This passage (Rev 3.14-22) draws together and illustrates a number of points about the ministry of the Holy Spirit that it might be helpful to summarise before we come to John 16.8.
(a) The Spirit convicts us of sin not to condemn us, but to lead us to repentance; it is as though he sets off the alarm bell of our conscience to arouse us from our complacent slumber so that we can hear the knocking at the door.
(b) If, under the conviction of the Spirit, our consciences do condemn us, it is to lead us to enter a plea for mercy before we face the same verdict in a higher court, the last judgement. It is worth comparing Jesus’ gracious words in Revelation 3. 19-20 with Jude’s stern warning about his second coming. Quoting a prophecy from the (apocryphal) Book of Enoch, he says: “Look, the Lord is coming with thousands of his saints to pronounce judgement against all, and to convict (‘elencho’) every soul of all its ungodly actions and of all the contemptuous words they have sinfully spoken against him” (Jude 14-15). On that day, conviction will inexorably lead to condemnation.
(c) The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; he is the Spirit of Jesus, who said “I am the truth”. John in his gospel records that Jesus “knew what was in (the heart of) mankind”; and at the end of the same gospel (21.17) Peter has come to realise the same truth: “Lord, you know everything, you know that I am your friend”. Each of the letters to the 7 churches begins with the word (one word in Greek) “I know”; what Jesus knows, the Spirit knows.
(d) We have seen how Paul urges Timothy and Titus to ‘rebuke’ those who fall into sin and those who speak against the truth of the gospel. The letter to Laodicea gives us a dominical, if daunting, model of such a rebuke. Church leaders who do not shy away from such confrontations but are faithful to their calling and obedient to scripture – and who are led by the Spirit – can be the channels through whom he can do his convicting work.
(e) Each of the 7 letters begins with a title of Jesus: he is the author. But we can only read them today because John obediently wrote them down. Twelve times in the Book of Revelation John is given the instruction “write” (‘grapson’, aorist imperative again), and the Book of Revelation is testimony to his obedience. But, as with all scripture, John can only achieve his task if he is guided and inspired by “the Spirit of truth – who will remind you of everything I have said to you”. With such a Remembrancer, who needs a tape-recorder ?
(f) Each of the 7 letters ends with the words “Let every one who has ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches”. The message is the word of Jesus, and Jesus is the Word of God, but the word can only truly be heard and get through to the heart by the medium of the Spirit. The eye of the reader may travel, line by line, over the words of scripture, and the words of the preacher may roll their sound-waves over the ears of the listener; but unless the Holy Spirit is at work imprinting God’s word on the heart and the conscience, nothing is really ‘heard’, and no lasting effect is achieved. Word and Spirit must walk hand in hand, both in the life of the believer and in the life of the church. The word remains dry and dead, like a seed in the ground, unless it is awoken into life and fruitfulness by the quickening Spirit. But. equally, it is dangerous, and sometimes disastrous, to assume that every thought that enters one’s head, and every impulse prompting us to action, is a message direct and infallible from the Holy Spirit; first we must assure ourselves that this message is consistent with the word of God revealed in scripture. The Word is Jesus; the Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus: they are always in perfect harmony.
No comments:
Post a Comment