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Our Lord has just been telling His disciples how He will equip them, as His champions, for their conflict with the world. He now advances to tell them that the three-fold conviction which they, as counsel for the prosecution, will establish as against the world at the bar, will be based upon three facts: a truth of experience, of history, of revelation, all three facts having reference to Christ and His relation to men. Now these three facts are — the world's unbelief; Christ's ascension and session at the right hand of God; and "the judgment of the prince of this world." These three facts are the staple and the strength of the Christian ministry. These are misapprehended, and have failed unless they have driven home to our consciences and understandings the triple conviction of my text.

I. THE REJECTION OF CHRIST AS THE CLIMAX OF THE WORLD'S SIN.

1. This is the most striking instance of the gigantic self-assertion of our Lord's. The world is full of all manner of evils, but Christ passes them all by and points to a mere negative thing, and says, "There is the worst of all sins."

2. And some of us do not think it is sin at all; that man is no more responsible for his belief than he is for the colour of his hair. Well, what is it that a man turns away from when he turns away from Christ? And what does such an attitude indicate as to the rejecter? He stands in the presence of the loveliest revelation of the Divine nature, and he sees no light in it. Why but because he is incapable of seeing God manifest in the flesh he loves the darkness rather than the light. He turns away from the revelation of the most self-sacrificing love. Why but because he bears a heart cased with selfishness? He turns away from the offered hands heaped with the blessing that he needs. Why but because he does not care for the gifts that are offered? Forgiveness, cleansing, purity, a heaven which consists in the perfecting of all these has no attractions for him. The man who is blind to the first, who has no stirrings of responsive gratitude for the second and who does not care for the third, in turning away, manifests and commits a true sin.

3. Then our Lord here presents this fact of man's unbelief as a "typical sin." In all other acts of sin you get the poison manipulated into various forms, associated with other elements, disguised more or less. However unlike they may be to one another — the lust of the sensualist, the craft of the cheat, &c. — all of them have this one common root: a diseased and bloated regard to self. The definition of sin is, living to myself and making myself my own centre. The definition of faith is, making Christ my centre and living for Him. And so, if you want to know what is the sinfulness of sin, there it is; it is all packed away in its purest form in the act of rejecting Christ. When you have summoned up the ugliest forms of man's sins, this one overtops them all, because it presents in the simplest form the mother-tincture of all sin, which, variously coloured and perfumed and combined, makes the poison of them all. A heap of rotting, poisonous matter is offensive to many senses, but the colourless, scentless, tasteless drop has the poison in its most virulent form, and is not a bit less virulent though it has been learnedly distilled and christened with a scientific name, and put into a dainty jewelled flask.

II. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST AS THE PLEDGE AND THE CHANNEL OF THE WORLD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS. Christ speaks as if the process of departure were already commenced. It had three stages — death, resurrection, ascension; but these three are all parts of the one departure.

1. The fact of an ascended Christ is the guarantee of His own complete fulfilment of the ideal of a righteous man. Suppose Jesus Christ never rose from the grave, would it be possible to believe that, however beautiful these records of His life, and however lovely the character they reveal, there was really in Him no sin at all? A dead Christ means a Christ who, like the rest of us, had His limitations and His faults. But if it be true that He sprang from the grave because " it was not possible that He should be holden of it," and because in His nature there was no proclivity to death, since there had been no indulgence in sin; and if it be true that He ascended up on high because that was His native sphere, as naturally as the water in the valley will rise to the height of the hill from which it has descended, then we can see that God has set His seal upon that life by that resurrection and ascension.

2. And further, with this supernatural fact, stands or falls the possibility of His communicating any of His righteousness to sinful men. If there be no such possibility, what does Jesus Christ's beauty of character matter to me? I shall have to stumble on as best I can, sometimes ashamed and rebuked, sometimes stimulated and sometimes reduced to despair, by looking at the record of His life. But there can come nothing other in kind, though, perhaps a little more in degree than comes from any other beautiful soul that has lived. But if He hath ascended up on high, then His righteousness is not a solitary, uncommunicative perfectness for Himself, but like a sun in the heavens, which streams out vivifying and enlightening rays to all that seek His face. If Christ be risen, His righteousness may be the world's; if Christ be not risen, His righteousness is useless to any but to Himself.

III. THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD'S PRINCE AS THE PROPHECY OF THE JUDGEMENT OF THE WORLD.

1. The world has a prince. That chaotic agglomeration of diverse forms of evil has yet a kind of anarchic order in it, and, like the fabled serpent's locks on the Gorgon head, they intertwine and sting one another, and yet they are a unity. We hear very little about the prince of the world in Scripture. Mercifully the existence of such a being is not plainly revealed until the fact of Christ's victory over him is revealed.

2. That prince is judged. The Cross did that, as Jesus Christ over and over again indicates. Since that Cross, the power of evil in the world has been broken in its centre; God has been disclosed, and new forces have been lodged in the heart of humanity, which only need to be developed in order to overcome the evil. Since that auspicious day when "He spoiled the principalities and powers," &c., the history of the world has been the judgment of the world. Hoary iniquities have toppled into the ceaseless washing sea of Divine love which has struck against their bases. Ancient evils have vanished, and more are on the point of vanishing. A loftier morality, a deeper conception of sin, new hopes for the world and for men, have all dawned upon mankind; and the prince of the world is led bound, as it were, at the victorious chariot wheels. The central fortress has been captured and the rest is an affair of outposts.

3. A final judgment is coming and that it is, is manifested by the fact that Christ, when He came in the form of a servant and died upon the Cross, judged the prince. When He comes in the form of a King on the great white throne He will judge the world which He has delivered from the prince.

(1) That thought ought to be a hope to us all. Are you glad when you realize the fact that the righteousness which is in the heavens is going to conquer and coerce and clap under the hatches the sin that is riding rampant through the world? Men who did not know half as much of the Divine love and righteousness as we do, called upon the rocks and the hills, &c., to rejoice before the Lord, "for He cometh to judge the world."(2) It ought to be a hope; it is a fear. And there are some of us that do not like to have the conviction driven home to us.

(3) But hope or fear, it is a fact, as certain in the future as the Cross is sure in the past, or the Throne in the present. Have you learned your sin; have you opened your heart to Christ's righteousness? Then, if you have, when men's hearts are failing them for fear, and they call on the rocks and the hills to cover them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, we shall lift up our heads, for our re. demption draweth nigh. "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the day of judgment."

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:

WEB: When he has come, he will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment;