Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed, Alleluia! +
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel. That's how the explanation to the 3rd Article of the Creed from the Small Catechism begins, and it summarizes one of the most profound truths that the Scriptures teach, that we hear in our Gospel lesson. When it comes to our faith, when it comes to us believing in Jesus, knowing anything at all about faith, it all comes about not by our strength, but by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel, through the Word. The Holy Spirit is the Helper, the Comfortor, the Paraclete (if you prefer the old Greek word as I do) – the One who comes to us with the Word of God and grants us faith and understanding. The Spirit working faith in us by the Gospel is indeed to our benefit, and today, we will hear again and remember Jesus' Words about the Spirit, and the Spirit will do His Holy Spirit thing and declare the things of Christ to us, and having called and gathered us here around the Word the Spirit will enlighten, sanctify, and richly forgive us. Listen.
When He [the Spirit, the Helper] comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So right here for us, Jesus lays out what the Holy Spirit will do in the Church, what the Word of God preached and taught will do – because wherever the Word of God is proclaimed, the Holy Spirit will be there at work. The Spirit calls us by the Gospel, the Spirit works through the Word. You want the Holy Spirit to be at work in your life – then, as former LCMS President A.L. Berry would say, “Get in the Word.” And when we hear the Word of God, the Spirit is going to convict the world, the world which God the Father loved by sending His Son, so that whoever believes in Him because the Holy Spirit convicts the world would have everlasting life. The Spirit will convict – He will show you what you've missed, what you've failed to understand, and He will do so thoroughly. The Spirit will connect the dots for you, for people throughout the world. That's what the Spirit does – the Spirit takes the Word of God and counteracts sin, our sin that would confuse us and mislead us and derail us. The Spirit comes in and by the Word fixes that.
And the Spirit convicts and fixes and corrects and redirects along three paths, in three angles. The first that Jesus mentions here is concerning sin. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me. The first thing the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit reveals sin. Well, Pastor, isn't sin sort of obvious? Well, remember, you're saying that as a Christian, as someone whom the Holy Spirit has already spent a lot of time convicting about sin, teaching and showing and revealing sin. We're used to dealing with and confronting sin – it's how we start every service, it's part of every sermon or bible study here. But this is something that happens in your life because of the working of the Holy Spirit – and apart from the Holy Spirit revealing your sin to you, you won't, you can't see it. Consider David, when he gets all wrapped up in his affair with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah – David doesn't see, doesn't understand His sin... not until Nathan the prophet comes, and Nathan speaks, and the Spirit convicts David, and then by the power of the Spirit David sees his sin and confesses; then David will write in the 51st Psalm – Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Because without Thy Spirit, O Lord, I get lost and caught up in sin!
And this is the reality – without the Spirit revealing sin to us, without the Spirit showing us our sin, we fall into folly. We fall into great shame and vice, and unbelief. And this is what we are in fact seeing when we see all the wickedness of sin around us – because the Spirit does make us to see sin at work in the world around us. We see unbelief and its fruit. Paul notes that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost. But if you don't see your sin, if you don't recoil from it, and if rather you dive on into it and delight in it, if you celebrate it and demand that it be validated and praised – well, that's because you don't believe that you're a sinner, because you don't believe in Jesus. And Satan and your sinful flesh will attack you, they will try to drive you into the morass of gross and open sin to destroy and crush your faith – and the Holy Spirit with great love for you will show you your sin and drive you to repentance. That's the first thing the Spirit does.
The Spirit also convicts concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer. The Holy Spirit will speak concerning righteousness – because again, the world apart from the Holy Spirit doesn't have a clue about what is actually right and good and just. Apart from Christ we will simply have people clamoring over their own hairbrained ideas and demanding their own way and coming up with crackpot schemes to fix this or that and everything in the world – and of course, these fixes only come about if we give them more power and do things their way.
That's not righteousness. That's not how things get fixed. That's not how the sin that we see in ourselves, in the world, gets fixed. With might of ours could naught be done, soon were our loss effect. No, we need a righteousness far greater, far truer than any that we ourselves could muster. We need Jesus. We need Christ and His righteousness. All the plans of the world are junk – Christ Jesus is the One who fixes things. Jesus is the righteous One – the One who makes things right, who rescues us from sin, death, and the power of the devil, who redeems us, who restores us. And how does He do this? By going to the Cross, by His bitter suffering and death – in a little while, and you will not see me – remember from last week, that's Jesus talking about His crucifixion, where He fulfills all righteousness.
