Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Fifteen

                                                                                                                                              Verse 22

Jesus' teaching in this verse happens to be most difficult to understand. But one can always speculate.

When Jesus said that He came to speak to the unbelievers, He had to have meant that He spoke God's Word. The Holy Spirit gives the spoken and written Word of God great power to bring conviction to the hearts of unbelievers that they are sinners who have offended God and that they need Christ to save them from eternal spiritual death. Romans 10:17. When Jesus taught that if He had not come to speak God's Word to them "they had not had sin," He could not have meant that they would have no sin at all because in the next phrase He said that "now they have no cloak for their sin." Jesus could not have contradicted Himself. Jesus had to have meant by saying "they had not had sin," that without the spoken and written Word of God, they could never gain a clear consciousness of their sin. The Jews had the Word of God but in their attempts to prove their own righteousness, they ignored that part of the Word of God that informed them that they had all sinned against Him. Psalm 51:4-5.

Sin causes spiritual death, and spiritual death causes sin. Romans 5:12. When all humans inherited a weakness for sin from Adam because of free will, that gave the Devil the ability to inject spiritual death into all humans who knowingly sin. Romans5:12-13. For this reason, little children who die go to Heaven because they have not reached an age where they can know that they have sinned. Matthew 19:13-15. Until a person knowingly sins, the Devil cannot inject spiritual death into them. The conscience that God gives to every living human He creates tells them when they have sinned, but if they do not have the Word of God to tell them they have sinned against God, He does not hold their sin against them. Acts 17:29-30. Nevertheless, as soon as a person realizes that they have sinned, the Devil injects spiritual death into them. Romans 5:12-14.

Innocence holds the power to annul sin and spiritual death with it. Jesus proved that in His death, burial, and resurrection. Acts 2:25-31. If Adam had only called on God for help when he learned that Eve had sinned, God could have annulled Eve's sin because she was still innocent even after the Devil had deceived her. She was like a little child. I Timothy 2:14. Eve did not knowingly sin until she gave the forbidden fruit to Adam because she knew it would corrupt him.

Pride happens to be the worst sin that humans can commit because pride is the satanic idea that humans can get rid of God and create their own moral code and their own heaven on earth. Followers of Nietzche and Marx have especially devoted themselves to this type of sin which is also deliberately evil. Evil attaches itself to all sin, but there can be some good in sin as when Adam sacrificed himself to fall to Eve's level so that he could love her and try to protect her. Romans 5:14. But when Adam deliberately sinned because he knew he had disobeyed God' Word, he committed an evil act of rebellion against God because of his pride. Sin and evil can be cleansed and forgiven by God when a person repents and believes in Christ because He bore the sins and evil of all mankind on His cross. I John 2:2. But spiritual death itself, which is totally evil, can never be cleansed and forgiven by God because it never repents. Matthew 12:31-32. Christ will cleanse and forgive living humans saved by His grace with His blood and water He shed on the cross, and He will annul their spiritual deaths. John 5:24. Christ will also use His fiery wrath against evil to cleanse and forgive the rest of living humanity because they will all repent and believe in Him as the Lamb of God of their own free will when He appears to them in a great worship service near the end of the world. Revelation 5:11-14; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Leviticus 5:7-10; Genesis 8:20-21; II Peter 3:9-13. Christ took away the spiritual deaths of all humans when He died on the cross, and He will cast the separated, spiritual deaths of all living humans into the eternal lake of fire in His final judgment. Revelation 20:11-15; Hebrews 2:9-18. In other words, in Christ's final judgment, he will purge all sin, evil, and spiritual death from His entire creation so that He can recreate it all to be wholly righteous. Revelation 21:5; II Peter 3:9-13.