The Holy Spirit is exactly the Helper we need

Sermon for Cantate – Easter 4

James 1:16-21  +  John 16:5-15

It’s been 29 days since we celebrated Easter Sunday. In just 11 days we’ll celebrate Jesus’ Ascension to the right hand of God, since He spent 40 days appearing on and off to His disciples and then ascended into heaven. And 10 days after that, we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the 50^th day after Jesus rose from the dead. Today’s Gospel gets us thinking about those two events and why they’re so vitally important.

On the night before He died, Jesus told His disciples that He was going away. And the very thought of that made His eleven disciples very sad. Why did Jesus have to go away? They didn’t even know what He meant by “going away.” We do. He was going away, first, to judgment and death. He would see them again when He rose from the dead, but then He would go away in a more permanent way by ascending into heaven. Why did He have to ascend into heaven, so that we can’t see Him here anymore, so that we can’t ask Him questions and hear His responses, so that we can’t see His miracles or see His face? The simple answer is, He went away, because He was no longer needed here. I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

The Son of God was needed here on earth, in human flesh, to live a righteous human life, to die an innocent human death. He was needed here to reveal God to us, to reveal the depth of the Father’s love for poor sinners by becoming the sacrifice for sins, the Substitute who paid the penalty for all people’s sins with His own blood, with His own death. He was needed here to earn a righteous verdict and the forgiveness of sins for all sinners. He was needed here to rise from the dead and to show His disciples the proof of His victory over sin, death, and the devil in His risen and glorified body, to show us the life that awaits all who believe when He comes again in glory.

All of that is done. All of that was accomplished nearly 2,000 years ago. What’s needed now, during this entire New Testament period, is for the blood of Christ and all that He earned by it to be applied to sinners for their justification. What’s needed now is for sinners around the world to hear the Gospel call to repent and believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, for sinners to be baptized and brought into the household of God’s Holy Church, adopted into His family for the sake of Christ, and made coheirs together with Christ of an eternal heavenly inheritance. That’s what needs to happen for the rest of this earthly age.

All of that—all that’s needed until the end of the age—is the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

The Holy Spirit’s proper work is explained in this name that Jesus gives Him: Comforter, also translated as Helper or Encourager, sometimes just transliterated from the Greek word, Paraclete. The proper work of the Holy Spirit is to help sinners by bringing them to faith in Christ Jesus, encouraging them, convincing them to flee in faith to Christ and there to receive the forgiveness of sins. His proper work is to comfort sinners with the knowledge of God’s love in Christ Jesus and with the assurance that all who trust in Him are safe from the guilt of sin, from the accusations of the devil, and from the fate of eternal death.

But before He can get to that work for which He is named, He has other important work to do. Sometimes we call it His “foreign work,” or His “alien work” (from the Latin), because His proper work and His ultimate goal is to help and comfort. But before He can comfort, He first has to convict.

And when he comes, he will convict the world regarding sin, and regarding righteousness, and regarding judgment. Regarding to sin, because they do not believe in me; regarding righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see me no more; regarding judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

How does the Spirit convict or rebuke the world? He does it through the preaching of the Law. The apostles were sent out by Jesus and empowered by His Spirit to expose sin, to tell the world what sin is and to accuse the world of it. The only way to escape the guilt and condemnation of sin is to flee in faith to Christ Jesus; where there is faith in Christ, there is Christ, and where Christ is, all guilt and condemnation are gone. But where sinners remain in unbelief, there they remain guilty of every misdeed, every harsh word, every wicked thought. They are rebuked, convicted regarding sin.

And regarding righteousness, because Jesus, the only Righteous One, has gone to the Father. And yet men, in unbelief, will still claim to be righteous without him. They hate the Word of God. They despise the commandments of God. They reject Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the world, but they still pretend that they are righteous, that they are good.

Don’t those who defend and promote abortion claim to be the righteous ones, advocating for women’s health and women’s rights? Don’t those who promote the LGBT agenda claim to be the righteous ones, who care about people’s feelings and stand up to the bullies who believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman? For that matter, though, don’t people in general claim to be good, claim to be righteous, claim to deserve to go to heaven, at least, more than certain other people do? But as the prophet Isaiah says, “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” All our righteousness is worthless before God, because there is no one righteous—truly righteous and deserving of eternal life—except for the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, who has gone to the Father. But the world still refuses to embrace Him by faith, and so the Holy Spirit convicts the world regarding righteousness.

And the Spirit rebukes the world and convicts it regarding judgment, because the unbelieving world refuses to believe that Christ is the Judge and that Christ will come for judgment. They’re more afraid of meteorites and climate change than they are of the imminent judgment of God. But there is the Holy Spirit, wherever Christian preachers preach the Law, announcing the already-pronounced judgment against Satan, the ruler of this world, and the impending judgment that the inhabitants of this world, too, will surely face, unless they are rescued from Satan’s kingdom through faith in Christ Jesus. For this, the Spirit is needed here.

So Christians can take great comfort in the fact that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work rebuking sin, wherever the Word of God is preached. We can also take comfort that the Holy Spirit brings some of those sinners in the world—like you and me—to repent of our sins and to believe in Christ Jesus. He washes away sins in Holy Baptism and there He clothes us with the true righteousness, with the righteousness of Christ. Now we are safe, as long as we remain in Christ.

And it’s the Holy Spirit’s work to see to it that we do. Jesus told His apostles: I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth … He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and proclaim it to you.

For the apostles, that meant that the Holy Spirit would guide them to understand the truth of Christ, to preach it in the world, and to record it for us in the inspired books and letters of the New Testament. For us, it means that we have the testimony of the Holy Spirit preserved for us in the Scriptures, together with His continual working through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, to keep convicting, to keep helping and comforting, to keep teaching and guiding His beloved Christian Church all the way up to the end of the age. This is the exactly the help we need.

I think we sometimes get the idea that, if only Jesus were here in person, making appearances around the world, then people would listen. Then we would have real and lasting comfort. But it’s not true. We don’t need Jesus sitting down in one home at a time, in one church at a time, preaching and teaching in one place at a time around the world, as He did long ago. What we need is His Holy Spirit, filling the world all at once and working through the powerful preaching of Law and Gospel, convicting sinners everywhere regarding sin and righteousness and judgment, comforting Christians everywhere with the peace of Christ and the forgiveness of sins, teaching the truth from Christian pulpits, washing away sins through Holy Baptism, and bringing the body and blood of Christ to Christian altars. This is why we will celebrate the Ascension of Christ and the Day of Pentecost in the coming weeks, because the Spirit is needed here, and the ascended Christ has given us exactly what we need. Amen.