In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the Bible tells us that He ascended into heaven and took His seat at the right hand of God. This is definitely one of those events from the life of Christ that doesn’t get as much attention as it probably should. Either people don’t really think about it that much at all, at least not as much as they do about our Lord’s death and resurrection, or they think about it in a way that’s completely different than what the Bible actually says about it. For example, I think lots of people just assume that when Jesus ascended into heaven, it was more or less the same kind of thing as when our loved ones go to heaven after they die. Just like grandma or grandpa are in heaven now, that’s where Jesus is at too.

But that’s not actually what the ascension means. And that one misunderstanding can lead to other misunderstandings too. It can deprive of the real benefits of this event, which as we say in the Creed, Jesus did for us and for our salvation. So, in today’s sermon, I’m going to do two things. In the first half, I’m just going to walk through what the Bible says the ascension really means, and in the second half, I’m going to explain what it means for us, as in, what are the benefits of this event for our faith.

Again, when the Bible tells us that Jesus ascended into heaven, we should not think about that in the same way that we think about our loved ones who die and go to heaven. On the one hand, when that happens to our loved ones, it’s only their souls that go to heaven and not their bodies. We bury their bodies in the ground to wait for the resurrection of the dead. But Jesus ascended not just in His soul, but in His body too. As Saint Mark tells us in our Gospel lesson today, “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” And as Saint Luke reminds us in the book of Acts, the disciples literally saw it happen with their own eyes: “And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight." Do we normally get to see people’s souls visibly go to heaven after they die? Never. And yet, Jesus let His disciples see this.

Furthermore, the Bible teaches us that when the soul of a believer goes to be with Christ in heaven after they die, they’re not able to leave there. As we read in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, “A great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” And yet, when it comes to the Jesus’ ascension, nowhere does God’s Word tell us that He was confined by it in any way at all. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. As Saint Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 4, “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” And as Paul also says in Ephesians 2, [God the Father] raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority… and He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.” 

This is an amazing thing! The ascension of Jesus doesn’t mean that He’s trapped somewhere, it means that He can go anywhere. It means that He already is everywhere. And not just as God, which He always was, but now even as a man. Who is it that ascended far above the heavens and fills all things? It’s Jesus.

The interpretive key that unlocks the correct understanding of what happened at the ascension is this term from the Bible, “the right hand of God.” Again, Mark tells us that when Jesus ascended, He took His seat and God’s right hand. But in the Scriptures, the right hand of God is not a place. It’s a power. Just like we use our right hand to accomplish most of the things that we do, God’s right hand is a reference to His omnipotence and His omnipresence. As we read in Psalm 118, “Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: ‘the right hand of the Lord does valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exalts.” And as it says in Psalm 139, “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” When the people of Israel were delivered from bondage to slavery in Egypt, and God led them through the waters of the Red Sea on dry ground, Moses tells us that God did it by His right hand. He means that He did it by His own strength and power and not that of anyone else’s. So, when the Bible says that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, like we say in the Creed, it doesn’t mean that He went to some location far away from us. It means that He took up the fullness of His almighty power. Christ left His state of humiliation, where He didn’t always use His divine abilities completely, but limited Himself in certain ways, and now, He limits Himself no longer. He enters into the full state of His exultation, and communicates all of His divine attributes to His human nature. Not just as God, but also as a Man, Christ fills all things. Not just as God, but as a Man, He rules and reigns over everything in heaven and on earth. Jesus visibly went up into the clouds, not to show how He was going away, but to show how He lords over everything. He’s above it all.

And that’s where all the benefits come from for you and for me. Because Christ has ascended into heaven and taken His seat at the right hand of God, meaning, because He has taken up the fullness of His divine power even as a Man, that means so many comforting things for all of mankind.

First, it means that we have victory over our enemies. Listen to what Psalm 68 says about Jesus’ ascension, “You ascended on high leading a host of captives in your train.” The imagery here from the Psalmist is that of a Roman triumph. After the Romans conquered an enemy of theirs, they would have a great big parade to celebrate it. The victorious general would ride into the city first, standing in a chariot, and behind him, usually stripped naked and humiliated would be the leader of the enemy army that he had defeated. Christ defeated our enemies of sin, death, and the devil, through His death and resurrection. He stripped them naked, so to speak, and humiliated them, by taking away their power to condemn us. And in His ascension, Jesus reminds us of it. As Saint Paul says in Colossians 2, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Remember where it says that Jesus ascended from. It is was on the mount of Olives. That’s the place where the garden of Gethsemane is. Christ returned to the same location where some of the fiercest fighting for our salvation was done, the place where He literally sweat drops of blood just thinking about what He was going to endure, in order to proclaim His victory. And just like the angels came and ministered to Him after that battle was over, this time the angels stood by watching in wonder at the glory Jesus had brought to us men.