So having shown you your sin, the Holy Spirit will show you your Savior – He will fix your eyes upon Jesus, the Author and Perfector of your faith. That's the Holy Spirit's job – and whenever you have any understanding of Who Jesus is and what He has done for you – the Holy Spirit has guided you into that truth. The reason you believe in Jesus is that the Holy Spirit has called you by the Gospel and enlightened you with His gifts. The Holy Spirit leads us away from trust in ourselves, trust in our own strength, our own power, our own reason and smarts, and He makes us to trust in Jesus and His righteousness. Because of what Christ Jesus has done, because of His death upon the Cross and His resurrection, you have forgiveness and life – and the Spirit is the One who actually delivers that forgiveness and life to you – He delivers it by the Word, whether it's the Word proclaimed, or the Word attached to water in Baptism, or the Word attached to bread and wine in the Supper. What we have taken to calling “the means of grace” are actually more properly called “the means of the Spirit” - they are the means, the ways, in which the Holy Spirit brings you Christ and His righteousness.
And one more thing. The Spirit will convict concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So, we live by the Spirit – by the Spirit we see our sin and then we see our Savior, we are brought to repentance and faith. But then we see the world around us, and so often it is a mess, a Christless and anti-Jesus mess. And this can threaten to overwhelm us, drive us into despair. And so the Holy Spirit speaks concerning judgment. And this is where that old term “Paraclete” is such a great word. It's translated here as “Helper” because hardly no one knows what a paraclete was anymore, but it's worth learning. In the Ancient world, if you were in court, and you had someone leveling vile accusations against you, and threatening you with ruin, you were allowed to have a paraclete – someone who would be along side you (para – like parallel, like side by side) and who would talk (clete, call out) to you and help you, advise you, encourage you, console you. Your defense lawyer who would see you through the case over and against the ravings of your enemy.
That's what the Holy Spirit does – the Spirit is your Perry Mason, your Matlock, your Atticus Finch. And when the world rants and raves at you, and you see the power of Satan roaring and raving, and it's fearful and it's intimidating, the Spirit is the One who leans over and says, “Don't worry – He's already lost – it's done and dusted and he's just in denial. He's judged, the deed is done, one little word can fell him.” And what is that word – well, we've been saying it all Easter – Christ is risen, He is risen indeed. The Spirit holds the judgment of God before our eyes – the judgment that you are alive in Christ, and in Christ you are forgiven, redeemed, and bound for the resurrection, and that Satan, the ruler of this messed up world, is bound for hell. This world's prince may still scowl fierce has he will – he can harm us none. That what the Spirit will remind you of in the Word.
And the Spirit continually and repeatedly works, because we can't keep this all in, we can't have all of this wondrous stuff that Jesus does for us in our heads at the same time – it's too big, to wondrous for us. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. We cannot process the entirety of what Christ has done for us at any one time. So Jesus sends the Spirit – When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the Truth. The Spirit guides you now into all the things about Jesus, about Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life that you need. The Spirit applies, delivers, gives you the Jesus that you need as you need Him. He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. Everything you need to know about Jesus, about the Father (for all that the Father has is Mine), this is what the Holy Spirit brings to you and reveals to you and makes you to understand.
So that's what the Holy Spirit does. And no, we don't talk about the Holy Spirit all the time, but in large part that is because the Holy Spirit is busy focusing us and fixing our eyes upon Jesus. And whenever you see Jesus, whenever you understand how sin attacks and how Christ's righteousness wins out forgiveness and that Satan is defeated – that's the Spirit at work upon you and with you and in you for your good, to be your paraclete, your Helper, just as Jesus sent Him to you to be, just as Jesus poured Him upon you in Holy Baptism to be. The Spirit is indeed the Lord, the giver of life – because He gives you Jesus. And while no man may say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit – you have been given the Spirit, and thus together we gladly confess that Jesus has forgiven us and given us life and crushed Satan. Let us confess it by the Spirit again! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia! +
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