These few verses illustrate exactly what I’m talking about, because He goes on to say, in verse eight,

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:

Now let me just say that religion has basically taught that every time you sin, the Holy Spirit is there to convict you and condemn you and to show you how far short you’ve fallen of what you’re supposed to be.

Religion would say yes to the question: Does the Holy Spirit convict us of sins

Religion would say the Holy Spirit is going to tell you that you are unrighteous and you have to get back into relationship with God. And if you don’t repent, then you’re going to be judged. Sins got to be judged. This is basically what these verses have been interpreted as.

Most people don’t see the Holy Spirit as the comforter, as the Lord called Him four different times in this one discourse that He gave to His disciples. Instead they see the Holy Spirit as the one who convicts them, condemns them, and makes them feel guilty and miserable. People will say, “it says right here that he convicts of sin.”

Well, Jesus knew that people were going to misinterpret this and so He explained it in this passage of Scripture,

of sin, because they do not believe in Me;

Jesus didn’t say sins, plural. Every time you do something wrong, the Holy Spirit is going to convict people of one sin and that’s not believing on Jesus.

Does the Holy Spirit convict us of sins before we are born again?

Before a person gets born again, it’s not the Lord saying, you adulterer, you liar, you thief! Now, those who haven’t accepted the Lord, He will show you that unless you repent, you are going to spend eternity in hell and He’ll tell you to repent. But once you get born again, He is going to minister to you that you are the righteousness of God. I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit won’t reveal to you that you have missed it in an area, but that is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit to condemn you and reveal sins (plural) to you. It’s just one sin and everything, if you boil it down to simplest elements, it’s not believing on Jesus.

Jesus in His physical ministry was constantly showing people God’s acceptance.Now that Jesus was gone, He was going to send the Holy Spirit to now show every one of us that even when we miss it, and He reveals to us that we haven’t been believing on Him, He’s going to still build you up and encourage you that you’re the righteousness of God.

So if the Holy Spirit doesn’t convict us of our sins (plural) what does He do? The Holy Spirit will show you that there’s an area in your life you aren’t trusting God, but then He’ll come right back and say, “But I love you.”

You know, it’s like a parent when you teach your little kid to ride a bike. Very seldom do they do it perfectly the first time. Most parents, if the child starts trying to ride, and they don’t stay on, the parent doesn’t go up and say, “You idiot! If you would have done what I told you to do, you wouldn’t have fallen off.”

If you do that there’s a lot of kids that would never get back on the bike. A good parent will come up and say, “look, you went 10ft, 20ft, you can do it, you already did it partway. Try again!”

You will encourage them and build them up. See, that’s the way the Holy Spirit is.

Religion has painted the Holy Spirit as a terrible, terrible parent who, if you mess up, is going to condemn you and tell you that you’re unrighteous.

The third thing this passage of Scripture in John sixteen says that the Holy Spirit would convict you of, is judgment. In verse 11 it says,

of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

This isn’t saying that the Holy Spirit will tell you that you’re going to be judged and that God is mad at you. That unless you repent, man, you’re going to get sick, God’s going to put you in the hospital, He’s going to kill your child, or you’re going to have something terrible happen.

That’s religion.

I actually grew up in a church where I heard people say that because they hadn’t been seeking the Lord, the Lord made their tyres blow out and they had to go get new tyres. Or their washing machine broke down and nothing is working because they hadn’t been tithing and God has taken it out with doctor bills. This is what people say that the Holy Spirit does, but no, He reproved you of the singular sin that you aren’t trusting in Him.

Go wants you to love Him and to trust Him. He’ll tell you, that you are righteous through Jesus, not through the things that you’ve done. Then He’ll show you judgment, but not your judgment, the prince of this world is judged. When the devil starts trying to condemn you over what you’ve done wrong and tells you all these things, the Holy Spirit will be there to say, “Tell him that he’s a loser. He’s the one who’s being judged. You read the back of the book and you find out that Praise God, we win!