James Nisbet Commentary - John 16:8

James Nisbet Commentary - John 16:8 - 16:8

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James Nisbet Commentary - John 16:8 - 16:8

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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

CONVICTION OF SIN

‘When He is come, He will reprove (convict) the world of sin.’

Joh_16:8

I. There is nothing in the world more difficult than to convict any soul of sin, or to be convicted of sin ourselves; and that for four reasons.

(a) Because of the deep-seated self-complacency which blinds every soul.

(b) Because our tendency is to imagine that we are going to be judged by the standard of our set.

(c) Because we are apt to be blinded by the good opinions that people have of us.

(d) Because we think we are people with exceptional difficulties.

II. Now we come to what the Holy Spirit does.—He cuts right away from us all these four things on which we stand, and He tears away all these four veils which blind our eyes.

(a) He first of all tears away the veil of self-complacency. He convicts of sin because He convicts of judgment. Do you realise that you and I have to stand, one by one, before the judgment-seat of God? That we have to give an account of ourselves before God? That every day that is passing is bringing us nearer to that judgment, and that, as a matter of fact, God is judging us every day we live? You do not imagine, do you, that death is going to change you? Five minutes after death we are just the same as five minutes before. Exactly. The real terror of death is that it changes absolutely nothing. And you go to your own place—the place you have prepared for yourself. And that is the first thing the Holy Spirit has to bring home to us. The awfulness of it, and the utter folly of waiting on year after year as if some day was going to come when everything would be changed, when we should have plenty of time to repent and get ready for heaven. God save you from that miserable delusion!

(b) Then the second work that the Holy Spirit does in convicting the world of sin is to press home the standard by which we shall be judged. Not the standard of your set; not the standard of what they think in the club, or in the office, or in the warehouse. God shall judge the world by the standard of that Man Whom He has ordained, and that Man Whom He has ordained is Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the standard. The generations come and go, but the standard is the same. How do we meet that standard?

(c) And then, again, the Holy Spirit has to break through our reliance upon the good opinion of our friends. I do want the Holy Spirit to make every one of us realise that it is not what our friends think of us that matters in the least, but what do I think of God and what does God think of me as He watches me all my time on earth? That is the only question of priceless importance.

(d) And then, fourthly, are we exceptional? Is human conceit right in persuading us that we are exceptional people, to be exceptionally judged? The Holy Spirit has to bring home, if we imagine that, the unpleasant but very wholesome truth that we are all very ordinary men and women, and no temptation has overtaken us but that which is common to man. Do you imagine, when you have that struggle with your thoughts, that you are the only one that has ever had to face such a difficulty? Do you imagine, you who are coming through the difficulties and perplexities of doubt, that you are the only one who has ever had to fight them? There is no temptation that has overtaken you but that which is common to man, and before the Holy Spirit can build up strength in you and give you the power which He wants to give you, and is ready to give you, to make you a strong, self-controlled, and holy man, He has to make you realise first that you have broken His laws.

—

Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.

Illustrations

(1) ‘I remember so well (says the Bishop of London) when I was speaking about the Good Shepherd and the lost sheep to a man once in a slum where I was visiting him; he said quite cheerfully, “Oh, yes, sir; I quite understand all about that. The more a man sins the better God likes him.” What he had carried away from Mission sermons which he had heard was this: that God liked forgiving—to put it into his mode of expression—a good big sinner. And the Church had begun the wrong side of the Gospel with him. What he wanted was to have preached to him judgment to come first; for he had no idea that he was a sinner. He did not realise that he was trampling under foot the blood of the Most High and putting Him to an open shame. He was judging himself by the standard of his set.’

(2) ‘A man once said, “Oh, there is plenty of time; I have only got to say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me,’ before I die, and it will be all right.” Shortly afterwards he was thrown from his horse, and as his friends gathered round him, he looked round and said, “Can you do nothing for me?” He saw in their blank faces that his case was hopeless. He looked round again, and, with a fearful oath, he died. That comes of waiting for the time when we are going to have plenty of time to repent.’

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WORLD

‘And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’

Joh_16:8

We are prepared to understand how it is that our Saviour should put His finger, as it were, upon the sin of the world, that He should have declared unbelief to be its characteristic sin—the sin which in the last resort will have proved the most hurtful of all.

I. ‘He shall reprove the world of sin because they believe not in Me.’—Unbelief is, or it issues in, the neglect or the rejection of God’s ‘great salvation.’ Many have exclaimed when they have weighed such words, ‘We never thought the sin of unbelief to be so serious.’ The world to-day is of the same opinion, and if we differ it is because the Spirit of God has taught us better.

II. But our Saviour says of the Holy Ghost, ‘He shall reprove the world of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more.’ If the world’s estimate of sin be defective, its estimate of righteousness must likewise be equally untrustworthy. He who does not regard sin as God views it, must be without true conceptions of righteousness, which is its opposite. The world does not recognise the truth that sin is at bottom the alienation of the heart from God and its idolatry of self. And further, the notions about righteousness current amongst men generally are very low compared with the standard which we find in the Sermon on the Mount. The world’s ideal of it does not excel even if it equals ‘the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees’ which our Saviour rebuked in such scathing terms. Righteousness as He enforced it must be inward, it must be sincere, it must be all-embracing in its scope.

III. The Holy Ghost ‘shall reprove the world of judgment’; and the reason given is this, ‘because the prince of this world is judged.’ Now when the world’s sin, that is, its unbelief, is condemned, when its ideals of righteousness have been unmasked and shown to be inadequate, then it follows ‘that the prince of this world is judged.’ His overthrow is henceforward only a matter of time. He will not be suffered to go on ‘deceiving the nations.’ The Lord will consume him with the breath of His mouth, and destroy him with the brightness of His coming. It follows that the process of judgment has already begun. Christians condemn the prince of this world in the degree in which they become partakers of the spirit of Christ.

—

Rev. F. K. Aglionby.

Illustration

‘ “This incident,” writes Bishop Moule of Durham, “is so far within my own ken that I remember seeing, in my early childhood, the dear and beautiful subject of it, the aged widow of a farmer in my father’s parish. My mother took me to visit Mrs. Elliot one day in her farm-kitchen. It was, I think, in 1848. I still see the brightness, the sweet radiance, of that venerable face; it shone, as I now know, with Jesus Christ. At the age of about eighty-one, after a life of blameless kindliness, so that to say she had ‘never done harm to any one’ was from her no unmeaning utterance, she was, through the Holy Scriptures, convinced of sin. ‘I have lived eighty years in the world,’ was her cry, ‘and never done anything for God!’ Deep went the Divine work in the still active nature, and long was the spiritual darkness. Then, ‘the word of the Cross’ found its own way in her soul, and ‘believing, she rejoiced with joy unspeakable.’ Three or four years of life were yet given her. They were illuminated by faith, hope, and love in a wonderful degree. To every visitor she bore witness of her Lord. Nights, wakeful with pain, were spent in living over the beloved scenes of His earthly ministry; ‘I was at the well of Samaria last night’; ‘Ah, I was all last night upon Mount Calvary.’ In extreme suffering an opiate was offered, and she declined it; for ‘when I lose the pain I lose the thought of my Saviour too.’ At last she slept in the Lord, gently murmuring, almost singing, Rock of Ages, with her latest voice. Wonderful is the phenomenon of the conviction of the virtuous. But it is a phenomenon corresponding to the deepest facts of the soul.” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

CONVICTIONS OF THE SPIRIT

The word ‘reprove’ is an unfortunately weak rendering of the true meaning. It has been amended both in the margin and in the Revised Version. Instead of ‘reprove’ we have ‘convince’ and ‘convict.’ The difference is enormous. It has often been pointed out that to ‘reprove’ the world is no new thing. A thousand writers, sacred and profane, have reproved the world, and the world has given little heed. But the work of the Spirit is widely different. He shall convict those in whom He comes of sin, of their own sin; He shall convict them of the need of righteousness, of the beauty of holiness; He shall convict them of the judgment that has been passed once for all upon the spirit of worldliness.

I. Conviction of sin is the work of the Holy Ghost.—No other power, no other influence or means can produce it. It is the prerogative of the Spirit. It needs the thunderbolt power of God to penetrate through the toughened armour-plating of worldliness. Only the piercing light of His direct revelation can dispel the dark illusions that hinder our sight, and show us the disconcerting reality.

II. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict of righteousness.—The reason that he gives is ‘because I go to the Father.’ This sounds rather cryptic until we remember another statement concerning the same Spirit that ‘He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you.’ The righteousness of which we are to be convinced is the righteousness of Christ—a righteousness so approved and acceptable to God that He Who possessed it could say, ‘I go to my Father.’ You will perhaps say this work is unnecessary. There is a conviction that says, ‘I am fully persuaded of the sinless righteousness of Jesus’ and yet remains impotent, and there is a conviction that brings this perception into vital relationship to the whole personality; that says ‘the righteousness of Christ must be my righteousness; that is the goal of my endeavour, the purpose of my life, the end and aim of my being, and I cannot rest until I have gained something of it, that so I may “come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” ’ This is the work of the Spirit.

III. We are to be convicted of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I think this is a statement concerning which many may err. They are likely to think that the judgment mentioned means the judgment of the Last Day. That, however, is not the meaning. It refers to the judgment which the life and death of Jesus have passed upon the spirit of the world. In the light of the Spirit we look back upon the tremendous conflict. On the one side is the rejecting and persecuting crowd dominated by the spirit of the world; on the other there are the life and death of the Man of Love and Righteousness. For a moment we are arbiters of truth. But the Spirit of Truth convinces us once for all that the prince of the world is tried, judged, condemned, and for ever discredited. Our eyes are open for a truer discernment. Henceforth we know that the standards of the world are false measures.

Rev. Walter H. Green.

Illustration

‘There is such a thing as an abortive, or fictitious, conviction, the cold result of a sheer dread of personal consequences, where the will all the while remains in itself centred on evil. The chaplain of a prison had to deal with a man condemned to death. He found the man anxious, as he well might be; nay, he seemed more than anxious; convicted, spiritually alarmed. The chaplain’s instructions all bore upon the power of the Redeemer to save to the uttermost; and it seemed as if the message was received, and the man were a believer. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the chaplain had come to think that there was ground for appeal from the death-sentence; he placed the matter before the proper authorities; and with success. On his next visit, very cautiously and by way of mere suggestions and surmises, he led the apparently resigned criminal towards the possibility of a commutation. What would he say, how would his repentance stand, if his life were granted him? The answer soon came. Instantly the prisoner divined the position; asked a few decisive questions; then threw his Bible across the cell, and, civilly thanking the chaplain for his attentions, told him that he had no further need of him, nor of his Book.’