Successful Soul Winning

Address delivered at Missionary Rally, The Moody Church, April 1923

If a soul is to be led to Christ the plan as given to us in the Word of God contemplates that the Spirit of God is going to do something in that heart in preparation for an intelligent decision of Christ.

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come he will reprove the world” (John 16:7–8a).

That refers to the Spirit of God. That was truly stated at the time, but we cannot refer to it in that tense now, for He has come. We are not looking forward to a day of His coming; He has come. Therefore, what has been promised here in this Scripture is now our privilege and our experience. We can read it this way, “Now that he has come he will reprove the world.”

From the 15th verse on you will find what he is going to do for the believer. He has a great message and a great ministry for the believer. But here we are concerned with His ministry to the world, and of course we know that this is individual, that it is a ministry to individual persons in the world. “When He is come He will reprove the world of sin, 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.” It is of tremendous importance that every soul winner shall have a clear understanding of the meaning of this passage, for after all it is the very heart of the promise of Christ to us for success. Everything that the Spirit is going to do in His three-fold work concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment is all gathered up in the word “reprove.” You notice that word in the 8th verse, “And when he is come he will reprove the world.” What is He going to do when He reproves the world?”

Other translations, like the Revised Version, translate this word “convince” and “convict,” but we have in the Authorized Version the word “reprove.” The word is used eighteen times in the New Testament; I mean the word from which this is translated. Not always is it translated “reprove” but I can say that it always has to do with one particular thing and that is the illumination or the enlightenment that may come to your mind when you have understood something that you did not understand before. For instance, if I could throw light upon this Scripture, I will have illuminated your mind.

Blind To The Gospel

Perhaps the foundation behind all of this is more clearly stated than anywhere else in the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians, verses 3 and 4. “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Instantly when Satan does that thing he is acknowledging indirectly that so far as he is concerned, he believes that the one danger point where a person can escape from the powers of darkness and be translated into the kingdom of the Son of God, is the point of believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, Satan is not blinding the minds of people about a thousand subjects more or less related to this very truth. He will not blind you concerning a moral life or church membership, but he is blinding people concerning the Gospel. We are not referring to the Gospel as the life story of Jesus or any general good news that might be picked up, but we are referring to the one message of good news, that Gospel of the way of salvation on the ground of a personal faith in a crucified, risen Saviour. It is God’s message and offer of salvation on the ground of a personal confidence in Christ as Saviour. That message is a very clean-cut, a very distinct, a very unique message, a message which is complicated and confused with other things almost to its destruction and ruin, and I know of nothing more needed today than a very careful restatement of the exact grounds and terms and meaning of the Gospel of the grace of God.

If someone asked you how to be saved, could you tell them? Why not? If they have difficulties, can you meet them? If they have been misled in some particular line of doctrine, can you straighten it out? Probably the worse curse ever pronounced in the Scripture has never been disannulled or withdrawn. You will find it in the first chapter of Galatians, and it has to do with perverting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is enough to make us tremble when we think about the awful responsibility. When you present the Gospel to unsaved people you stir up opposition from all the hosts of darkness because your purpose is a plain purpose of going over on Satan’s ground, and taking one of his own.

A Crafty Enemy

In preaching the Gospel to unsaved men you are not dealing with mere humans. You are fighting the hosts of darkness. You are presenting a truth that Satan has already anticipated to the extent that he has dulled their minds to it. You can go to a crowd of people on the street and talk to them on any subject and they will all listen. But if you present the facts of the Gospel, the Good News of a crucified, risen Saviour, you will find very few can follow you. There is a dullness of mind, and you are very happy indeed if out of the crowd a very small percentage comes out and receives the Gospel of Christ. Why cannot they understand the simple plan? Why do they not understand this simple truth when it is explained to them? It is because the god of this world has blinded their minds.

