The Fourth Sunday after Easter , 2001
John 16:5-15

"He Will Glorify Me"

Those who have studied Karl Marx in depth can't escape the role of Frederick Engels. The two became lifelong friends in 1844. Marx got the glory for the theories of Communism and historical materialism, but they were actually ideas discovered by Engels. Engels was always ahead of Marx. Engels co-authored The German Ideology in 1845. He co-authored The Communist Manifesto in 1848. He ghost wrote many of Marx's journalism pieces to help earn him some extra money. Whereas Marx had a turgid, unreadable literary form, Engels had a lively writing style and the ability to turn a phrase.

Moreover, Frederick Engels was wealthy. He was an executive of his father's factory in Manchester, England and was a responsible, hardworking man. Marx too grew up in opulence but became estranged from his parents, and once married, never bothered to go out and get a job. For that, the Marx family lived in virtual squalor. Karl became an irresponsible philanderer who preferred to lie most of the day on the living room sofa. He spent his life begging money from Engels, and usually Frederick gave it to him. Marx's grandson admitted later on: "There is no doubt that without Engels, Marx and his family would have starved." Nevertheless, Marx became the darling of the German radical movement. Exuding authority and confidence he was happy to receive their adoration. Marxism of course became a hideous political system, the source of untold suffering. Be that as it may, the duo of Marx and Engels is a case of one man doing the work, and the other getting the limelight. Only Engels' humility allowed him to play such a back seat role. A similar thing happens in the Persons of the Trinity. After the Son of God's ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit took His place on earth. Speaking of the impending arrival of the Holy Spirit, Jesus promised the Church, "He will glorify Me." Thus, one of the roles of the Spirit is to glorify the Lord Jesus. This and related matters we want to examine now.

Reading John 16:5-7:

But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, 'Where are You going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.

Sometimes people today wish they had lived during the time of Jesus; to hear His voice, see his miracles, touch the hem of His garment. Think how much easier it would be to believe and learn from the Savior Himself. To them the words of Jesus still apply. "It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you." And that is what Jesus Christ has done. The Spirit is His gift to the Church. The Lord left us His Holy Spirit to make His presence as real to us as if we were listening to Him teaching beside the Sea of Galilee. And the Spirit can do more for us than Jesus could have done. He can come within us, and take up residence within our very beings. He not only brings to our remembrance what Jesus taught, but reveals to us the meaning of His death and resurrection. The Spirit strengthens us with the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament, and makes us more Christ-like. None of these things we could ever have grasped or enjoyed had we merely lived during the time of Jesus. We are indeed not worse off, but better. Verses 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.

We now see another of the many hats that the Holy Spirit wears. We know that He is our helper and advocate. As our helper, He comforts and strengthens us in our affliction. As our advocate he defends us against the accusations of the Devil. These are decisive functions. But here we see the Holy Spirit in a different role. He convicts the world. Therefore He is a prosecutor. What is a prosecutor? A prosecutor brings formal charges against a criminal. In the case of the Holy Spirit he convicts sinful men and women of being in the wrong, and he brings about the world's conviction. "And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and judgment."

Sin, righteousness, and judgment: let us survey these one at a time. First, the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin. The basic sin is unbelief. God sent His Son into the world and the world refused to believe in Him. The world is guilty. We are guilty; we are guilty of unbelief. Maurice Roberts said it well when he wrote:

Unbelief is the father of sins and is found in every sin. It is the hardest sin to master and the last to be mortified. It follows all men from the cradle to the grave. No Christian is free from its chilling influence. It is the spirit of the world. It knows no shame, but scorns God, pours doubt upon truth, denies all that Christ has said or done, scoffs at goodness and turns love to poison.