The ascension of Jesus also means, of course, that there is a place in heaven for all believers. Because Christ ascend into heaven, indeed, far above all the heavens, we can have confidence that through faith in Him, we will go to heaven someday too. In fact, the Bible tells us that our eternal life in Jesus is so secure for those who trust in Him that it’s as if we are already there. Here’s another passage from Saint Paul about the ascension, this time from Ephesians chapter 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

You and I, and every baptized child of God who trusts in Jesus for salvation, has been united to Him through faith. As the Bible says, He is the Head, and we are His body. So, if our Head has been glorified, we get the glory too. If our Head is in heaven, meaning eternally in the presence of God, we know that someday we’ll be there too. Didn’t that hymn that we sang at the beginning of the service, just hit the nail right on the head: “On Christ’s ascension I now build, the hope of my ascension; this hope alone has always stilled all doubt and apprehension; for where the Head is there as well I know His members are to dwell when Christ will come and call them.” Humanities place is with God. Jesus made that clear when He ascend into heaven as a Man. And He will return in the same way that His disciples saw Him go, to bring every man, woman, and child who believes in Him there enterally. As Christ said right before His ascension, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” 

And finally, the ascension of Jesus also means that we have access to Christ’s saving presence here and now in the means of grace, especially in Holy Communion. sometimes the ascension of Jesus has been used to try and denying the bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. If you know, this is the official position of Reformed churches, who follow in the theological tradition of John Calvin. They argue that when we take Communion, we can’t possibly be eating and drinking the real Body and Blood of Christ, because His Body is up in heaven. What they say is that through faith, our hearts ascend to heaven, where we feast upon Christ there spiritually. But Christianity is not about us going up to heaven to get Jesus. It is about Jesus coming down from heaven to get us. And the ascension doesn’t mean that Jesus can’t be with us bodily. It means the exact opposite! It assures us that every time we take the Lord’s Supper, we get the full Body and Blood of Jesus, even though He only has one Body. Unlike our bodies, His body can be in more than one place at the same time, because He no longer puts any limits on that body at all. Remember, Jesus “fills all things.”

When Christ our Lord said, “Take eat, this is my body,” He meant it. And when Jesus said “Behold I am with you always, to the end of the age,” He meant that too. Who is the One that promises to always be with us? It’s Jesus. And who is Jesus? Is Jesus just God? No, Jesus is also a Man. And the God man Jesus is with us whenever we men and women need Him. Chiefly, He is with us in His Body and Blood on the altar.

I heard a great story the other day from our district President, Pastor Saunders, at our circuit meeting. He told the story about one of his adult members who was handicapped. She was about fifty years old, but had the mind of 10-year-old instead. Apparently, she liked country music, and there’s some song about “where heaven is.” And when President Saunders asked her one time on a Communion visit, where is heaven, she pointed to the bread and wine on the table and said, “Right there, pastor.” That’s the faith of child. The kind of faith we need to take the Sacrament rightly. Heaven is where Jesus is. And Jesus is present where He’s promised to be. He’s present in His Body and Blood.

No, the ascension of our Lord doesn’t mean that Jesus is far away from us at all. It means that He is very close; closer than He could ever be. He draws so near to us poor sinners, that we are united with Him in the means of grace. Christ shares with us every heavenly blessing that He obtained through His life, death, and resurrection. Our sins are forgiven. We won’t go to hell. Our bodies will come back to life. And Jesus will never leave us or forsake us.

“He has raised our human nature

On the clouds to God’s right hand;

There we sit in heavenly places,

There with Him in glory stand.

Jesus reigns, adored by angels;

Man with God is on the throne.

By our mighty Lord’s ascension

We by faith behold our own.”

