deeds as ultimately deserving of punishment. What Jesus is saying is that sin is more than isolated bad deeds, for it consists in a state, or condition, of unbelief. This is the universal human problem—‘the great reigning sin’, as Matthew Henry calls it.9 This was now fully exposed by his coming into the world. If people had believed in Jesus and all that he had declared, they would have been convicted of sin and would have admitted, to use Calvin’s phrase, ‘the corruption and depravity of human