When the Holy Spirit convicts the world of the sin of unbelief it goes to the very root of the world's problem. The world then turns in faith and repentance to King Jesus, the One who died, rose again, ascended on high, and now rules Heaven and earth. We trust that one day the Holy Spirit will fulfill this goal of ruling the earth. If the Holy Spirit has been poured upon the Church, how can we expect anything less than the triumph in this present age of Christ the King? However, in our present era we are far from being under the control of the Spirit of Christ. The conflict is a bitter one. We battle every day in the war between faith and unbelief. Roberts continues:

Our greatest need is to believe more than we do. We believe in an inspired Bible, but we need to believe it more than we do. We believe in the providence of God; we need to believe it still more. We believe in the Holy Spirit; we have need of more faith in Him still. We believe in the Gospel as the power of God; we have not believed yet as we should. We believe that rightly received the physical sacraments bring spiritual blessing; we need even more faith in their sanctifying power. We believe in the leading and guidance of God for our lives; we need to believe and trust much more.

Oh that the Holy Prosecutor would convict us of the sin of unbelief!

What about righteousness? How will the Holy Spirit convict the world of righteousness? Jesus tries to clarify this when He says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness "because I go to My Father and you see Me no more." (v. 10) The Resurrection seems to be crucial here. The resurrection would vindicate Jesus. His rising from the dead and ascending in glory to the Father would mark Him off as the truly Righteous One. Thus, the world would be convicted with respect to the righteousness of Christ. The Holy Spirit would prove that Jesus was the true and holy Son of God.

Next, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of judgment. How would He do that? Surely this judgment has to do with Satan, for Jesus says, "the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment 'because the ruler of this world is judged.'" Jesus had already spoken several times about judging the devil (John 12:31; 14:30). When does Satan's judgment take place? The key is the ensemble of events touched off by Christ's death; His cross, resurrection, and ascension. The Bible suggests to us that that was the moment when Satan was cast out of heaven and bound (Luke 10:18; Rev. 20:2). His judgment began then, it will end at the Great White Throne.

Summing things up, it is clear that the Holy Spirit is the Cosmic Prosecutor. He helps the Church by convicting the world. Through the preaching of God's Word and the celebration of the sacraments the Prosecutor convicts the world with respect to its own sin of not believing in Christ. The Prosecutor uses the resurrection to convict the world with respect to the righteousness of Christ; God the Father completely vindicated His Son through the resurrection. And lastly the Holy Prosecutor convinces the world of judgment by prosecuting Satan. The Church rejoices in God's judgment against the Devil. It is a wonderful judgment. The power of the Holy Spirit grants the Church victory as the gates of Hell come crashing down. Verses 12-13:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

Our Lord tells the disciples that He has yet many things to say to them, but they are not yet ready to receive them. They will be able to receive them in the future, under the guidance of the Spirit who He will shortly send. The Holy Spirit will tell them "many things," and more amazing than that, the Spirit would guide them to "all truth." What exactly are those "many things" that the Spirit would divulge? How would He guide the Church into "all truth"? There are several ways of seeing it. Certainly the "truth" that the Spirit would reveal points to Jesus Himself. The Spirit would teach the Church as Jesus had taught His disciples for three years of His ministry on earth. Since Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6), Jesus' phrase "all truth" means not "all there is to know about anything," but "all you need to know about me." Since Jesus is the source of truth, it is the Holy Spirit that leads the Church to an ever deeper knowledge of that truth, and to work out the implications of that truth in the world. Thus, the Holy Spirit guides the Church through the ages. Verses 14-15:

He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

We come upon one more role of the Holy Spirit. It is the duty of the Third Person of the Trinity to glorify the Lord. He makes men and women aware of the glory of Jesus. How does the Spirit do this? J. I. Packer calls this role the floodlight ministry. He urges us to think of the Holy Spirit as a floodlight. It is a helpful image. He says,

I remember walking to a church one winter evening to preach on the words "he shall glorify me," and seeing the building floodlit as I turned a corner, I realized that this was exactly the illustration my message needed. When floodlighting is well done, the floodlights are so placed that you do not see them; you are not in fact supposed to see where the light is coming from; what you are meant to see is just the building on which the floodlights are trained. The intended effect is to make it visible when otherwise it would not be seen for the darkness, and to maximize its dignity by throwing all its details into relief so that you see it properly. This perfectly illustrates the Spirit's New Covenant role. He is, so to speak, the hidden floodlight shining on the Savior.

