The position of this world is an awful one. It has rejected the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in all their manifestations of righteousness and love.
The Son and the Spirit have both visited this scene in Person. One is here and One is not here. The Son came to reveal the Father and to display divine love as it had never been displayed. In the life of that lowly, gracious Man was a perfect representation of the Father. His was no hidden life; it was lived before the gaze of men. In word and deed, such deep grace shone forth accompanied by unmatched power, and at the close of His ministry He says, "Now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father." John 15:24. The world had rejected the Son, and with Him the Father also.
But the ways of divine love are very wonderful, for immediately after speaking thus He announces that the Holy Spirit shall come to earth that He may "testify of Me." This was the world's last opportunity. The Spirit was to come because the Son was rejected. If the Spirit should be rejected too, what is left for the world? Nothing but the pure, righteous wrath of an insulted God. Jesus, in announcing the advent of the Spirit, foreshadowed the setting in of a day of grace; but a day that would assuredly be followed by a night of judgment.
Despite the world's awful sin in rejecting the Father and the Son, grace still lingered over the world, loath to leave it to itself and to its doom; hence, when Jesus ascended to heaven, the Spirit came to earth (Acts 1, 2).
But both blessing and woe are connected with His coming. His testimony received brings salvation; rejected, it carries with it eternal judgment. The world has been given its last chance, but it is a wonderful chance, for while He, the Spirit, is here, there is salvation for the vilest. Today the destiny of numberless souls is being decided by the rejection or reception of the Spirit's witness.
"He shall testify of Me," says the Son; and this witness of the Spirit is found in the Bible, which is His work. Prophecy, symbol, type, and figure, interwoven throughout Old Testament history, is the Spirit's way of testifying of Jesus there; and in the New Testament the incarnation, life and ministry of the Son are brought before us and then the Spirit illuminates Calvary's dark scene. There we see Jesus as the true and only sacrifice for sin, the Savior of the world.
But while it is true that the Holy Spirit has in the Word given a powerful testimony to the work of Christ in its blessed efficacy for the salvation of the lost, it is also true that He has taken up an attitude toward this world which must never be forgotten. In John 16 Christ says, "When He is come, He will reprove (bring demonstration to) the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged."
In whatever way it may please men to view and speak of Christ's death, there, unchanged and awful, is the Spirit's witness that His crucifixion was the result of the world's unbelief in Him, and the sin of that crucifixion is fixed upon it (Acts 2:22-24). The world got rid of one divine Person by crucifying Him, but it is a solemn and significant fact that another divine Person came straightway to bring demonstration to it of this dreadful crime. It may suit the world to try and forget or smooth over that shameful act at Calvary, when Incarnate Love was taken by guilty hands and for no offense whatever was put to death, but it will never be able to clear itself of the sin.
The world cannot get rid of the Holy Spirit as it got rid of Jesus. He is beyond its power and, whether men know it or not, the terrible fact remains that His presence here is a perpetual witness of the sin which is upon it in crucifying Him whose only crime was to make known the glories of divine love.
Where is Jesus now? The Spirit points us to the Father's throne and tells us He is there. The world displayed its utter sinfulness in crucifying the Son; the Father's righteousness was displayed in seating Him at His own right hand. And this act of the Father's righteousness sheds an eternal light upon the world's guilt. That blessed Person whom men spat upon and put into the most ignominious place on earth, has been exalted to the highest place in heaven. Thus has the Father declared the worthiness of the Son; and the Spirit's testimony as to the Son's present position reveals the magnitude of the world's sin in rejecting Him.
And this is not all. Satan, who led man on to commit this crime, who is the world's prince, who has control here over the hearts and minds of the unconverted, and who has them in his power and leads them in his chain, has been judged. His wickedness rose to its greatest height at Calvary; the witness of the Spirit as to Satan is that he is judged, and the moment fixed when he shall be cast into the everlasting fire prepared for him and his angels. (Rev. 20:10; Matt. 25:41)
And if the prince is judged, what of the people? Why, the judgment of God is hovering over them.
