The house church, emergent church, bible resource and news relevant to Christians blog

52 lies told in church every Sunday - Lie 8 - The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of their sins

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit Convicts Unbelievers of Their Sins

How are we to pray for a friend or family member who doesn’t believe in Christ? If you follow the example of most believer’s prayers, you’ll pray that the Holy Spirit will convict them of their sins so that they’ll become open to the gospel. No one would object to the motivation behind that kind of prayer, which is the salvation of loved ones. But are we really praying according to what the Bible says the Holy Spirit will do when we approach it that way?

The answer is no. It is pointless to hope or pray that the Holy Spirit will convict an unbeliever of the things they are doing wrong. He’s not going to do that for one simple reason: Their sins are not the problem. Christ dealt with their sins on the cross. When He said, “It is finished,” He was including the world, not just those who have already believed the gospel. You see, the specific sins, the detailed misbehavior of a person who isn’t trusting in Jesus Christ are just indicative of a deeper problem.

The Holy Spirit isn’t going to convict unbelievers of their specific sins because that wouldn’t meet the deepest need they have. Their biggest problem isn’t their misbehavior. He’s going to convict them of the one thing that ultimately matters – their unbelief in Christ. That’s the core issue.

The Truth Is So Much Better!

John 16:8 tells us exactly what the Holy Spirit will do in regard to the conviction of the world. Jesus said, ‘He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin,because they do not believe in Me’(John 16:8-9).

The word convict in this biblical context doesn’t mean that He finds them guilty as we might normally think when we use that word. The word in this context means ‘to convince’, and that’s what God wants to do. God’s Spirit will convince an unbeliever of his unbelief, and he will come to see the necessity of believing in Jesus Christ and what He has done on that person’s behalf. In comparison to that, nothing else matters. Compared to unbelief, behavior is just incidental.

I’ll give you an example.

You can dress a dead body for a funeral. Everything can look right about them, but they have a big problem. They’re dead.

That’s exactly the way it is with the life of an unbeliever. His sins, as serious as those things might be in terms of how they will affect his life, are really symptoms. You might as well forget praying that the Holy Spirit will convict an unbeliever of his addiction to drugs, or her addiction to alcohol or promiscuity or anything like that. If a person doesn’t know Christ, he has one consuming problem, and that is his unbelief.

Clarify Your Thinking

Sometimes the most glaring characteristic of an unbeliever in our minds may be his misbehavior. We may cringe when we see a person acting in a way that is considered morally offensive to many people, but that isn’t the big thing to God. He knew how we would all behave back when He gave Himself for our sins. He knew the child molester would molest 5 children. He knew it before the child molester was born. His concern now is that we believe on Him and enter into the experience of knowing our sins are forgiven and living out of the fullness of His indwelling life. The Holy Spirit will convict an unbeliever of only one thing-his unbelief in Jesus Christ. He will show that person where he stands so that he can enter into the experience of knowing God through Jesus.

We all know people who haven’t trusted in Jesus Christ. When we pray for them, let’s not pray that they’ll be convicted about taking drugs, drunkenness, immorality, sex before marriage or anything like that. Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit will convict them of their unbelief, because that is His ministry. When we pray for them in that way, we are appropriating a truth of the Bible that can make an eternal difference in somebody’s life.