John 16:9 Of sin, because they believe not on me; I. TO CONVINCE THE WORLD OF SIN IS MUCH MORE THAN TO CONVINCE THE WORLD OF CRIME. There may be sin where there is no crime, but wherever there is crime there is sin to account for it. Society is organized to defend itself against crime, yet every member of it is guilty of sin. Thus — 1. Society condemns murder; so in His reasoning with us the Holy Ghost begins with this admission, and proceeds to say — You condemn murder, but this is merely a gross and vulgar morality, little better, indeed, than selfishness stimulated by fear; you must find out how murder begins — it begins in unholy anger; that anger may never have spoken one word or shown one sign, yet by so much as you have given way to it in the secrecy of your inmost heart you are guilty of murder in the sight of God! It required a Ghost to teach us that. We could only get so far as to make some difference between murder and manslaughter, or between murder with extenuating circumstances and murder without them. There society paused, being unable to go further; and precisely there the Spirit began His work. 2. Society has made murder penal, but it has not been able to set falsehood amongst punishable crimes, although it is treated more spiritually than murder. We own, for example, that a man may act a lie as well as tell one: that he may use words with two meanings: that he may guard himself and mislead others by mental reservations. What more can the Holy Ghost Himself do? The Holy Ghost says that a form of words may be true, and yet it may express a lie! A conversation may be reported verbatim, yet, by a mere change of tone, by the omission of a facial expression, by a skilful variation of pause or emphasis, the report may be a falsehood from beginning to end. Farther and deeper still, a man may be false to himself. He may actually have treated himself so dishonestly as to have suspended or destroyed the very power by which he knows right from wrong. His conscience is "seared as with a hot iron," and he "given over to believe a lie." Under such circumstances the man is something more than a liar, he himself is actually a lie! Who then but the Spirit of God can convince of sin here? 3. But the process becomes still more spiritual. Murder and falsehood are at all events nominally condemned; but what of virtues which are praised as the very security and crown of human society? Take an act of almsgiving, and let it be outwardly the choicest specimen of its class: the gift is large, timely, cordial, and deservedly bestowed. Beyond this point society does not carry its judgment. But where man ends, the all-searching Spirit begins: He holds the candle of the Lord over the secret places of the heart: He tries the motives by the fires of the supreme judgment; and having done so, He says in effect to the applauded man — "Your love went not with your gift; it was an oblation to your own vanity; it was a bribe by which you bought reputation; it was not given to the poor, it was given to yourself." This conviction may be made so clear to a man, as to cause him pain amidst the general applause. 4. We are now upon the line every point of which adds to our knowledge of spiritual realities as distinguished from formal facts. May our religion be the chief of our immoralities? You prayed in the house of your friend, and made your prayer the medium of personal compliment to his supposed excellencies and deserts; not daring to hint at his sins; would you have so prayed for him if he had not been listening to you? Would you have prayed at all if you could decorously have escaped the duty? Not only does the Holy Ghost ask these questions, He compels you to answer them to your shame. 5. More: even if we are unassailable at any of the great points now indicated, yet there is another kingdom. Every man has two lives — the life of motive, and the life of behaviour, into the first of which none can enter but the Spirit of spirits. "He knoweth our thought afar off;" before it is a complete thought. Through your heart there shot a desire which scorched you, though no human eye will ever see the blister which it left, and the very memory of that desire will make you dumb whilst others sing. Into your mind there came what was only the hint of a thought, yet it struck you like a thunderbolt, so evil did it seem to be even in its incompleteness! These are the visitations which show a man that there is something worse than crime, and make him impatient with the deceitful comforters who would "heal his hurt slightly." II. "The Spirit of truth will convince the world of sin, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE NOT ON ME." The Holy Ghost will so vividly and thoroughly show the nature of sin, that those who thought themselves the best examples of human society will be afflicted with the keenest compunction because of what they know themselves to be in the presence of God. It will no longer be a question of comparison as between one class of man and another; the judgment will lie wholly between man and God. This personal consciousness is to be so vivid and intense as to become painful; a man will see himself as he never saw himself before, and feel the burden of life with a new and intolerable oppression. Can he in that moment of despair turn to others for help? No; because they are in the agonies of the same experience. What then? When the conviction is so keen and relentless, the heart will begin to know that in turning away from Christ, it turned from the Son of God, the only mediator of the covenant of peace. This is the conviction of sin which the Spirit of God is to work in hearts which have not believed in the Saviour of the world. Christ cannot be understood until sin is understood. So long as sin is regarded from a merely social point of view, the Cross of Christ must appear to be an exaggeration. Why do with blood a work which could be done as well with water? Why sacrifice a man when the blood of a beast would answer every purpose? But the moment that sin is seen under the illumination of infinite holiness, the Cross of Christ alone is equal to the tragic awe and appalling horror of the situation. The first clear view which any man gets of the sinfulness of sin marks the crisis of his life. From that time he elects his destiny. III. In the light of this exposition we may see the way clear to some PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS. 1. All attempts to establish a satisfactory life on the basis of what is commonly known as morality, must be given up. Morality has become one of the fine arts. It is a fine balancing of calculations, a tacit understanding with evil powers, at best but an armed neutrality. But what if morality be only an art — the most cunning and profitable of tricks? What if the partitions which we call our "rights" be saved from destruction merely because it pays better to repress the fire of passion than to give it free course? The Holy Ghost teaches us that we cannot be right with one another until we are right with God. He says: "You must be born again — you must die unto yourself, that you may live unto God." This is clearly a magnificent basis of life, supplying as it does eternal guarantees of purity and nobleness. 2. All hopes founded upon what are thought to be different degrees of sin must be abandoned. There are, of course, different degrees of crime, but the question does not turn upon crime at all. For all the purposes of criminal law it may be sufficient to classify men according to the mere accidents of their mischievous behaviour, so that punishment may be assigned with some degree of proportion to the shock which public feeling has sustained; but another standard must be set up when the offence is between man and God. "Would you send a murderer and a speculative sceptic to the same hell?" it may be asked. But stop! The question is one of the heart, not of the hand. According to the teaching of the Holy Ghost it may be that the heart through which has passed an unholy desire may be in a worse condition than the heart whose momentary passion has vented itself in murderous vengeance. The thing to be understood is that sin is spiritual, and that it is to be judged spiritually, without reference to the vulgarity or noise which may make it socially noticeable. 3. Under such realization of sin the work of Christ is seen in its true light. Here it is emphatically true that "they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." But let the boastful man awake to the fact that in his own body there is a slowly developing disease, painless in its early stages, but surely advancing upon his very life; let him come to the conviction that at any moment his pulse may cease, and instantly his attitude towards the medical profession may be totally changed. A new conviction has given him a new feeling and compelled him towards a new policy. Jesus Christ makes use of this very experience to throw light upon His own ministry: "I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Everything, therefore, is made to depend upon conviction. Where there is no conviction there will be no pressure of necessity. Where there is no thirst, who cares for the fountain? but in the desert, under an intolerable sun, who can calculate the value of a cup of cold water? Christ awaits the demands of spiritual necessity. He knows that the Holy Ghost will so torment the heart with a sense of sin as to compel the sufferer to pray for mercy, and at that point of anguish he will show himself to the Saviour of the world. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Of sin, because they believe not on me; |
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