This metaphor is useful for our Christian walk and worship. If the purpose of the Spirit is to glorify Jesus, then we should be looking to Christ, not to the Holy Spirit. It is possible to zero in on the Holy Spirit when the Spirit Himself does not desire such attention. His main and constant task is to mediate Jesus' presence to us. How is that so? The Holy Spirit works through the distribution of the Eucharist, but we do not come forward to receive the Holy Spirit we come forward to receive Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who helps our worship, and as the Third Person of the Trinity He deserves our adoration, but above all He desires that Christ get the glory in our prayers and praises. As we read the Scriptures the Holy Spirit guides us into wisdom and truth, but that wisdom and truth is most intimately connected to Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. In our fellowship with one another it is the Holy Spirit who polishes us, but our fellowship is sweetest when we behave Christ-like to one another. It is the Holy Spirit's job to beautify the Bride of Christ, but the Church becomes lovely only to the extent that she submits to and obeys her Bridegroom, the Lord. Over and again the Spirit shines the light upon Christ. It is therefore our job to behold that glory, and as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18).

Lastly, let us ask a question that has only been hinted at up until now. To whom is the Holy Spirit given? Is the primary work of the Holy Spirit to build up the believer, to build up the church, or to transform the world? Is the Holy Spirit's locus of activity the world, the church or the person? The tendency of the Roman church has been to limit the Holy Spirit to the offices of the church; the tendency of Protestantism has been to make the Holy Spirit captive to the individual by locating the Spirit's home in the hearts of the faithful. And few people pay much attention to the Holy Spirit's work in the world. (John 16:9) So where does the Holy Spirit operate? He operates in all three. The Bible says that. Though our Gospel passage today suggests that the Holy Spirit is given to the world in order to convict the world, we should not overlook the fact that Jesus, by His words, is setting up the Church. Christ speaks His instruction to the Twelve, to the apostolic band. His Spirit came on Pentecost to create a community, to form a fellowship. Hence, the stress in the New Testament is not so much on every individual's possession of the Spirit, but on the Church's possession of Him. While it is possible that the individual Christian is regarded by Scripture as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), it is beyond question that the New Testament emphasis falls squarely on the Church, the collective Body of Christ, as the Temple. This is the point of most, if not all the New Testament texts on the subject (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:20-22; I Peter 2:4, 5; Rev. 3:12). The Spirit dwells in the hearts of believers, but only to extent that they become part of God's Temple par excellence , the Church. The Spirit transforms the world, but only to the extent that the Church is faithful and strong.

It is as we are the Church that we have the Spirit, because it is the Church that possesses the Spirit, and therefore it is the Church that possesses the world-transforming power that Christ promised. It is in the Church's preaching of the Word, the celebration of her Sacraments, and the fellowship of her people that the activity of the Holy Spirit is most concentrated. It is the worship of the Church that moves history and renews the world. Irenaeus, one of the great Fathers of the early Church, warned his contemporaries in A. D. 190 of lightly dismissing the Church. He wrote:

For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth. Those, therefore, who do not partake of Him, are neither nourished into life from the mother's breasts, nor do they enjoy that most limpid foundation which issues from the Body of Christ; but they dig for themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches, and drink putrid water out of the mire, fleeing from the faith of the Church lest they be convicted; and rejecting the Spirit, that they may not be instructed.

It is therefore hard to avoid the conclusion that the Body of Christ is the center of God's kingdom, where the Holy Spirit shines His most bright and beautiful light.

The focus of the Spirit's activity in the Church is a timely message for a perversely individualistic culture. Ours is a crowded society of lonely souls. It is no accident that suicide increases in an environment of isolation and social withdrawal. Therefore, we need the life of the Church for our psychological stability and spiritual well being. We were designed by God to take our place in the Body of Christ. So let us commit ourselves to Christ in the life of the Church, let us glorify our Lord in the worship of the Church, let us change the world through the outreach of the Church. And let us be very aware, that permeating all our corporate prayers and enterprises is the quiet, but powerful presence of the Holy Spirit.

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