The Switch…

To Joy (part 9)

According to Jesus in John 16:7-9, the Holy Spirit was given to his disciples “in regard to sin” so that they – his disciples – would understand what sin is. Because if we understand what sin is, that’s the means by which the Spirit can help others understand what sin is.  

It’s an odd word, “sin,” and it’s open to all kinds of interpretations, but Jesus made it clear in verse 9 what sin is: it’s sin, he said, when “people do not believe in me.” And why that’s such a sin is what the Holy Spirit gets through to Jesus’ disciples, because it’s we who need to understand it first. 

The Spirit’s purpose – as Jesus himself said in verse 14 – is “to bring glory to me.” The Spirit would make Jesus glorious to us. And so believable and so real in his glory, that knowing him and being like him would be the driving force in our lives. The joy of it being, that we don’t have to conjure this up for ourselves; this is entirely in the Spirit’s job description. He does it, because that’s what the Father and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us for.    

The means by which the Spirit makes Jesus glorious to us is “by taking from what is mine and making it known to you,” verse 14. “What is mine” is quite the statement, because, as Jesus explained, “All that belongs to the Father is mine.” So everything that the Father is and has belongs to Jesus. And the importance of that statement is that the Holy Spirit is now “making this known to us.”  

And that, surely, would make believing in Jesus easy, knowing he has the same power and glory and everything else the Father is and has. But how on earth is the Holy Spirit going to get that through to us? 

He helps us see what not believing in Jesus does to people. We’re watching it, feeling it, and witnessing in brutal reality the enormous damage to people physically, mentally and spiritually. And what a shock to realize we’re living in a world that has no clue what to do about what’s ailing us. 

Understanding sin and the damage it does, therefore, is how the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the glory of Jesus, because included in “What belongs to him” is the power to nail sin to the wall…(continues Monday)