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.