as put down the kings of the earth upon the earth, and slay the dragon that is in the sea. (Isa. 24:21; Isa. 27:1) The Christian knows what will be for the earthly people's deliverance and the joy of all nations, but he sees already by faith that Satan is judged in Christ's death and resurrection and ascension. The Holy Ghost sums up all in Christ's Person; and this is the grand demonstration for the world. Its ruler is already judged in rejecting Him Who made known the Father, glorified God, and is glorified of God. All is closed for the world in Him Who came in love, and is gone up in righteousness. The ruler of the world is judged in His cross.

For this, however, we must yet wait: here we have, first, the result of the presence of the Spirit thus sent from the rejected One in glory, as the necessary demonstration of the world's sin, with the judgment of its prince, and the manifestation of the Father's righteousness. "He will convict" does not necessarily imply that men will receive the conviction. The guilty do not necessarily own the righteousness of their sentence. The world assuredly, does not own it. None the less has God demonstrated the guilt of the world, and placed men under responsibility to receive His sentence. There lies the way into inconceivable blessing in that salvation for the guilty which the gospel proclaims.

In the first Scripture to which you call attention, the very presence of the Spirit in this world as dwelling in the hearts of believers brings "demonstration" (New Translation) of three things. "Sin" — for the world had not believed on the Son. "Righteousness" — in the fact that the Father had taken Him out of the world and taken Him to glory. He came on behalf of the Father and it was only right that, if they would not have Him, the Father should take away the only One Who could save this world. "Judgment" — in that the prince of this world who led them to reject Christ was himself brought into judgment. Note, not here "judgment to come." The judgment on the prince of this world has come already. He is judged in the cross of Christ. Had this world received the Son, the Spirit would not have been here in His present testimony dwelling in our hearts. I do not doubt the demonstration is first to us, then through us to this world as 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.

He, coming, shall convince the world about sin, etc. This is His office. He does not speak of effectual result, though of course there was such. About sin, indeed, in this, that "they believe not on me." It was not merely sinfulness or transgressions; both might have been charged naturally, and by the law; but their very state, their whole state with God. The former, sunk under the bright coming of Jesus from God the Father, were forgotten in this abounding act of love. This proved the manner of God's dealings with the world; not then, that is, in the presenting of Jesus to it. God was in Christ reconciling, and not imputing. They saw no beauty in it or Him. He was despised and rejected of men. They esteemed Him not. Thus was the accumulated evidence of their utter and desperate alienation of mind brought out. They were sin, and nothing else; for where all beauty was they saw none; where God was manifested in the flesh He was not known; when He came to His own in the way of personal grace they received Him not, but hated and rejected Him. This is the great argument, the argument of sin to the world. Here is the ground on which it stands before God, howsoever besides it may have transgressed, as indeed they had. They believe not on Jesus; that is the whole matter, the summing up of all, the concentrating and exhibition of all; enmity against God most displayed in grace; enmity to death; the slave of Satan. Here sin was triumphant, most utterly so, as far as it could be in its weakness and destructiveness in the death of Christ the Lord. But not believing was the same thing as to position.

281 Then of "righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." To the world there would be no evidence of righteousness in the death of Christ, but the contrary; nor even outwardly in the act of vicarious suffering. To the world it was the triumph of unrighteousness. And not only so, but the apparent utter dereliction or failure of God in upholding that which was righteous. The righteous One was put down by man apparently, and deserted by God. His own word was, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Indeed, the full tide of the effects of unrighteousness, judicial and moral, all set in and flowed into and over the soul of Christ. If He bowed in His love under the triumphant effects of moral unrighteousness, led of the great head of it, Satan, his hour and the power of darkness, He had to bow at the same moment, instead of finding vindication under the judgment, as the unrighteous One (though righteous), at the hands of His God. It was the full resulting exhibition of the power (but weakness) of unrighteousness in the hands of Satan, left (in order to the full result of divine glory and vindication) to come to its height of evil; the utter rejection of sin by the Father, even when laid on the Person of His beloved Son, where if anywhere it might be passed by. In a word, while the cross established in the Person of Jesus the most perfect righteousness on the part of Man, as may be seen in the minutest contrast with the first Adam, and the most perfect vindication of God in the same act, as may be also seen in it, there appeared the most total failure to own or vindicate this; it seemed left helplessly in the power of unrighteousness. But indeed vindication there would neither have been it, or given it its force; nor would it have given it its righteous reward. Righteousness to death was needed, and righteousness under apparent rejection, to show the full force of its reception at the right hand of God, the right hand of the Father, the Majesty on high itself.

It was God's righteousness illustrated in the Son that was to be shown; and though in Man, in whom it was to be wrought out, it had no adequate witness of glory but at the right hand of the Father. And hence as to this the intrinsic importance of the position of Christ to the Church before His return: "I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." He was alone in this, alone in righteousness. Even His disciples forsook Him, and fled; or denied Him, and stood afar off. None even outwardly stood by Him, or were able to drink the cup; that is, then, or be so baptised. And though the coming of the Lord will be the time of His joy in being glorified in His saints, their being glorified with Him, yet the reward of righteousness was in His acceptance of the Father, His glory vindicated and adequately shown, and only so in His sitting down on the Father's throne. This is a blessed and glorious thought. He, speaking of Him as a Man, owned and vindicated the Father throughout, and sits down accordingly on His throne in righteousness. And righteousness in its fullest, highest sense was here, as between the Father and the Son; that is, the suffering Jesus shown, but shown in the glory of God. See chapter 13:31-32.

