sin, righteousness, and judgment

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

John 16:8-11

The Holy Spirit’s convicting work has a three-fold emphasis. He is at work convicting all people in three crucial categories. This conviction (sense of wrong and awareness of God’s greater accountability) prepares the way for the good news of the gospel to be received by those who will believe it. I believe that all people everywhere know the feeling of conviction in these three areas. They may not realize that it is God doing this in them, but they are aware of a human deficit in three ways.

The first is conviction of sin. People know that other humans do wrong things. When they are really honest, they will admit that they do wrong things as well. They will argue and perhaps self-justify with “degrees” of wrong-doing when confronted with self sin, but sin and its negative affects on humanity are pretty well known. And the Holy Spirit convicts at a personal level as all people fall short of the glory of God in sin.

The second conviction area is righteousness. The world has imperfect standards, but even then human beings realize that there should be some standard of right. In the gospel, we know this standard is found in Jesus. Conviction of sin is strongest once we know Who Jesus is and why He entered planet earth to die for the sin of the world. Righteousness is the standard that His life shows us now that He is with the Father. And this standard aggravates our sense of sin, convicting us even further.

The third area of conviction concerns God’s right to judge sin and unrighteousness. Seeing Jesus as God’s righteous standard, convicting of sin personally, knowing sin deserves punishment, the Holy Spirit shows us that the world stands deserving judgment... that each of us is part of that condemnation. This is painful to realize, but sets us up for wanting something so much better. The Holy Spirit thus convicts so that the gospel can be heard for the really good news that it is!