THE PURPOSE & EFFECT OF REVELATION

PART FOUR (continued)

Convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement (Continued)

 I recall a time I was sitting in an airport waiting for my flight. The gate attendant made an announcement that the flight was full and that we would need to check any carry-on bags. The offer was made to check any carry-ons for free to the travelers’ destination. An appeal was made to accommodate each other out of kindness. This offer was made 3 or 4 times, and then the tone of the gate attendant changed. It was obvious that not enough people had offered to check their bag.

The gate attendant said something like this:

"Ok everyone, this flight is very full, there is not an empty seat. The overhead bins are small and will fill up quickly. We need more people to check their bags. If you don't check your bag, we will be stuck on the runway and the gate agent will have to check your bags. Check your bags now or else we will have to pull bags out and no one wants to sit around while we do that.”

What began as an appeal to love, kindness and compassion quickly descended into a threat. I was struck by how quickly the gate attendant changed the source of motivation. When an appeal to love does not work, we quickly descend into the madness of fear. While it is excusable for a gate attendant to use fear as a motivator, we do it in our Christian communities all the time.

Anthony the Great, one of the first monastics of the desert, recognized the transformative power of God’s love:

I no longer fear God, but I love Him. For love casts out fear.

We ought to be moving from fear to love in all that we do, especially when our culture surrounds us with reasons to fear and be anxious. Its no wonder that our default response for Jesus’s words on the conviction of the Holy Spirit can generally be summed in this phrase: “Oh no!” We see the words of Jesus as a threat, rather than an invitation. 

When we see primarily through a lens of fear, we don’t even read the words of Jesus immediately following the above passage. How will the Holy Spirit will convict of sin, righteousness, and judgement? The answer is actually right there:

John 16:9-11 …of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

I go to the Father…

The Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness because they no longer see the express image of the Father embodied in Christ. So what does the Holy Spirit do that convicts the world of righteousness? He points people back to the Father!

John 16:15 All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

The way in which the Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness is to point people back to the One who is righteous, the Father. While Christ was in the world, He was the image of the Father. Now that Christ had ascended, the Holy Spirit took up the role of pointing to the image of the Father. To convict the world of righteousness to point people to the beauty of the Father.

They do not believe…

The word for believe is a funny one for us today. When we read the word believe we immediately equate belief with a set of ideas in which we have some confidence. To the 21st century Christian, belief has to do with doctrine and theology. Belief is what I think about God and what I think about Christianity. A 21st century person may ask the question, “Do I believe in Christianity?” or “Do I believe in God?” And by that, they mean do I have confidence that what others say about Christianity or God is factual and true. 

But the world in the 1st century was quite different than our world today. Facts, knowledge and belief were entirely different concepts. The concept of belief was not a set of ideas/ideals that you think are true. The word for belief can alternatively be translated as “entrust.” And therein lies the difference. 

A child entrusts himself or herself, quite naturally I suppose, to their parents. The child does not believe in their parents, the existence of their parents is taken for granted. The way that child entrusts themselves to their parents is much more what Jesus has in mind here. He is not chastising them for their inability to grasp a particular doctrine. You can no more entrust yourself to a particular set of doctrines as you can entrust yourself to the code of ethics for an organization. The question is not what you entrust yourself to, but rather, who you entrust yourself to.

Jesus is pointing out that humanity has lost touch with the care, goodness, kindness, and tenderness of God. How does the Holy Spirit convict the world of sin? By calling people back to a simple trust in the Father. If I entrust myself to the Father, sin begins to lose its hold on me. If I have entrusted myself to the Father, when someone lashes out at me in anger I no longer respond in anger. I have entrusted my life to the Fathers care and I find in myself the love of the Father. Forgiveness then comes bubbling up to the surface. 

The ruler of this world is judged…

We can find echoes of “the ruler of this world” being judged in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. 

John 3:18-19 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Darkness has already been judged. You could go so far as to say that darkness was condemned in the Garden of Eden when God addressed the serpent and the fall of man. Remember, when it comes to sin and repentance, it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance:

Romans 2:4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

How does the Holy Spirit convict of judgement? By pointing out the kind of things that are in common with the “ruler of this world.” Jesus added additional clarity to this:

John 14:30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.

When the “ruler of the world” is exposed and the kinds of things he does (kill, steal, destroy) are exposed, will we be able to say the same as Jesus: that he has nothing in me? 

How is any of this germane to prophetic ministry and the gift of prophecy? Going back to what we have laid out, prophecy is rightly understood as a manifestation of the Spirit. If prophecy is a manifestation of the Spirit, then how we understand the activity of the Holy Spirit will go a long way to informing how we think of prophetic ministry. And furthermore, as the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, and the testimony of Jesus is declaration of the nature of the Father to the world. The Holy Spirit relates all that is the Father’s to those who know the Father. The Spirit of prophecy, the Holy Spirit, His activity will be to bear witness to the Father. This activity is herein laid out: to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement. 

In regards to prophetic ministry, a significant function of prophecy will be to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement. And the way the Holy Spirit will do this will be to point people back to the goodness of the Father (they no longer see the Father), remind people that the Father is good and takes care of His children (they do not entrust), and that the kinds of things that have ownership in darkness have been judged (the ruler of this world is judged).

And to take it even further, it is in the coming of the Spirit that we our orphan-ness is destroyed. If the Spirit intends to erase our orphan-ness and introduce us to the nature of the Father, then prophecy is one means by which the Father will eradicate our own sense of orphan-ness. He will send the Spirit, and as a result we will not be orphans. The Lord calls Himself a Father of the fatherless (orphans). What the Holy Spirit will do when He comes into the world will be to point people back to the Father, remind them how trustworthy He is, and point out what darkness is (what it means to be a part of God’s family). You could then say that prophecy will point people back to the beauty of the Father, remind them that He is good and trustworthy, and clearly show what is within us that must be brought to death.

Prophetic ministry that does not point back to Jesus is an orphan prophetic spirit. The Spirit that comes is the Spirit that cries out, "Abba, Father." It is the Spirit that comes and erases orphan-ness. The response of the Spirit to the cry of Abba Father is that the Spirit will tell you things of the Father and Son. The scope of prophecy is to convict the world of sin (a lack of trust and faith in Jesus), righteousness (the beautiful face of Jesus), and judgement (clarifying what must die).