Of sin, because they believe not on me;
Of SIN, because they believe not on me. By this is not meant that He shall deal with men about the sin of unbelief only; nor yet about that sin as, in comparison with all other sins, the greatest. There is no comparison here between the sin of unbelief and other breaches of the moral law, in point of criminality. The key to this important statement will be found in such sayings of our Lord Himself as the following: "He that believeth is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the Only begotten Son of God: He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life: He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:18; John 3:36; John 5:24). What the Spirit, then, does in the discharge of this first department of His work, is to bear in upon men's consciences the conviction that the one divinely provided way of deliverance from the guilt of all sin is believing on the Son of God; that as soon as they thus believe, there is no condemnation to them; but that unless and until they do so, they underlie the guilt of all their sins, with that of this crowning and all-condemning sin super-added. Thus does the Spirit, in fastening this truth upon the conscience, instead of extinguishing, only consummate and intensify the sense of all other sins; causing the convicted sinner to perceive that his complete absolution from guilt, or his remediless condemnation under the weight of all his sins, hangs upon his believing on the Son of God, or his deliberate rejection of Him.
But what, it may be asked, is the sinner to believe regarding Christ, in order to so vast a deliverance? The next department of the Spirit's work will answer that question.
Second,