God’s Prosecutor
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 12 December 2021
This is a portion of Scripture that every preacher must understand, every elder and every Christian must understand too. This text is foundational to our mission and to our cause in the world. It is the foundation of all gospel preaching and witness. And since the church and you personally are in the world to proclaim the gospel, we need to know what this Bible passage teaches.
Jesus has done nothing to overpower the Jews, and also nothing to overpower the Romans who occupy Israel, and now He is saying they’re going to kill Him. But that is God’s plan for Him so that He can be the only acceptable sacrifice for sin: to die for sinners, rise from the dead, as God validates the sufficiency of His death, and provide eternal life to all who will repent and believe in Him.
Not only is Jesus leaving them, but He tells them in John 15, that the world that hated Him will hate them, that the world that persecuted Him will persecute them, and that the world that kills Him will kill them. How are we going to remain faithful in this world full of temptation, hatred and animosity? Where’s the power going to come from? Where are the resources we need to survive?”
John 14:16 says, “I’m going to give you another of the same kind, exactly like Myself, who will be with you forever,” and He identifies Him in verse 17 as the Spirit of truth. It is very important that they understand that the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit primarily is to give you the truth. Verse 26, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
The ministry of the Holy Spirit to the apostles, is to give them all heavenly blessings, all that they need to write the New Testament. And He is going to teach you about Me. That really sums up what the Holy Spirit does in revealing Scripture, divine teaching. It is the record of all that Jesus did and said, and it is all the epistles and letters that tell us what His life and ministry meant.
This is the internal ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer to grant every promise that Christ ever gave, to bring the treasures of heaven down and deposit them in our lives. But there is going to be an external provision by the Holy Spirit, and He’s going to bring that through the apostles and all of us. All Scripture is God-breathed, and the Holy Spirit is the breath of God.
So let us look at John 16:8-11, “And when He comes, He will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. 9 The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in Me. 10 of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no more. 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world has already been judged.”
2 Timothy 2:25 says, “It is God, through the Holy Spirit, who grants repentance.” The Holy Spirit gives life and light. He grants repentance. He grants faith to believe the gospel: it’s a work of God, through the Holy Spirit in the sinner. They are awakened to their guilt, they are awakened to the terror of judgment, they are awakened to the truth of the gospel and they are granted faith to believe.
But that is not what Jesus is talking about. Let’s start with the word “convict” in verse 8. It’s a legal word, and it takes us into court essentially. It means “to indict by evidence.” It’s a word that could be translated “to prosecute.” And it can even be translated “to prove guilty.” In a non-legal sense, you might say, “Oh, I feel convicted.” And by that, you mean, “I feel guilty.”
But the word “convict” in a courtroom takes on a completely different meaning. If you say, “A person was convicted,” you mean the trial is over. You’re not talking about some emotional feeling inside. You’re saying, “He was measured against the law and found guilty. The proof is in; the verdict is guilty.” That’s a conviction. The Holy Spirit is here saying, “I’m going to render a final verdict.”
Those of us who preach the Word of God are the world’s prosecutors. We are God’s select prosecutors. We do it by preaching; we do it in testimony. And by means of the revelation of the Holy Spirit, you are going to be able to indict and prosecute and convict the world before God. The good news makes no sense if it’s not a deliverance from a severe punishment for a severe violation of the law.
In the Old Testament in every generation of history, God had His prosecutors. You would expect that, right? God is absolutely holy and man is fallen and sinful. So the Bible is just full of prosecutions, full of indictments, full of evidences, and full of convictions, full of guilt verdicts and full of judgments. For example, go back to Enoch in Genesis. How do you know what he said?
It’s in Jude 1:14-15, “In the seventh generation from Adam, Enoch preached.” And what was Enoch’s message? He said, “Behold, the Lord comes with many thousands of His holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
He is the first person identified as a preacher. Enoch was a preacher and he was a prosecutor. So were all the other prophets. Moses was a prosecutor. All the prophets that you read in the prophetic books were prosecutors. Elijah was a prosecutor. They were prophets of Israel. They indicted Israel; they indicted Judah; they indicted the nations. They indicted them for violations of the law of God.
The prophets indicted them for their immoralities and their idolatries that rendered them guilty before God so that we could honestly say that all the prophets were God’s prosecutors through the whole Old Testament period. Their role was primarily to bring in accusation, and to bring evidence, and to render a guilt verdict on those who violated God’s law. This led to a conviction of guilt and punishment.
The Holy Spirit in them is why they did it. Ezekiel is taken into the Lord’s house. Ezekiel 11:5-10, “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon me, and he told me to say, “This is what the Lord says to the people of Israel: I know what you are saying, for I know every thought that comes into your minds. 6 You have murdered many in this city and filled its streets with the dead.”
“7 Therefore, the Lord says: This city is an iron pot all right, but the pieces of meat are the victims of your injustice. As for you, I will soon drag you from this pot. 8 I will bring on you the sword of war you so greatly fear. 9 I will drive you out of Jerusalem and hand you over to foreigners, who will carry out my judgments against you. 10 You will be slaughtered all the way to the borders of Israel. You will know that I am the Lord.”
That’s a prosecution. That’s an indictment, accusations, evidence, a verdict, and judgment. For 400 years there was no prophet in Israel. There were no prosecutors. And then there appeared one by the name of John the Baptist. He was filled with the Spirit because the Holy Spirit was going to empower him as a prosecutor. And John said, “You snakes. You vipers. Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?”
You would hear John saying those kinds of things that were intended to terrify sinners and to indict them. You would hear him say, “When the one who is coming arrives, He’s going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And the next verse says, “And he convicted Herod of his immorality.” John with the Holy Spirit prosecuted people because they violated the Word of God.
Then came another prosecutor, the perfect prosecutor: the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember at His baptism? The Spirit of the Lord empowered Him for ministry. He went back to His synagogue in Nazareth, in Luke 4, and He prosecuted them for their hypocrisy and false religion and said, “You’re just like your fathers before you.” and they tried to throw Him off a cliff and stone Him to death.
He was everything an Old Testament prophet was and more. He was God’s prosecutor. Jesus says in John 3:19, “This is judgment; Light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, doesn’t come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” He prosecutes and indicts.
Look what our Lord is saying to the disciples, “From here on, the Holy Spirit is going to put the truth in your hands by which you will measure every man, and you will become God’s prosecutors.” Remember in John 16, Jesus went over to the Mount of Olives, looked at the temple and said, “Not one stone will be left on top of another.” Because our Lord is the prosecutor of Israel.
Then came John the Baptist, God’s prosecutor, and they killed him. After that came the Son of God, the ultimate Prosecutor who prosecuted the world of sin and judgment, and they also killed Him. In each case, the prosecuted became the prosecutors of the world. And our Lord is saying to the disciples and to us that the world’s going to prosecute us in every generation.
We are prosecuted in the world’s courts. Ten out of the eleven disciples, with the exception of John were killed. So the Holy Spirit is the one who convicts. But this is not talking about the work that He does in the heart, this is talking about the work that we do, empowered by Him with the Scripture. The Holy Spirit gives us an offensive weapon, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God to prosecute.
All gospel ministry starts here. You can’t get to the good news until you’ve preached the bad news. This is a time when the church is trying to make the world feel good about itself, trying to make everybody feel a little better. If you ever hear a preacher who is not a prosecutor, you’re listening to someone who’s shirked his duty. What is the point of the gospel if there’s no sin and judgment?
So here’s how we have to give the gospel. First, we find in the Scripture everything we need to know concerning sin. But it’s one particular sin that we have to proclaim. The sin of not believing in Jesus. Everyone has a general sense of morality, a general sense of sinfulness and breaking the rules, but everybody tends to think that even in spite of breaking the rules, they’re good enough.
People will inevitably think that they’re good deeds outweighs the sin. So you have to say, “Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as God and Lord and Savior?” All other religions that are outside of Christ mean zero if you reject Christ. John 3:18 says, “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in Him. But anyone who does not believe in Him has already been judged for not believing in God’s Son.”
There’s only one person who ever walked on this earth who had a right at the end of His live to go directly on His own merit into the presence of God, only one. So unless you possess the righteousness of Jesus Christ, you will never see God. God highly exalted that demonstrated righteousness, God sat Him at His right hand, and gave Him the name Lord, the name that’s above every name.
If you’re going to be with God, you have to possess the righteousness that Jesus Christ possessed. When you believe in Christ, He gives you His righteousness. You become the righteousness of God in Him. Our righteousness is filthy rags. But Christ’s righteousness allowed Him to go into the presence of God. The only way you’ll ever get to God, is to be granted His righteousness.
Because on the cross, Christ took your sinfulness. The only way you’ll ever get to heaven is to be perfectly holy. Your righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees; you have to be holy like your Father in heaven is holy. You can’t be that on your own, and so it has to be something granted to you, a righteousness that is alien to you. The only righteousness acceptable to God is the righteousness of Christ.
How do we prove judgment? Because the ruler of this world has been judged. Genesis 3:15, “His head is crushed.” Colossians 2, “The powers of Satan and hell are all defeated at the cross.” Hebrews 2, “The one who had the power of death is destroyed by Christ.” You can go to Revelation 20 where Satan is bound, and cast into the lake of fire with all the demons forever and ever.
Acts 2:22-24, “God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through Him. 23 But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed Him to a cross and killed Him. 24 But God released Him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life.”
Peter is a prosecutor on the Day of Pentecost. Acts 2:33, “Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.” Peter preached judgment, verse 34-35, “For David himself never ascended into heaven, yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit in the place of honor at my right hand,”
35, until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet. 36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” 37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” 38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent,
And let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 40 And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” 41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. And that was because they were accused. Let us pray.