“If I don’t go away, the Assistant won’t come to you. Once I cross over, I will send him to you all. Once he comes, he will correct the culture about sin, rightness, and judgment. About sin: People don’t trust in me. About rightness: I’m going away to the Father, and you’ll all no longer see me. And about judgment: The ruler of this culture has been judged.” —Jesus,
We Christians are a little too eager sometimes to take on the Holy Spirit’s role: We want to correct the culture about sin, rightness, and judgment. We want to condemn all the evil in the world.
We figure the Old Testament prophets used to do it, so why can’t we? We want to teach them rightness, and maybe get some right-thinking candidates elected and mandate some of that rightness. And we definitely want to judge others: We might think we’re generous by giving them three strikes before they’re out, but once they’re out they are out, condemned to prison, death, or hell with no more chances for forgiveness and grace.
Here’s the problem: We are wrong, and the Spirit is right. We are not right-thinking enough to be able to wield power fairly and infallibly. We will make mistakes based on partial information, bias and prejudice, anger and vengeance, being too easily swayed in favor of the wealthy or of the poor, lack of sympathy or forgiveness, or too much sympathy and forgiveness. We can’t do the job the Spirit can. Not even close.
We won’t even get the issue right. Jesus points out three things that the Spirit will conclude about sin, rightness, and judgment. These are not the three things that we would conclude about these subjects. They’re not even in our top ten.
About sin.
Our knee-jerk reaction about the subject of “sin” is that people are too sinful. Some of us would correctly recognize that we, too, are too sinful; and we might even feel a little proud of ourselves for humbly admitting that we’re no better than the rest of the world. But even that is not what Jesus has to say about sin. His words:
What’s he mean by that? Simply put: Jesus is the cure for sin. Jesus has killed sin through his self-sacrificial death. We no longer have to be slaves to sin. We no longer have to let it rule us. Sin causes death, but we no longer have to fear death. Sin doesn’t have to affect us, and the world, to the degree that it does.
And yet… we don’t trust Jesus enough to let this reality rule our lives.
Imagine a world where sin doesn’t rule. Where we recognize that we have the freedom to not sin. Where we don’t make lame excuses for slipping up, like, “Well, everyone sins; ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ and all that; so since all have sinned, I sin too.” Where when people sin, they’re actually repentant, and we actually forgive them instead of handing down sentences and punishments. Imagine a Kingdom like that. We could live in such a Kingdom like that… if we wanted to. The Spirit makes it possible. But people don’t trust Jesus enough. We Christians don’t even trust him enough. Not yet.
Yeah, it’s a shame. Yeah, there’s more.
About rightness.
Our knee-jerk reaction about the “rightness” is, for a large number of us Christians, that we’re right. After all, we have a relationship with Jesus, and he’s made us right in the Father’s eyes. We have a right standing with God. We also have the words of Jesus—either revealed to us personally, or written down in the bible—so everybody should listen to us so that they, too, can hear the words of Jesus and have eternal life.
And then there’s the words of Jesus:
We are not right. Jesus is right. We are wrong. All of humanity is corrupt, Christians included. Yes, we have a right standing before God, but that has nothing to do with whether we make right decisions or believe correct things. We don’t, and God’s grace has to make up the vast, vast difference. We have to turn our eyes upon Jesus, and follow him as closely as possible if we ever hope to be right.
But Jesus has gone away to the Father, and we don’t see him. Not currently. When he returns, sure. In the meanwhile, we can’t point to ourselves, as if Jesus is in our midst, insuring our correctness. We have to point away from ourselves, to Jesus. We shouldn’t want people to listen to us; we need them to listen to Christ.
Rightness is not to be found in humanity. Not even among us Christians. This is not to say that we Christians can’t pursue rightness with all our hearts, and try to follow Jesus as best we can. This is to say that if you’re looking towards any other human than Jesus for an ideal role model, you’re looking at the wrong person. If you’re looking for the “right” church, or the “right” group of Christians, or the “right” teacher, or the “right” blog, or the “right” anything, you’re not gonna find it on earth. You’re gonna find it seated at the right hand of the Father, communicating truth through the truthful Holy Spirit. Follow him. Not us humans.
About judgment.
If you’re a fan of End Times timelines, in which Jesus raptures the Christians, and then there are seven years of tribulation, and then there’s Armageddon and the fall of the Antichrist and all the other tropes you’ll find in bad Christian movies, you’re likely expecting that the devil will get judged at the very end of history. In the meanwhile, it’s running amok, tempting world leaders and the occasional celebrity. But don’t worry; in the End, it’ll get what’s coming to it. If you’re not a fan, you’ve probably heard some variation of that idea, and believe it: The devil will be judged at the end of time.
The reality:
Jesus told his students, right after 72 of them got back from a brief evangelism trip,
“I’m watching Satan, who fell like lightning from heaven. Look, I’ve given you all the ability to trample upon serpents and scorpions, and over all of the enemy’s power. Nothing at all may harm you. But don’t rejoice about the spirits submitting to you: Rejoice that your names have been written in the heavens.” —Jesus,
If you treat the book of Revelation like a timeline (you shouldn’t, but if you do) you might notice the devil got tossed out of heaven after the birth of Jesus, not before. The devil wasn’t overthrown when it first started sinning, as Paradise Lost describes it. The devil was overthrown when Jesus granted the very power of God, the might of the Holy Spirit, to ordinary humans. Think about that. These followers of Jesus, as we well know, weren’t the most intellectual, the most devout, the most anything. They were regular guys who trusted Jesus. They were given the power to easily conquer our greatest foes: Sin, death, disease, and the devil.
The devil only runs amok because we don’t put a stop to it.
Or we try to put a stop to it in every other way than Jesus instructed. We don’t preach the gospel, heal the sick, minister to the hurting, and love our neighbors. We try to pass laws. We try to get our candidates elected. We stage protests. We file lawsuits. We try to inflict the Kingdom upon others instead of inviting them to participate in it. We don’t share; we force.
The ruler of this culture will remain in place over it, so long as we continue to give in to its temptation, “I’ll give you all this power and honor—it had been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I want.” So long that we keep pursuing power, instead of surrendering every last bit of it to Jesus, we’re not gonna defeat the devil when we insist on using the devil’s machinery.
Follow the Spirit.
The biggest obstacle to our following God is that we Christians blindly keep forgetting that we are wrong. Our knee-jerk reactions are wrong. Our automatic interpretations of the scriptures are wrong. We don’t have the mind of God. Just because we’re saved, just because Jesus has dumped a bucket of grace over us, it doesn’t mean we’re fixed and infallible and understand everything. We don’t. And we won’t get any better when we obstinately insist that we’re fine when we’re not.