In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main theme for the sixth Sunday of Easter, which is called “Rogate,” and that means “to ask,” is the theme of prayer. This is a very appropriate topic for us to discuss on Mother’s Day, not only because for many of us it was our moms who first showed us how to pray, but also because there are few people in this world that probably pray more than mothers do for their children. I can still remember how my mom told me once that she prayed every night before bed that her four boys would find good Christian women to marry and that when we got older, we wouldn’t wander away from the faith. I thank God for giving me a mom that prayed that for me, and now I pray it for my own kids too.

Prayer is a wonderful gift that comes from the Lord. Jesus even tells is in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 16 that the reason why God gave it to us was so that we would have joy. As Christ says in verse 24 of our text “Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.” Prayer isn’t supposed to be something that causesus anxiety, it’s supposed to be something that takes it away. And yet, in order for that to happen, we also need to understand how to do it in the right kind of way.

The right kind of way to pray, according to God’s Word, is in Jesus’ Name. Again, as Jesus says in our text today, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My Name, He will give it to you.” But what exactly does it mean to pray in the Name of Jesus?

Certainly, praying in Jesus’ Name doesn’t just mean that you end your prayers with those exact words. If you notice not even the Lord’s Prayer includes the exact phrase “in Jesus’ Name.” But that, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad prayer. In fact, the Lord’s prayer is the best prayer of all. It’s a perfect prayer, because it includes every possible thing that we could ever ask for from God and summarizes all of it for us succinctly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we can have confidence that were praying correctly, because it’s literally the word of God. That’s how every good prayer starts. It doesn’t start with our own ideas or our own wisdom. It starts with the wisdom of God, which is given to us in His Holy Word.

Praying in Jesus’ Name also doesn’t mean using God’s Name as some kind of magic formula to get whatever you want. There was a very popular movement not too long ago in our country, called the “name it and claim it movement,” which taught this exact thing. Rich television personalities maintained that if you prayed in Jesus’ Name, and you believe in what you were praying about, you could get anything. If you wanted to be rich, God will bless you with lots of money. If you wanted to get cured of some disease, you could get that too. So long as you had enough faith, meaning so long as you wanted it bad enough, if you used Jesus’ Name, in just the right way, you could get it.

But that’s not what it means to pray in Jesus’ Name. We have all kinds of examples from the Bible of people trying to use Jesus’ Name for that purpose, but still not getting what they asked for. For example, in the book of James, James tells us in James chapter 4 that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” We shouldn’t expect God to give us things that we want to use for sinful purposes. What kind of a good God would do that? Or what about the story of the sons of Sceva from Acts chapter 19? Do you remember that one? That’s when a couple of Jewish exorcists tried to use Jesus’ Name to cast out a demon, but because they didn’t actually believe in him, the demon jumped on top of them and overpowered them all. So, using Jesus’ Name to try and get things, or thinking that you can trick God into giving you stuff if you want it bad enough, isn’t what praying in the Name of Jesus is about. 

What it’s about is praying for things in faith. And praying is faith is not about getting God to do the things that you think are best, it’s about receiving whatever God gives knowing that His will is best. It’s about trusting in the fact that because God has already given you the forgivness of sins in Jesus, He will certainly give you whatever else you need too. You can be confident that God is never holding out on you, because He didn’t even hold back His own Son from you. As Paul says in Romans 8, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not with Him gracious give us all things.”

The people that give the impression that our praying or our believing by itself cause things to happen, have it exactly backwards. Faith doesn’t do. It receives. And prayer doesn’t do anything either, at least not in that sense. Good prayer recognizes that God is the One who does everything. That’s the reason why we’re praying! Because we can’t do anything without Him. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” And that’s what praying in his Name is all about. 

Besides asking for things in faith, praying in Jesus’ Name also means praying according to God’s Word. True faith rest in the promises that God’s actually made, not in promises that He hasn’t. How would we even know what sort of things God wants us to have, if we didn’t have His Word? We don’t just look around and think about the things that we want. We have to look at the Scriptures. That’s where God speaks to us. That’s where the Holy Spirit guides us so that we don’t end up in the wrong place. When people try and look for signs in the world around them, and especially when they think about prayer as means to make those signs happen, they end up just interpreting them the way they want anyway. The use the façade of signs to legitimize whatever decision they’re making, even though it’s impossible to prove that the sign actually came from God. But our faith, and our prayers, aren’t supposed to be built on every changing signs. They’re supposed to be built upon the unchanging truth of God’s Word. Only then can we have confidence that we will receive the things for which we ask.

And just because it looks like we didn’t get the exact thing that we prayed for, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t. It certainly doesn’t mean that we didn’t have enough faith. Did Saint Paul not have faith in Jesus, when he pleaded with the Lord three times to remove the thorn that was in his flesh and God told him, “No.” Did King David not have faith in Jesus, when he prayed and fasted all night that his son wouldn’t die, and God did not let the baby get better? Did Moses not have faith in Jesus when He asked God to let him cross over into the promised land and instead the Lord only let him see it from a distance? And what about the prayer that Jesus Himself prayed in the garden of Gethsemane? In the mystery of His state of humiliation, our Lord prayed multiple times that if it were possible for the cup of His suffering to pass from Him, that God would take it away. Did that mean that Jesus did not have enough faith? Of course, it didn’t. Jesus had perfect faith. He completely trusted in the will of His Father at every single turn. And yet, Jesus still had to go to the cross and suffer for our sins.

Sometimes God answers our prayers in good ways that we can’t even see. Sometimes we ask for the wrong things without even knowing it and God gives us something better instead. Sometimes we are completely unaware until later on just how merciful and kind our Heavenly Father was to us when we came to Him asking for help. That’s because God always has the bigger picture in view. He sees every moment of our life at once, and He knows exactly what is best to actually bring us to our eternal home. Lots of times we think we know what is best, but we don’t. But God still does. He desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and He works all things together for the good of those who love him. And when we pray for things with that perspective in mind, then it becomes easier to see how God actually does give us everything that we ask for in Jesus’ Name. 

Go back to those same examples. Yes, it's true that God did not take away the thorn from Saint Paul’s side, but He did give him something even better. God gave Paul the assurance of His grace. God reminded Paul how His power is made perfect in weakness so that Paul could continue to trust in the Lord and be saved. No, God did not let King David’s son get better from his sickness in this earthly life, but He did usher David’s son into everlasting life early. Remember what David said after the baby died, “He cannot come to me, but I will go to him.” It’s true, God did not let Moses go into the promised land, but He did take Moses directly to the promised land of heaven. Which is better, a piece of land in the Middle East that people are still fighting over or a place in our Father’s House where there are many rooms? And no, God did not take away the cup of His wrath from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, but by letting His only begotten Son drink it, God satisfied His wrath over sins of the whole world and made it possible for everyone who believes in Him to be saved.

And just like God did those things for all of them, we know that He will do the same kinds things for us too. We know that not because we’re better than any of them, or because we deserve it more, but because just like them, we’re also God’s dear children. In the waters of our Baptism, God adopted us into His family, and poured His Spirit in our hearts crying “Abba, Father.” He made us part of His house, and gave us all the rights and privileges of true sons and daughters. As Jesus says elsewhere, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg will instead give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

God always answers the prayers that we pray in faith. Even when we don’t know what to pray for, and even when we unknowingly pray for things that could harm us, as it says in Romans chapter 8, the Holy Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. God takes our feeble and imperfect prayers and He polishes them up, and then He provides the perfect response to them. He does that not by giving us necessarily what we always expect, but by giving us exactly what we need the most in order to remain faithful to Him to the end.

Prayer is a good topic to talk about on any day, but it’s especially good for us to think about on Mother’s Day. Few people pray as much as moms do for their kids. They worry about them all the time. But Jesus tells us in our text today that when we pray to God in the right way it’s lead to our joy. When we pray in Jesus’ Name, meaning, when we pray in faith, trusting in God’s Word, then God uses our prayers to give us comfort. What could be more comforting to a mom who’s worried about her kids than the knowledge that Jesus died for them and God wants them to be saved? What could give her more peace of mind then knowing that we have a merciful God who proved that by offering up His own Son in our place? Moms, even if you can’t give certain things to your kids, God still can. And He loves them even more than you do. Remember that before you say your prayers at night. And remember that no matter what God gives, in the end, through faith Jesus, your joy will be complete.  In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s still a common thing nowadays for people to talk about “conviction” as if it were a virtue by itself. When an important public figure is honored, let’s say at their retirement party, or maybe a funeral, often times you’ll hear it said that he was a man of great conviction. “He always did what he thought was right,” and “he never backed down from his principles.” The idea that someone has strong beliefs about certain things, and that they let those beliefs guide their life, is seen by many as an objective good no matter what. In fact, in some cases its even viewed as a cause of salvation.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but ever since the Second Vatican Council, this is actually the official doctrinal position of the Roman Catholic Church. In a section called Lumen Gentium 16, they argue that even atheists of goodwill can be saved if they follow the dictates of their conscience. So long as a person does what is in himself, and doesn’t suppress what he thinks is right, God will apparently overlook everything else. You can literally hate God, and not even believe in Him, but if you hold to that belief sincerely enough, Rome says that it might just get you into heaven.