But though this is true, yet the position of Satan and that of the world differs; for while there is no hope for Satan, there is hope for sinners while the Holy Spirit is here. There is salvation for them on one condition, which is that they receive His testimony.
He is here to declare to mankind the sin that was committed in murdering Jesus of Nazareth, and the testimony which He bears to this renders every human being on earth responsible to clear themselves of all participation in the crime by accepting without delay Jesus as their Savior. They must avail themselves of the work which He accomplished on that cross where man's sin placed Him for the salvation of their souls, for apart from the Spirit's indictment of the world for the slaying of Christ, He points fallen humanity to the very same crucified Christ. He tells them that their only hope is in Him, that at the cross the whole question of human guilt was gone into and that a full and complete satisfaction for sin was made in the Son's death and blood shedding. He teaches that out of evil good has come, that God's love has triumphed over man's sin, and that the very act whereby humanity consummated their guilt has been used by God to provide a full and everlasting salvation for their souls. From the judgment of that Holy One, pardon flows forth to the guilty; from His smiting, healing comes to a sin-sick humanity; from His death, eternal life springs for every child of Adam that believes in Him (Acts 2:12-36; 13:38, 39).
It is the complete and glorious triumph of divine wisdom and love over man's sin and folly, and Satan's craft and malignity. At the cross Satan was defeated and his condemnation sealed. On the one hand was manifested, in a light that will never grow dim, man's hatred of God and all good; and on the other, Jesus' perfect obedience, and God's magnificent love and holy abhorrence of sin.
Yet, though the Spirit can and does announce to man a present and eternal salvation through that wondrous work, He never ceases to warn the world of another work that Jesus has to accomplish. The Son has been appointed to judge (Acts 17:31; 2 Thess. 1:6-10).
Hidden from man's gaze for centuries, He will again be manifested, but this time not in grace, not in weakness, not to endure reproach, but to pour upon it in the power of omnipotent might, the wrath of the offended Deity.
Salvation or judgment, bliss or woe, heaven or hell, Jesus as Savior or Jesus as judge, this is the Spirit's never changing story, His never varying witness to a lost world.
And how has mankind treated the witness of the Spirit? It is now more than nineteen centuries since He came to earth. And what is the world's condition? Has it accepted His witness? Just as in the days of Christ the world rejected the Father and the Son, it has now rejected the Spirit, for in rejecting His testimony, they have rejected Him.
God's means for blessing this present world are thus exhausted. He can do nothing more. In rejecting the Spirit, men close the door of salvation against themselves. Angels are not sent as revealers of God's mercy, but the Son and the Spirit came; and in these the whole Trinity, in all its wondrous manifestations of compassion for and interest in the fallen creature, has been refused by mankind.
The world has sealed its own doom, and that doom is fixed. It has thrown away its last opportunity. No power now can arrest the threatened judgment. And time is hurrying it toward the awful crisis. The last moments of the dispensation are here. Christ is at hand. The Spirit and the saints will soon be gone; and the world, now careless of its danger, will wake up to reap the awful consequences of rejecting the Father's love, the Son's work, and the Spirit's strivings. "Depart from us" (Job 22:17), said the world of Noah's time to God, and He took them at their word. "Depart from us" was said in substance to the Son by men nineteen hundred years ago, and He left them. (Luke 8:37.) "Depart from us," this present world is saying to the Spirit, and soon He shall depart.
Reader, if you have not listened to the Spirit's solemn witness concerning Jesus, if you have not yielded to the authority of the Son, if you have not left the rebel ranks and placed yourself beneath the banner of Christ, if you have not received Him as the Savior of your lost soul, you are yet in fellowship with this unhappy world—part of it—and charged in the mind of God with the sin of rejecting the blessed Trinity in all its wondrous ways of grace.
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