In early America, it was common for ministers to offer remarks or even sermons at the public executions of criminals. At a January 1894 execution in Texas, Lee Lewis Campbell—29 years old and only two years into what would be a 35-year pastorate at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin—offered this prayer immediately before a convicted rapist was hanged:
Ed Nichols is to swing into eternity in a short time. The supreme court of heaven will be in session. Sheriff Death is on his black steed, is but a short distance away, coming to arrest the soul of this man to meet the trial at the higher bar where God himself is supreme ruler, Jesus, his son the attorney, and the Holy Ghost the prosecutor.
When we hear that story today, it feels foreboding—as if the pastor was only delivering a message about judgment. Though the young preacher was a bit off the mark, he was right in one important way. The Bible does speak about the Spirit as a prosecutor, and on the final day, Jesus will be our defense attorney. But the two are not at odds; rather, they work together for our salvation.
Promised Advocate
Only hours before Jesus would stand trial, he painted an extraordinary picture of the Holy Spirit for his disciples. Jesus would be leaving them, he explained, and in a little more than seven weeks, he would be leaving the earth and giving his ragtag group of followers a commission to upend the world. How could they conceivably do this?
Earlier that evening, Jesus had revealed to his disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to lead them into an understanding of the truth (John 14:26). But as his hour of crucifixion drew near, Jesus informed his disciples he would send the Spirit for another purpose.
Only hours before Jesus would stand trial, he painted an extraordinary picture of the Holy Spirit for his disciples.
It’s not clear how much the disciples understood about the third person of the Trinity before that night. The Synoptic Gospels all have passing references to the Spirit, most prominently in connection with Jesus’s baptism (Matt. 3; Mark 1; Luke 3). But the Holy Spirit doesn’t receive extended treatment in the Gospels until the monologue by Jesus on the night he was betrayed.
John records Jesus’s promise to the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to them and serve as an “advocate” (John 14:26; 15:26 NIV). The Greek word John uses is parakletos, which many people compare to a defense attorney. But that’s not the picture of the Holy Spirit that Jesus painted. Rather, he described the Spirit as a different type of advocate—a prosecutor who would “convict” the world.
Convict the World of Sin
A prosecutor exposes a defendant’s wrongs through the introduction of evidence. Jesus said the Holy Spirit would expose the world’s wrongs. He would, Christ explained, convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment (16:8). The Spirit would expose the world’s sins as measured against God’s righteousness and thereby reveal the judgment those sins deserve.
Would the disciples play any role in this prosecution? Yes. When the Spirit came, the disciples would be witnesses (Luke 24:48–49; Acts 1:8). The disciples would testify to what they’d seen (Acts 4:20). The Holy Spirit would press the case, not at the bar of God—as the Rev. Campbell suggested—but in the hearts of men.
That’s precisely what happened. In the weeks after Christ ascended into heaven, Peter and the other disciples started preaching. As Peter and John described it, their preaching was them telling about what they’d “seen and heard” (v. 20). They weren’t educated people, as was obvious to all (v. 13). But they knew what they’d observed and, because they had the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth, they understood the significance of what they’d seen and how it related to Old Testament prophecy (3:12–26). They couldn’t stop telling people about it. And that testimony, with the Holy Spirit’s convicting power, “turned the world upside down” (17:6).
Prosecution and Defense
Remarkably, the Holy Spirit isn’t the only “advocate” in the godhead. John later writes that the Son too is an advocate, but this time as a defense attorney. Jesus pleads our case to the Father (1 John 2:1). Though we’re justly convicted of our sins and stand guilty before a holy God, Christ intervenes on our behalf, offering his righteous life and sacrificial death as our defense case. The Father imputes Christ’s righteousness to us and Jesus takes our sin on himself (2 Cor. 5:21).
The Spirit would expose the world’s sins as measured against God’s righteousness and thereby reveal the judgment those sins deserve.
That defense works. It always works. No one—not even Satan—can effectively bring a charge against us because Christ is interceding with the Father on our behalf (Rom. 8:33–34). When it comes to his elect, Jesus has an undefeated record of advocacy. And his advocacy is the only defense that works (Acts 4:12).
Do you want something to thank God for today? Thank God that he both convicted you of your sin and defended you from it. God is “just and the justifier” (Rom. 3:26). The most confounding riddle of the Old Testament—that God forgives sin and yet doesn’t let the guilty go unpunished (Ex. 34:7)—is resolved in the work of Jesus Christ. As Richard Sibbes so beautifully put it in his sermon on Song of Solomon 5:10,
Often think with thyself, What am I? a poor sinful creature. But I have a righteousness in Christ that answers all: I am weak in myself, but Christ is strong, and I am strong in him. I am foolish in myself, but I am wise in him. What I want in myself I have in him. He is mine, and his righteousness is mine, which is the righteousness of God-man. Being clothed with this, I stand safe against conscience, hell, wrath, and whatsoever. Though I have daily experience of my sins, yet there is more righteousness in Christ, who is mine, and who is the chief of ten thousand, than there is sin in me.