THE PURPOSE & EFFECT OF REVELATION
PART FOUR
Convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement
Earlier, we referenced Revelation 19:10 in relation to Christ in the bosom of the Father. But let’s take it one step deeper. One of the most overlooked verses in regard to prophetic ministry is Revelation 19:10:
Revelation 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
““Indeed, the whole point of prophecy and of the sanctifying work of the Spirit lies in the testimony of Jesus Christ, whom the entire law and all prophecy serve [as though slaves].””
Everything Jesus did declared the nature of God. He, who was in the bosom of the Father, declared the nature of the Father to this world (John 1:18 – He has explained the Father). In the Old Testament, God is called “Father” almost exclusively in relation to the nation of Israel. Here are a few examples:
Exodus 4:22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn.”
Deuteronomy 1:30-31 The Lord your God, who goes before you, He will fight for you, according to all He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.
Isaiah 63:8 For He said, “Surely they are My people, Children who will not lie.” So He became their Savior.
Isaiah 63:16 Doubtless You are our Father, Though Abraham was ignorant of us, And Israel does not acknowledge us. You, O Lord, are our Father; Our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name.
Jeremiah 3:19 But I said: “How can I put you among the children and give you a pleasant land, a beautiful heritage of the hosts of nations?” And I said: “You shall call Me, ‘My Father,’ And not turn away from Me.”
Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.
Malachi 2:10 Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously with one another By profaning the covenant of the fathers?
In Malachi, the fatherhood of God is directly connected to God as creator. He is our Father because He created us. The idea of God as Father takes a minor role in the Old Testament. It is there, but it is there in a general sense. God is depicted as a father of the nation; not the personal father of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, or Moses.
However, there is one place where it becomes acutely personal in the Old Testament: to the orphan.
Psalms 68:5 A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.
This sounds suspiciously like the language of James:
James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
We can see that the Father is intensely concerned for those who are abandoned and bereft. And that sound is reflected in the teachings of Christ:
John 14:18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
The term for “orphan” in the New Testament is the Greek word “orphanos” (G3737). It means to be obscure or dark, and it takes on the connotation of an orphan because the orphan wanders in darkness and obscurity as they have no family or family name. Sounds a bit like the whole human race, bereft of God, does it not?
What is obliquely predicated of God in the Old Testament takes on a deeper, richer meaning in the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus says that He has manifested the name of God to the disciples:
John 17:6 I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
The name that Jesus so often manifested to the disciples was the name “Father.” In fact, Jesus refers to God as Father more than 150 times! This is over against the lack of references to God as Father in the Old Testament. Jesus offers profound insight into what it means to call God “Father” throughout his life. His vision of God as Father is intensely personal:
John 14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
The Old Testament only hints at God as Father in a personal way, the New Testament declares it extravagantly. God the Father intends to heal the orphan-ness of humanity. This is the one of the most Fatherly thing he can possibly do. Now, how is that cure going to be effected? Actually, Jesus states it rather explicitly:
John 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another [a]Helper, that He may abide with you forever—
How will he not leave us as orphans? He will send the Spirit of truth, the Helper, otherwise known as Spirit of adoption. What other way would he deal with the orphan-ness of humanity than by the Spirit of adoption:
Romans 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”
Galatians 4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”
When the Spirit of adoption comes, we cry out, “Abba, Father!” because we are no longer dark and obscure, but seen, known, and loved.
Making manifest our adoption as sons and daughters is basically the entirety of what the Holy Spirit does within us. The Holy Spirit forms and fashions the nature of the Father within, He forges within us the calling as sons and daughters and causes us to cry out, “Abba Father!” at one glimpse of Him.
““The Holy Spirit’s real ministry is building the Father’s nature into us.””
I John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
The Holy Spirit is always going to point back to the nature of the Father. How do you take someone from being an orphan to being a son or a daughter? You must bring them into family. Jesus says this nearly explicitly about the Holy Spirit:
John 16:12 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
All that the Father has is Christ’s and the Holy Spirit will take what is of Christ and declare it to the Church. The Greek word for adoption is “huiothesia” (G5206). It does not quite mean the same things that the word adoption means today. When we hear the term adoption, we think of taking a child with no parents and integrating him into a new family. That child did not have a family and now has a family. But that child will never share the same DNA as their adopted family. They may share their name, their culture, and their values, but the adopting parents will never be their birth parents. (And by the way, I have a number of good friends that have gone through the adoption process and I think it is a wonderful thing. By no means is what I am saying an attempt to demean family that have adopted children. We must simply lay out that there is a difference between what the Bible is trying to say and the contemporary adoption process).
The term huiothesia means to make as a son and to place in the position of a son by birth. It is not that the son is brought into a family that becomes theirs, they are literally made a part of that family. To huiothesia someone means to make them your child from birth. It is not something a human being can do. The word itself is not a common word used in the ancient world. Paul actually co-opts it from the Romans to employ it in a Christian setting. It doesn’t mean to give someone a new family, it means to make them as always having been a part of the family. The term itself implies the miracle of new birth in Christ. And it all happens around the Holy Spirit pouring the love of the Father into our hearts. The reciprocal cry of, “Abba Father!” is the consequence of this pouring.
Romans 5:5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Jesus lays out some of the practical ways that we will see the Holy Spirit accomplishing this later in the same teaching on the Holy Spirit. How will the Holy Spirit forge the nature of the Father within those who come close to Him? He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement.
John 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
Chances are when someone reads this phrase, they are immediately confronted with the thought that the Holy Spirit is going to tell us how bad we are (convict the world of sin), how much we fail at being good (convict the world of righteousness), and that we have no hope (convict the world of judgement). In contemporary Christianity we are quick to communicate that God is a god of fear, rather than a god of love. The default frame of mind for a 21st century human is fear, and it makes sense when you realize just how powerful is the force of fear. Moving from fear to love is a difficult and tricky process and almost the entirety of the Christian struggle is to get from fear to love, just see 1 John 4.
Fear dominates our thoughts and our bodies. Our physical bodies are inhabited by fear. Our nervous systems are attuned to fear. Neurologically, you are wired to be aware of any threat in your environment. Your body will respond to a charging bear much the same way it will respond to an argument with your spouse.