Go back a moment to our first passage. In John 16 we have the word, “When he is come, he will reprove.” I would like to go into detail but I must not. Satan has cast a veil over the mind of them that believe. When the Spirit is come He is going to enlighten the mind. The remarkable fact is that the very thing He will reveal is a marvelous three-fold statement of that very same Gospel about which Satan has been busy darkening the mind. There could not be a better gathering into a three-fold division of the essential facts of the Gospel and the presentation of the Gospel than in these three words of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

Some persons have the impression that when the Spirit of God does this work and visits the heart of an unsaved person, He goes there to make them ashamed of their sin. They think that when the Spirit of God visits an unsaved man he makes him very much ashamed of the fact that he has been a drunkard or profane or something of that kind, and that the Spirit’s work has to do with making people so ashamed of sin that they will be willing to give it up. That kind of thing is not in this Scripture nor even in the Bible. Would you think that God’s work for man today was summed up in such a statement as that: that He is trying to get men to stop sinning? If you could get every person in the city of Chicago to stop sinning (I speak accurately) you would not have one more Christian than we have today. If you are in the reformation business, please do not call yourself a Bible Christian. God is not in the reformation business. The work of the Spirit is not merely to get people to stop their sinning. The work of the Spirit is to bring them to see Jesus Christ as Saviour. A Christian is not a person who has given up sinning, but he is one who has been born again. And everything that is focusing in this great passage is not to get people to live a better life but to get them to receive a new life from God.

A Complete Change

When you do receive life from God, there will be a mighty transformation, but don’t try to substitute the transformation for salvation. Reading this verse you discover that the Spirit’s work is to convince of only one sin. “And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin. . . because they believe not on me.” That God should have provided redemption through His Son and offered it in His Son to a soul, and that that soul should spurn it and turn from it—that is the awful sin. Why not other sins? Very simple, because God believes (whether you and I believe it or not does not make any difference) that every other sin of this world was laid on His Son, and He is not talking about these; He is talking about believing on the Christ on Whom the sin has been laid. What Gospel have you to preach if you have not that to preach? What in the world can you say other than that?

“Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.” Undoubtedly, so far as I understand this passage, it has to do with the righteousness of God that is bestowed, a righteousness which is unto all and upon all who believe, in which every saved person is robed as in a white wedding garment. Because we are clothed in that righteousness we are acceptable standing before God in the very liberty of heaven, not blushing in our own nakedness, but standing in the robe of the righteousness of God imputed through Jesus Christ, for “He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

I do not say that a sinner has to have a definition of the imputed righteousness of God or understand that most difficult of the doctrines of Scripture. I do not think he has to understand it to be saved, but he will get to a place where he says, “All I need is in Christ.” That is a simple thing for a sinner to say, but a very difficult thing to see, and there is a wonderful change of mind when a sinner can say, “I can’t work this thing out, but Jesus Christ is all I need.” Can you make the sinner see it? Is it not your business? No. Can you make him see the greatest sin is to reject Christ? No. The Spirit of God is here to do that thing.

Last of all, “of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Do not talk about a judgment to come. I have heard people say, “Take these sinners and scare them to death so that they will be so frightened that they will stop sinning.” That is not even Christian, dear friends. The thought here is of a judgment which is already perfectly accepted in the past, for the greatest judgment scene the world has ever seen or will see is that judgment scene of Calvary’s cross where the Son of God heard the awful indictment that was due to you and me as high criminals against that holiness of God, and the Son of God, as our Substitute, went to that execution and died under that sentence of our judgment. He died in your stead; He really did the thing for you. Oh, friends, listen: When we preach the Gospel we challenge you to believe that Jesus Christ on the cross is there in your stead, and He did something for you (a glorious accomplishment) that is never to be done by you. A judgment passed. One of the most marvelous things of Calvary is this: That every soul has been put beyond his own execution, every man is looking back at his own execution as an accomplished fact, and God is asking him to believe it.

“My soul looks back to see
The burden thou didst bear
When hanging on the accursed tree,
And knows my guilt is there.”

Can you say it today, dear friends? Why don’t men on the street shout “Glory to God”? Because they don’t believe it. “When He is come He will convince the world with respect to sin and righteousness and judgment.”

A Call To Prayer

The great ministry of the Spirit working in the hearts of men is largely in answer to prayer. When Jesus Christ our Lord said, “If you ask anything in my name I will do it,” I believe that there is included in that the privilege on our part of interceding and praying in [sic] behalf of darkened minds that the Spirit of God will do that work. In the days in which we are living, with modern ways of getting things done quickly, we have gotten the idea that we don’t need to wait for the ministry of the Spirit in hearts. If men are going to take Christ it is because their own hearts reach out after Him. They can’t take Him in your faith or your courage or your enthusiasm; the desire has got to be born in their hearts by the Spirit of the living God.