But Jesus was going through death and resurrection and by ascension into the glory of the Father. Thus Divine righteousness would be vindicated and displayed. The point here is not remission of sins and justification for us, as it is in Romans 3, but of righteousness to be publicly established in every sphere that has been touched and marred by sin. Christ's death was the supreme act of the world's unrighteousness: His glorification was the supreme act of God's righteousness, and the guarantee that ultimately righteousness shall everywhere prevail, in keeping with Paul's words in Acts 17:31. Now the Spirit is come from the glorified Christ as the standing Witness to this. To have merely demonstrated sin would not have been enough: righteousness its antithesis, and that which will ultimately abolish it, must be demonstrated too.

The third thing, judgment, follows as the appropriate sequence. If human sin be dealt with in Divine righteousness, judgment cannot be avoided. Paul reasoned before Felix of "judgment to come" and the Roman governor trembled, but the point in our passage is that the prince of this world has been judged by his attitude to Christ, and in the power of His cross. In John 12, Jesus had spoken of the judgment of the world and the casting out of its prince. These solemn facts are demonstrated by the presence of the Spirit, for if the prince and leader of the world is judged, the world that he controls is judged too. Satan is also called "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4), as men ignorantly worship him in turning aside to all the things that they idolize: he is "the prince" as being the originator and leader in the world's great schemes.

For a world that has refused Christ and has no righteousness of its own (righteousness on the throne being the proof of its guilt) there is but one thing left — judgment. So the last convicting work of the Spirit is to bring home the fact of judgment upon the consciences of men. This He does, not merely by warning of a judgment in the future — "as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" — but He brings home the fact that judgment has already been pronounced and inflicted — in the mind of God — upon the prince of this world.

It is not some obscure person who has thus been judged, but the ruler and prince of this world — Satan himself. Little did he think in his plottings, entering into Judas, bringing together all the powers of darkness, that he was but hastening his own doom, and that in the very hour of his greatest apparent triumph, the judgment of God had fallen upon him. True, he was bruising the heel of the woman's Seed, but his own head was crushed by the mighty Victor.

"Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more." The proof of sin is not the breaking of the law, as in Israel. There is a new standing altogether, and the Holy Ghost stands to this and to no other. So in righteousness, it is not here but up in heaven. Jesus is rejected, and righteousness is not here. It is the fruit of His work, and the work of the Holy Ghost is in answer to His; but righteousness is seen only in heaven. God the Father raised up a rejected Christ, and set Him at His own right hand. So the world lost Jesus, and God was righteous when He received Him to His own right hand in heaven. "Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." It is not merely the terrible thing which is coming on the world at a future period — it is done. Judgment is true to faith now. The world is judged: only the sentence is not yet executed. This is the key to the Christian's remarkable attitude towards the world. How could he tamper with and allow that which he sees to be judged? When he does so, he has got away from his moorings and is seeing things with his own eyes instead of believing what God says about them. "Of judgment because the prince of this world is judged." He (the prince of this world) led it on and he is judged. By the believer Christ is seen, heard, and felt, and the Holy Ghost convicts all outside of Him of these three things.

But further, the Spirit of God, when come, should also "convince the world of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Satan did sorry work in getting man to join with man, in the day that the Saviour died. He got them to combine and coalesce. Prince and peasant, priest and people, chief and subaltern, Greek and Gentile — he got them all to combine against Christ. As you know, Herod and Pilate shook hands over the murder of Christ. But Satan did it to his own discomfiture, and destruction, for God has bruised his head. And here the Spirit convinces of "judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Judgment is not yet executed, but Satan is a defeated foe, for Christ has risen from the dead. Good news for sinners that! The very moment, when it looked as if He were in the grasp of Satan, was just the opportunity that the Saviour took to do His mighty work, and burst open the door of the prison where Satan's captives were. And now, the door is burst open, and the shackles, and fetters, of the captives and slaves of sin, are broken. Satan is a beaten foe, and let me tell you this — If you go to Jesus you will be saved. I recommend you to do so.

And this judgment of the world is known to all believers; yea, the Holy Ghost Himself convinces them of it. "When the Comforter is come, he shall reprove [or convince] the world of sin," said Christ; "of righteousness, and of judgment … because the prince of this world is judged." So that they are convinced they lived in a judged world, a world found guilty of, and condemned for, rejecting God, but on which sentence has not as yet been executed. It is now just in the position between sentence having been passed and the final execution.

"And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father and ye see me no more; of judgment because the prince of this world is judged" (John 16:8-11). It will be noticed that the entire work of the Spirit, so far as the world is concerned, is conviction or reproof. The light can only make manifest the works of darkness. Until those works are seen and judged, the Spirit can only maintain that testimony, there can be no work as "Comforter." In fact, the word so rendered is hardly that, but the same as the one rendered "Advocate" in the first epistle of John. It is one who undertakes the whole work for another, an agent, if we may use such language.

Are we wrong in thinking of the Spirit as our Lord's advocate or agent here, in His absence, carrying on His work, fulfilling His will? Undoubtedly He is also the advocate for His people too, looking to all their interests and ministering to all their needs. In this way He might be designated "Comforter." But in relation to the world He represents Christ. Just as our Lord, when He was here, by His testimony convinced the world of sin — "Me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil" (John 7:7) — so now the Spirit as His representative, continues this work of conviction in the world at large and in individuals.