Well, that’s absolutely insane. And it’s a good example of what happens when you reject the foundation of Scripture alone. God’s Word does not teach us that “conviction” is a virtue by itself, or that doing what you think is right excuses you from your sins. It certainly doesn’t save you from them! On the contrary, our convictions, need to be grounded in the right thing. They need to be formed and shaped by the Holy Spirit, who speaks to us through the text of the Bible.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is getting at in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 16. In that passage, Christ comforts His disciples by promising them that after His ascension into heaven He would send them a Helper, who would guide them into all truth. Specifically, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit would do that by convicting the world of three important things. As we read in our text, “And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Those are the three things that we need to have a proper conviction about if we’re going to be saved.

First, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin. That means that He gives us the proper attitude about what sin is and how we should actually think about it. There are lots of different opinions out there about sin and, especially, what kind of sin truly condemn a person to hell. 

Most people assume that sin isn’t really that big of a deal, and that you only go to hell for committing the really bad ones like murder or adultery. Even though people in our society can’t even agree among themselves about what counts as murder or adultery, I’m thinking here of things like abortion or cohabitating, the assumption is that as long as you haven’t done anything like Hitler or Bin Laden did, you’re automatically good to go. God will just let the rest of it slide, and you don’t need to worry about it. 

Isn’t it interesting, though, that when people in the world talk about what sins might send somebody to hell, they almost never talk about sins against the first table of the law. It’s only the ones that have to do with your neighbor. Apparently, God doesn’t care that much if you worship other gods, misuse His Name, or never remember the Sabbath day. He only cares about the things that have to do with the way other people treat you. 

But none of that, of course, comes even close to the proper conviction about sin that we get from the Holy Spirit. What does Jesus tell us in our text today from John 16? He says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, “because they do not believe in Me.” This is an amazing statement. Certainly, Christ does not mean that unbelief is the only sin that there is. We hear about all kinds of different sins elsewhere in the Bible, even from Jesus Himself. But the point that our Lord is making here is about where sin really comes from, and what makes something truly sinful in the first place.

According to Christ, that which makes something sinful in the eyes of God, and worthy of eternal damnation, is not just the “bad things” that we say and do, but even the good-looking things that we say and do for the wrong reasons. In fact, it’s everything that someone does apart from faith in Christ. That’s literally what Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 14, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” All of our acts of kindness, all of our charitable donations, every time that we help someone in need, even the times that we try and follow God’s Commandments, if we do any of that for the purpose of trying to earn us a place heaven, it will have the exact opposite effect, and condemn us to hell instead.

That is the true conviction of sin that comes from the Holy Spirt, and the only one that leads to salvation. It’s the reason why we in the Lutheran Church are not ashamed to call ourselves “poor miserable sinners” every Sunday morning. Because that’s who we are by nature. That’s who we are apart from Christ. And our only hope for salvation is Christ. It’s not us, and it certainly not our works, either good, or not so bad.  

The second thing that the Holy Spirit convicts us of then, and this is related to the first thing, is a proper understanding concerning righteousness. Besides showing us what sin is, and what kind of sin actually condems someone to hell, He also shows us what true righteousness is required for salvation and where we find it. because many people in this world get sin wrong, assuming that it’s not that big of deal, that leads them get righteousness wrong too, and totally miss the point of where it comes from.

The universal attitude about righteousness, which is common to all men, unless the Holy Spirit convinces them otherwise, is to think that righteousness is something that comes from us. It’s found in you, and in the way that you live your life for other people. If you’re a good citizen, or a hard worker, or even the pious religious type, who always says your prayers, and never misses a church service, then doing those things is what make you righteousness before God in heaven.

