John 16:8

And he, when he is come, will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.

Convict the world ... The means of the Spirit's convicting the world was explained thus by Lipscomb:

He will convict the world, not by direct work upon their hearts, but as the event shows (Acts 2:37), through the life of the apostles, declaring the wonderful works of God. The Holy Spirit came not "unto the world" but "unto the apostles." The world could not receive the Spirit directly (John 14:17), and never can, AS THE WORLD. The apostles received him, and through their testimony he reaches the world.[8]

And he ... Personal pronouns referring to the Holy Spirit throughout these pages emphasize the personal nature of the Spirit. The Trinitarian concept of three persons in the Godhead is in these verses. See under John 16:14-15.

Convict ... Regarding this word, Westcott noted that:

It involves the conceptions of authoritative examination, of unquestionable proof, of decisive judgment, and of punitive power. He who "convicts" another places the truth in a clear light before him, so that it must be seen and acknowledged as truth ... He who then rejects ... rejects it with his eyes open and at his peril.[9]

The issue of whether the world will or will not receive the truth is not treated here. The Spirit will "convict" the whole world by witnessing the truth to the whole creation; but every man, through the exercise of his own free will, will determine his own destiny by his reaction to the truth, either receiving it or rejecting it.

Sin ... righteousness ... judgment ... The comprehensiveness of these terms is boundless. Here are the two fundamentals of man's spiritual condition and the two options, or alternatives, open to him. The Spirit convicts of sin, revealing man's fallen estate and bondage to Satan, and showing his total helplessness to achieve through his own efforts any healing of his condition. The Spirit also convicts of righteousness by revealing the mystery of how a man may acquire a righteousness not his own, that being the righteousness of Christ, available to all who receive and obey the gospel, thus being inducted "into Christ," and identified with Christ as Christ.

"Sin ... righteousness ... judgment ..." Over against these three words stand three proper names: Adam, Christ, and Satan. Through Adam came sin; through Christ came righteousness; and upon Satan the penalty of ultimate judgment shall fall (John 16:11). As Westcott observed:

The "world" acting through its representatives, had charged Christ as a sinner (John 9:24). Its leaders trusted that they were "righteous" (Luke 18:9), and they were at the point of giving sentence against the "prince of Life" (Acts 3:15) as a malefactor (John 18:30). At this point the threefold error (Acts 3:17), which the Spirit was to reveal and reprove, had brought at last its fatal fruit.[10]

Any human intelligence capable of understanding the phenomenal connections of these three words (sin, righteousness, and judgment) with all that was previously written in John, and so dramatically presented in Westcott's words above, and as encompassing in their total significance the entire history of Adam's race from Eden to the Great White Throne - any mind which sees all that can only marvel at a critic's conclusion that such words "do not fit." The sun, moon, and stars do not fit any better than these words fit the context.

[8] David Lipscomb, op. cit., p. 253.

[9] B. F. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), p. 228.

[10] Ibid., p. 229.