Lloyd-Jones- I wonder whether you have always realized the significance of this statement?

Talking about His death, just before this, our Lord said, ‘Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out’ (John 12:31). He was referring to what He was going to do in His death: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die’ (vv. 32–33).

Then there is the statement of the apostle Paul in Colossians 2:15, where he says that in dying upon the cross our Lord was putting principalities to an open shame, ‘triumphing over them in it’. The statement in John 12:31, therefore, means that our Lord in His death upon the cross was judging and defeating Satan. It was a prophecy that the prince of this world was to be cast out by that event. Paul says it has happened. And I suggest that our Lord says the same thing here in John 16. The death of our Lord upon the cross, His resurrection and ascension, and His sending of the Holy Spirit, was the proclamation of the defeat of Satan. Satan is now cast out, as our Lord had prophesied and predicted that he would be. And, of course, it was the coming of the Holy Spirit that finally proclaimed this. ...

I wonder whether you have always realized the significance of this statement? Do you not see that it means that Satan has already been judged? He was judged by the work done on the cross; it was proclaimed by the sending of the Holy Spirit. And it is a fact. Our Lord’s last great commission to His followers was, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’ (Matt. 28:18–19). He has this power. The apostle Paul puts it like this: ‘He must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet’ (1 Cor. 15:25). The Day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, therefore, was a great proclamation to this effect—that the world will never be the same again as the result of what our Lord has done upon the cross.

Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1997). God the Holy Spirit (pp. 48–49). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

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