Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to live with and in his disciples to provide a contrast to the evil going on, which would then serve as evidence in this great global court case led by the Holy Spirit to prove why not believing in Jesus is a sin (John 16:9).
And the evidence is simple: on the one hand, John 3:20, there are those who hate the “light” that Jesus shone on himself as the loving God’s solution to the chaos caused by people who love the “darkness” of evil instead (19). And who can deny such evidence? In every century we’ve all had to suffer the wreckage caused by those who coldly and callously sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their addiction to money, status and power.
“But,” on the other hand, Jesus says in verse 21, “those who live by the truth come into the light.” So there’s a “truth” in existence in contrast to the ever prevailing evil plaguing our planet, the truth being “that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (15). There’s another world we can enter and experience – and eternally too – that’s the total opposite to the self-destructive ways of the world.
To believe, therefore, that experiencing this eternal world is what Jesus was sent to us for, is like “coming into the light,” as Jesus phrases it. But it’s not “light” in the sense that the darkness is stripped away and everything becomes clear to us. The purpose of this light is “so that it may be seen plainly that what he (the believer in Jesus) has done has been done through God” (21).
And it’s “done through God” all right, because this is the Holy Spirit at work providing a clear contrast between those who love the secrecy of the darkness, plotting their evil where people can’t see what they’re up to, and those who want the lights shone bright on their lives to prove that what God sent Jesus for is working, that humans really can be rescued from their self-destructive ways. It’s all contributing to the evidence the Holy Spirit is piling up to show that not believing in Jesus is a sin – by making it “plainly seen” in the lives of those who do believe in Jesus, and in those who don’t.
But is this irrefutable and obvious evidence simply to expose evil people and nail them to the wall? Or is there something in that word “sin” in John 16:9 that adds “An element of tragedy” in all this too?….(next blog)