But listen again to what Jesus says in our text today. He tells His disciples that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of righteousness, “Because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.” That, of course, is a description of our Lord’s ascension into heaven, which is the culmination, and victory lap, of all of His redemptive work to save us. It’s a summary of the Gospel! Jesus Christ, true God, and true Man, came down from heaven to win for us eternal life. He came to give us what we poor sinner don’t have by ourselves, which is the kind of righteousness necessary to be saved. The way that Jesus accomplished that for us was by living a completely perfect life in our place and then He suffering and dying as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. That’s how He fulfilled all righteousness on our behalf. Remember what Saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The way that you get the kind of righteous that you need to go to heaven is not through doing a bunch or righteous deeds, which you could never do enough of, but through faith in the perfect righteousness of Christ. It’s through trusting in what Jesus did for you, not in what you do for Him or for others. As Saint Paul also tells us, this time in Romans 10, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” And as he says in Philippians chapter 3, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that depends on faith.” 

The true conviction about righteousness that comes from the Holy Spirit, the one that actually saves, is that we find it in Jesus alone. We get is not by our merit, not by our works, not by anything that we do at all. But only through faith in what Jesus did for us. 

And finally, Jesus tells us in our reading today that the Holy Spirit also convicts the world concerning judgment. That means that He gives us the proper attitude towards God’s coming judgment on the Last Day and how we should get ready for it. 

There is a very popular idea in our time which says that Christians aren’t supposed to judge anything. People take that one verse from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, “Judge not,” and they twist that into something that’s completely different than what it was ever intended to mean. They make it about how you shouldn’t make any judgment at all, and never even say that something is wrong. 

But the kind of judging that God’s Word forbids is not telling someone else what God’s Word says. It’s stating your own personal opinion as a fact, even if it isn’t backed up by the Scriptures. Listen to what Jesus tells us elsewhere about judging in John chapter 12. He specifies that “the one who rejects Me and does not receive My words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” Or what about John chapter 7? There Jesus literally says, “Judge with right judgment.” 

When we Christians tell other people what God’s Word says from a position of humility and not hypocrisy, we’re not doing the kind of Judging that Jesus forbids, we’re doing the kind of judging that He commands. That’s because we aren’t making a personal judgment at all. We’re just pointing out the judgment that already exists in His Word. For example, when we tell a couple that they can’t sleep together before getting married because the Bible says it’s wrong, that’s not a bad kind of judging. In fact, we’re trying to help them avoid God’s judgment so that they don’t fall into it. What does the author of Hebrews tell us in Hebrews chapter 13? He writes, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” We don’t want that to happen. We don’t want people to go to hell. So, sometimes we have to tell them what the Bible says about how you go to hell so that they won’t actually end up there. We warn them out of mercy and love, just like we would want to be warned too, so that they’ll repent and be saved as well.

In fact, that is the entire reason why Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment. He says it’s because “the ruler of this world is judged.” The ruler of this world is a reference to Satan. What our Lord is getting at is that He has already conquered the Devil through His death on the cross. He’s already paid the price for our sins so that they can’t condemn us any longer. There is no sin that Satan can accuse us of having done that we can’t have forgivness for in Jesus. The only way not to have it is if we refuse to receive it through unrepentance. But anyone who comes to Christ with sorrow in their heart asking for His mercy will not be turned away. They can have confidence that God will restore them and forgive them, and not even the Devil can say otherwise.

No, having conviction by itself isn’t necessarily a good thing. It doesn’t excuse you for your sins and it certainly won’t get you into heaven just because. You need to have conviction over the right things. You need to have the convictions that come from the Holy Spirit. First, you need to believe that you are a sinner, who is completely damned apart from Christ. You have nothing good to offer God on your own, and even your best works don’t contrite anything at all towards your salvation. Second, you need to believe that Christ is your righteousness and despite your sins, He gives you forgivness for them out of His own mercy and love. You’re saved not because you’re a good person, but because Jesus traded places with you on the cross and bore the punishment you deserved. He acted as your substitute, traded His innocence for your guilt, and you receive the benefit of everything He did through faith alone. And third, you need to believe that the prince of this world is judged. God has already revealed His judgments to us in the Bible, and we cling to His Word for truth and grace. Satan can only harm those who won’t take refuge in Jesus. But everyone who does, no matter what they’ve done in the past, doesn’t have to be afraid of him at all. They can rest assured that despite their sins, they have full forgivness for them in Christ.

Those are the convictions that the Holy Spirit gives. They are the only convictions that save. May God give them to us all for Jesus’s sake. May He open our hearts to His Word constantly so that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth, even to the One who is the way, the truth, and the life. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.