One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to convict you of the nature of sin.

The Lord Jesus boiled sin down to one word:  unbelief—

John 16:9 (NKJV) — 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me;

Unbelief is the parent of all other sins… all sin ultimately comes from unbelief.

The sin that doomed the human race in the garden of Eden was the sin of unbelief.

If Adam and Eve had simply believed what God told them to do and not to do, we would not be in the dire straits that we are in today.  (Well, that’s not completely true…I am sure that I would of messed it up for us all!)

Unbelief is the sin that reigns over all other sin.

 Unbelief is the unpardonable sin. I hope you fully understand that.

God can forgive a man of practically any sin; I do not care how horrible, hurtful, or heinous it might be.  What about Hitler?  Could Hitler have been saved?  Yes.  There is no sin (other than unbelief) that cannot be forgiven at the Cross.

But if a man dies refusing to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no hope for him.

Dr. Rogers says that, “The sin of unbelief is actually a twofold sin.  It is a sin of commission and it is a sin of omission.  It is the sin of rejecting Jesus, and therefore the sin of refusing to receive the Lord Jesus.”

The only sin that has ever sent anyone to Hell is the sin of unbelief.

A man is not lost, without God–doomed because he gambles, gets drunk, cheats, lies, or steals.  Jesus died for every one of those sins, and He can forgive every one of those sins.

But the one sin that kills eternally is the sin of refusing to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself said in:

John 3:17–18 (NKJV) — 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

A judge may convict you of a crime.

Your conscience can convict you of guilt.

But only the Holy Spirit can convict you of sin.

Many of you will remember the first sermon ever preached in the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost, when the Apostle Peter preached on repentance and faith in Christ, and 3,000 people were saved in one day. 

If Peter had preached that the day before, which is the day before the Holy Spirit had come, I don’t believe that the results would have been the same.

Those 3,000 people were not saved because of Peter’s delivery, style or passion.  It was not the witness of Peter that saved them, it was the work of the Holy Spirit.

The worst sin on planet earth today is the sin of unbelief. 

You show me a person who does not believe in Jesus Christ, and I do not care how morally he lives, or how much he gives to others or how well-intentioned he is…in the eyes of God he is just as guilty as the vilest sinner on earth.

Please understand this:  Show me a person who does not believe in sin, and I will show you a person who cannot believe in Jesus Christ, because the essence of sin is unbelief.

The Lord Jesus Christ died between two thieves hanging on two crosses. 

One died a saved thief, one died a lost thief; one is in hell today cursing God, one is in heaven today praising God. 

The only difference between those two thieves was unbelief. 

The greatest sin in the world is the sin of refusing to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  But only the Holy Spirit can convict you of that truth.

Has He done that in your life?

“Holy Spirit conviction” isn’t a phrase that you hear much about these days.  But that doesn’t change this one, simple truth:

Only the Holy Spirit can convict us of the truth about sin.

Jesus said about the Holy Spirit:

John 16:8–9 (NKJV) — 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me;

The word convict literally means “to reprove.”  It is a legal term that describes how a jury or a judge would bring in a verdict of guilty.  It could be translated “pronounce a verdict.”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is saying, that the Holy Spirit has been sent to show us that we are guilty of sin and need the forgiveness of God.

Now the Holy Spirit has not been sent merely to hurl accusations at us…rather, the Holy Spirit convicts us.  There is a huge difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the accusations of Satan:

• Satan will accuse you of sins that God has already forgiven.
• The Holy Spirit will convict you of sin which God has not yet forgiven.

There are two general ways that the Holy Spirit will teach us about sin…the first is simply the truth and reality of sin.

If you looked around our world you would think that everybody believes in sin. It seems so obvious every time we log onto the internet or turn on our televisions. But that is really not true.  In our society, and all around the world, sin is becoming a forgotten term and a laughable concept.

A psychologist, Carl Menninger, once wrote a book entitled, “Whatever Happened to Sin?” 

 He said that 82% of the population of France consider themselves to be Catholic, and yet 90% of the population no longer believe in sin, and only 4% accept the concept at all. 

What is true in France is probably pretty typical for much of the world that simply rejects the concept of sin.

But even those who do believe in sin do not understand it.

The world sees sin as something that is external—what a man does. 

But God sees sin as something internal—what a man is. 

Dr. Rogers said: “Man is not a sinner because he sins, he sins because he is a sinner.  A man is not a thief because he steals, he steals because he is a thief.”

We are not just sinners by choice, we are sinners by nature; and we sin by choice because that is our nature.

We do what we do because we are what we are.

Now the world thinks that man’s problem is sin(s): murder, lying, rape, stealing, etc.  These are not man’s problems.  They are just symptoms.  The problem is S-I-N.

Sins are the fruit of man’s problem; sin is the root of man’s problem.

We do what we do on the outside because of what we are on the inside.

Jesus said in John 15:19:

John 15:19 (NKJV) — 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

An illustration that I have heard preachers use is the one of the apple…Have you ever bitten into an apple and found a worm inside of that apple?  If you have, oftentimes you will notice there is no hole in the apple. 

 Do you know how the worm got there?  The worm did not bore its way into that apple.  Instead he is trying to bore his way out. 

 How does that happen? 

 Well, the egg was laid in the blossom of that apple, and because the egg was in the blossom the worm was in the core.  The worm began on the inside, trying to make its way to the outside. 

That is exactly the way sin works in the life of man…it comes from his heart.

In the next post we will look at the second way that God the Holy Spirit teaches us about sin.

Dr. Rogers told the story of a pastor who left the pastorate after twenty years, and decided to become a funeral director.  Somebody asked him, “Why did you do that?”

He said, “Well, I spent about twelve years trying to straighten out John.  He never did get straightened out.  I spent fourteen months trying to straighten out the marriage of the Smiths, and it never did get straightened out.  I spent three years trying to straighten out Susan, and she never did get straightened out.”

“But, now that I’m a funeral director…when I straighten them out, they stay straight.”

Well, contrary to what we may sometimes believe…it is not the job of the preacher to straighten anybody out.  The honest truth is that I cannot straighten out anyone.

That is the role of the Holy Spirit. 

I can preach the truth and get it into your head, and perhaps even be very persuasive…but only the Holy Spirit can impart the truth and get it into your heart where it matters the most.

John 16:7–11 (NKJV) — 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

 On my own, I cannot even convince you of the truth of what you just read.  That isn’t really my job.  In my own power I cannot convince someone to believe in a spiritual truth.

A preacher once said, “The truth of the matter is, anything that I could talk you into, eventually somebody else can come along and talk you out of.”

A natural man cannot receive spiritual truth without supernatural help.

If you share your faith with others, (and I hope you do—every Christian should!) you need to understand that it is not your job to get people to accept the gospel, nor even to fully understand the gospel.

It is your job to get people to hear the gospel and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.

Whenever Charles Haddon Spurgeon would approach his pulpit to preach the gospel, he would be muttering under his breath: “I believe in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.”   

Spurgeon understood a concept that we all need to apply to our lives: Everything we do for the Lord Jesus Christ is totally dependent upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

As the old song goes: “All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One come down.” 

Francis Chan authored a book titled, “Forgotten God.”  He deals with the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit…and how many times believers live as if He doesn’t exist and they have completely forgotten about Him.  That is the perfect title for a book on that subject because many believers have simply “forgotten” about the Holy Spirit.

For the next few weeks we will be looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in the conversion process of a new believer… and how these steps can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit.