The Spirit of God

"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)

When is the last time that you prayed to the Holy Spirit? If you are like most Christians, you probably can’t remember. We don’t pray to the Spirit very much. We pray to Jesus; He came to open the way to God, and we pray to Him to represent our needs before the Godhead. We also pray to God the Father, since He is the giver of life and of all good things. But it is only rarely that we pray to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it is because we don’t really understand what it is that He does.

In the verses quoted above, Jesus describes what the Holy Spirit does. Jesus says, "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." To properly understand Jesus, we must know what He meant by the word "convict". The Greek word used means ‘to show someone his error, to convince someone of the truth of his situation, to reveal or to make clear.’ Perhaps the best way to translate this word would be to say that the Holy Spirit’s job is to strip away all human delusions and show people things as they really are.

The first thing that the Holy Spirit does is to confront the people of the world about the reality of sin. Most people have no concept of what sin is. Some don’t believe in God, so they don’t worry about angering Him by disobeying Him. Others consider themselves to be spiritual, but believe that each person has to decide for himself what is a ‘right’ way and a ‘wrong’ way to live. And some people know that what they are doing displeases God, but they love their sin so much that they choose to risk God’s anger by continuing to live in their sin.

The Holy Spirit strips away human delusions about sin. The Holy Spirit confronts people with the harsh truth that there is indeed a God who created us and who will judge our lives. This God created every human being to live life believing in God and to serve God’s other children in love. When we ignore God and His intentions for our lives we anger Him, because ignoring God is sin, and God will not tolerate sin. When life ends, if we have ignored God, He will ignore us and bar us from the joys of heaven forever. When it comes to sin, God accepts no excuses, He cuts no deals, He makes no compromises.

When the Holy Spirit confronts a person with the unyielding truth of God’s Law, one of two things happens. Some people become angry at being told that their lives are unacceptable to God. They are so comfortable in their sins that they reject God’s claim of ownership over their lives. They deny that God exists, or that they are displeasing Him. To such people God says, "They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees" (Leviticus 26:43).

But other people react differently. When they hear that God is angry at their corrupt lives, they become fearful of God’s anger. Such people ask in their hearts, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30) When the Holy Spirit finds this response in a human heart, He performs His second work: He strips away human delusions about how to please God, and reveals Jesus Christ.

It is natural for us to want to ‘earn’ heaven by our own good deeds. We are creatures of pride—we want to think that we can earn God’s favor, and that heaven is a reward for the ‘best of the best.’ All of the false religions created by sinful humankind emphasize living a holy life to earn eternal rewards. But the Spirit confronts us with the reality that true righteousness cannot be gained through our hard work; Isaiah 64:6 says, "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." Paul adds, "God credits righteousness apart from works" (Romans 4:6). The Holy Spirit takes the greatest joy in showing us that righteousness can indeed be ours, but only as a gift of God. When Jesus was asked, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent" (John 6:28). Jesus said this because man cannot make himself righteous; sin infests each of us until we die. It is Jesus Christ who is the Righteous One of God. When we believe that righteousness can be found in Jesus, when we trust that He is willing to extend His righteousness to us if we repent of our sins, "he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Jesus makes us acceptable to God by putting His righteousness over us like a coat; Isaiah 61:10 says, "he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness."

We are only acceptable to God when, by faith in Jesus, we share in His righteousness. This righteousness did not come cheaply. There was tremendous anger in God at being ignored by sinful mankind. But Jesus, the Son of God, suffered all of God’s anger so that we would not have to. Jesus suffered on the cross to satisfy God’s anger at our sin, and He died and rose so that when we die we too will rise from our graves, separated by death from the curse of sin forever. In Jesus, all sin is forgiven. That is why Jesus said of Holy Spirit "he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin…because men do not believe in me." In a sense, there is only one sin: not believing in Jesus. John 3:18 says, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." If a person believes in Jesus, all his sins are forgiven through our Savior; but if a person rejects Jesus, the guilt of every other sin is added to the sin of unbelief.

The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ as our only hope for righteousness and rescue from the eternal death brought by sin, but not everyone accepts this truth. Some reject salvation because they reject Jesus as the only way to heaven. Their misplaced pride does not allow them to accept the charity of God offered through Christ. But others are glad to hear the Good News of Jesus. In them, the Holy Spirit plants the seed of faith; He gives them the ability to believe that everything the Bible says about Jesus is true. Paul writes, "For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ…to believe on him" (Philippians 1:29). This is the Holy Spirit’s most joyful task—to build in the human heart saving faith in Christ .

The Spirit’s third task is to confront the people of the world with the truth that God judges righteously. For a long time, Satan and those who follow him have opposed God. Satan and his followers have worked tirelessly to persecute Christians, to get laws passed that prevent prayer in schools, to cause some foreign governments to declare Christianity an illegal religion. Satan and his followers have gotten our schools to teach that man evolved from animals instead of being created in the image of God; they have led our society to believe that truth and morality are up to each of us to define for ourselves.

Jesus has beaten Satan. When Jesus died on the cross, He died the death that would have sent us to hell and into Satan’s eternal control. When Jesus rose from the dead, He proved that Satan has lost control over the power of death, the power to claim us. Satan and his followers still harass us, still seek our souls for their own, but Satan cannot claim the soul of anyone who trusts in Jesus, because Jesus has proven His superiority over Satan.

For some, this is not good news. To those who reject Jesus in order to wallow in their sins, the Holy Spirit announces in no uncertain terms that they have allied themselves with the loser. Satan is condemned to eternity in hell, and those who prefer his priorities in life will join him there.

But for we who trust in Jesus, the reality of the Judgment is good news. It is good news, because we have the security of knowing that Satan cannot tear us away from our Savior; Jesus said "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28). And it is also good news because we do not need to fear God’s judgment of us. John writes, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned," and in Hebrews 10:17 God says: "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." We need not fear God’s judgment because of Jesus; John writes "if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 2:1-2). Because of Jesus, when we die we can look forward to unending happiness in the Kingdom of God. This is the truth about the Judgment that the Holy Spirit reveals to us.

It is surprising, after all, that we do not pray to the Holy Spirit more than we do. Although the Father created us and the Son died to remove the guilt of our sins, it is the Holy Spirit that brings salvation to us. It is the Spirit who points out our sins and our need for a Savior. It is the Spirit who shows us Jesus in all His glory and makes it possible for us to trust that Jesus can take us to heaven. It is the Spirit who reassures us that we need not fear God or death, so long as we have Jesus in our hearts. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we would have no relationship with Jesus.

Perhaps we do not pray to the Holy Spirit because we never hear Him quoted in the Bible. We hear the Father quoted. We hear the Son quoted. But although the Holy Spirit is never quoted, He does speak to us. Every time the Bible is read, the Holy Spirit speaks—He speaks through the words of Scripture, which men wrote down under His supervision: Peter writes "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 20-21).

It's okay not to pray to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to help us give glory to Jesus and His Father, so it is natural for us to pray to them more often. But never forget the work of the Holy Spirit, because without Him, you would still be lost in your sins instead of being a forgiven child of God.