Sin, Righteousness and Judgment

Because I have heard it, I am sure that you must have heard it too, and that is,

“It’s the Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin.”

Haven’t you heard that before? I have, many times, and I believe it to be biblically sound doctrine. After all I have only heard it from Christians. But I wondered where it came from, so I went searching through the bible for book, chapter and verse, and voila, I found it in the Gospel of John.

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin – John 16:8 (ESV)

Jesus was talking to His disciples, preparing them for what was to come after His death and in this verse, He’s referring to the Holy Spirit. So, herein lies the justification for our belief that the Holy Spirit convicts us.

But this is not the whole verse; this is just a fragment of the verse, there’s more. Jesus did not stop at the word “sin”, he went on to say, and righteousness and judgment:

The entire verse tells us that there are three things that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of,

•        Sin
•        Righteousness
•        Judgment

This was news to me. This is showing us three separate groups; so, what is this verse really about? What was Jesus really saying to His disciples then and is saying to us now?

Every person in the world is in one of these groups; you’re either in sin, or in righteousness, or in judgment but you can’t be in more than one group and there’s no overlapping and we come to this conclusion because of verses nine to eleven that follow,

• concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 
•  concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 
•   concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

And then we’re confronted by the pronouns “they”, “you” and indirectly “he”.

When it comes to sin, Jesus uses the pronoun “they”. Why? Who is Jesus referring to? He is talking to His disciples, believers in Him, therefore the “they” could not be them, otherwise He would have said “you”.

The disciples believe in Jesus, so “they” who do not believe are unbelievers. The first group in verse 9 is group one – the “Sin” group, unbelievers to whom the conviction of sin is specifically targeted. They are convicted, proven guilty, concerning their sin of unbelief in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of sin, for those who do not believe in Jesus, that conviction is a wake-up call for them to recognize that they are in the wrong group and in need of the Saviour, Jesus.

Group two – the “Righteousness” group of verse 10. For this group, Jesus uses the pronoun “you”, a clear indication that this verse is directed to those He is speaking to, the disciples, who are believers. Believers are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Christ had no sin, but God made him become sin so that in Christ we could be right with God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ERV)

The Holy Spirit convicts, bears witness to, believers of their right-standing before God (see Romans 8:16). Jesus is no longer in the world physically but has given us His Spirit so that we can still believe in Him (see John 12:36).

The conviction of believers’ righteousness is to reinforce that those who believe in Jesus are always in right-standing before God because of the finished work of Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood (Romans 3:25 GNT). People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood (Romans 3:25 NLT).

The third group, group three – “Judgment”, verse 11. In the last group, Jesus is speaking about the ruler of this world, Satan, who is convicted, found guilty, by the Holy Spirit, of his judgment because he is already judged and pronounced guilty as charged.

Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine. The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. – John 12:30-31 (NLT)

Within these three groups everyone who is in the world is accounted for,

•         Unbelievers
•      Believers
•       Satan

It is a list of persons that are mutually exclusive, since as mentioned previously, no one can be in more than one group and taken as a whole, they make up the entire world so it’s collectively exhaustive.

Beloved, fragmenting bible verses is a dangerous practice as it leads us into erroneous doctrine. The verse that has been used to base our “conviction of sin” doctrine, plainly demonstrates that point.

Reading the verse in its entirety, together with the accompanying verses that follow shows that there are three actions that the Holy Spirit performs and these actions are applied to three separate groups and attached to each one is a reason for targeting each group.

So, this is merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg concerning the intriguing topics of sin, righteousness and judgment. Apostle Paul takes us much deeper in his letter to the Romans in which you will find a detailed and comprehensive look at all you need to know about sin, righteousness and judgment.

Incidentally, this “conviction of sin” doctrine is not new, the apostle dealt with it in his day and had to set things right (see Romans 8) but that’s a topic for another blog post.

For today, we have seen from John 16:8-11, that there is no basis for believing that believers in Jesus are convicted of their sins by the Holy Spirit, or by the Father, or by the Son but the Holy Spirit does remind those who believe in Jesus that God has declared them innocent because of His Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Amen †

Shelley Johnson “Sin, Righteousness and Judgment” ©2026 May 25, 2026