John 16:8-11 – And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Conviction is the penetrating work of the Holy Spirit. In John Chapter 3 Jesus used the wind as a picture of the Holy Spirit in His ministry to the Pharisee, Nicodemus. Apparently Nicodemus was having trouble embracing things he couldn’t see or comprehend with his intellect. Jesus told him, “you really can’t fully grasp the things of the Spirit.” Jesus said the Spirit is like the wind. You can feel it and hear it but it is mysterious and uncontrollable. It refreshes, has power, and goes places nothing else can go. The wind will expose and penetrate every crack or flaw in our lives. He is relentless. F.E. Marsh describes this work of the Holy Spirit like this.
“The wind finds out all the crevices. How penetrating the Spirit is! He searches into the inner-most recesses of the heart and reveals the hidden evil there. David knew something of this when he said, “God has searched, known, understood, compassed, or winnowed, and is acquainted with me altogether.” He knows what we are and where we are. Can we get away from the presence and power of the Spirit? No! “Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?”
We don’t really hear much about sin anymore. I don’t think it is because people are sinning less, but it may be that our spin on sin has changed. Rather than looking to God’s word as the final authority on what makes sin sin, we have taken the alternative path. Everyone just does what is right in their own eyes. Along with that, we have reinvented God in our own image. He no longer judges people for their sins, after all, He is the One who made us that way.
If you haven’t picked up on it, there is a bit of sarcasm in my comments. Of course The Lord hasn’t changed; it is our culture and society that has changed. The Holy Spirit wants to bring us to God, that is the point of this teaching by Jesus. He said first He convicts of sin, next He shows us what righteousness looks like in the life of Jesus. Then He finishes this part of His teaching by describing judgement. Once we see that we are sinners and righteousness is in Christ alone; then we are ready for the solution. Judgement! Christ is judged in our place that we can have communion with God.