Bible Study on 1 John 2- Jesus Christ Our Advocate Before God

 Episode Title:  1 John 2:  Our Advocate

We have an Advocate!

John 2:1-  These two verses constitute the second part of the message we were studying in Chapter One. Remember in verse 5 of 1 John 1 we read, “This is the message,” and then in the rest of that chapter, including the first two verses of the second chapter, we have the message in its entirety. This is the message that John and the other apostles were commissioned by Christ to carry throughout the world. It is the message of man’s utterly lost condition in darkness, and of the atoning value of the precious blood of Christ. This message tells us the importance of facing our sins in the presence of God, and finding forgiveness. Now John goes on to address the failures of believers, those who have been cleansed judicially from all sin. What about our failures?-for you know we do fail, all of us, much as we may regret the sad fact.

There are many of us that are probably praying that God will make us good, and holy, and that our lives may be lives of victory. But I’m afraid many of us have to confess that God hasn’t done it yet. We recognize the fact that we do sin, and we do fail. Our hearts are constantly broken by our failures. What about the sins of believers?

First of all, believers should strive not to sin. John tells us, “My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). The word translated “little children” could better be translated “children” or “dear children” because the original word does not refer to age or size. It is a word that takes in everyone who is born of God. It literally means “born ones,” those who are born into God’s family. “My children, these things I write to you, that you should not be sinning.” It is the desire, the will of God for His children that we should not sin. God has redeemed us to Himself not only to take us to Heaven, but that we should live to the praise of His glory in this world.

Further on we read, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin” (1 John 3:9). In other words, they do not live in the practice of sin. When an individual is saved, a change takes place. If there is no change in a person’s life, they have never been born of God. From the time of their new birth they hate sin and love holiness. If they do not hate sin and love holiness, they are not born of God. On the other hand, I recognize the fact that “there is not a just man upon the earth, that does good, and sins not” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). There is no one who does not fail. It is not that God is powerless to deliver us, but we fail to steadfastly keep our eyes fixed on Christ-to reckon ourselves “to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11).

The moment a believer becomes self-occupied, undisciplined, and negligent in prayer, he sins. Remember that sin consists not only in doing overt evil acts, but also in not doing the good that you know you should. ‘To him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).

“If anyone sins” as we read in verse 1-here the word sin is in the Greek aorist-it means, “If any man commit a sin at a given point of time.” It is not a question of the practice of sin, but of a definite failure. “If anyone sin,” what then? Some believe that sin immediately severs the link that binds the believer to Christ. If that were true, no one would ever have the assurance of being a Christian. But there are two links that bind us to Christ. First there is the link of union. That link is so strong that the weight of the world could not break it. Our blessed Lord Himself said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” (John 10:27-28). Nothing can ever break our link with Christ once it has been formed by the Spirit of God.

But there is another link that binds the believer to the Lord, and that is the link of communion. This link is so delicate, it is easily broken. One unholy thought will snap it. One unchristlike action will destroy it. One minute given to foolishness will break it, and that link could never be formed again if it depended entirely on us. We often speak of the finished work of Christ, and rightly so. Our blessed Lord as He hung on the cross cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30). He bowed His head and dismissed His spirit, and there the work that saves our guilty souls was completed. “Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14). The finished work of Christ stands alone in absolute perfection. Our souls can rest on that finished work.

Nothing can be added to a finished work. While it is perfectly Scriptural to speak of the finished work of Christ, it is just as Scriptural to speak of the unfinished work of Christ. Our blessed Lord who completed one work when He died for our sins, began another when He ascended to the Father’s right hand in Heaven. There in the glory “he ever liveth to make intercession for [us]” (Hebrews 7:25). That intercessory work has two aspects. We read in Hebrews that He is there as our High Priest with God. As High Priest He is able to give us a perfect representation before God. We are seen in Him, and He is there to minister grace in our time of need. As a High Priest He can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, and sympathizes with us in all our weakness. His sympathy has nothing to do with our sins, but with our infirmities-our weaknesses. If we avail ourselves of His high priestly work, we will not fall into sin. We can go to Him-our great High Priest-to “obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

Scripture not only presents Christ as our High Priest, but also as our Advocate. It is as our Advocate that He confronts the believer’s sins. He is said to be a High Priest with God, but He is our Advocate with the Father. The more I read the Bible the more I realize the exactness of Scripture. The more I hear people talk about the Bible, the more I am impressed with how inexact we are when talking about divine things. It is quite natural for us to talk about Christ as the High Priest with the Father, or the Advocate with God, but that would dilute the truth of Scripture. My sins are put away by the blood of Christ, and I have a perfect representation before the throne of God in my great High Priest. “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

In the original the word paraclete (translated “advocate” in 1 John 2:1) means “one who comes to your side to help.” This same word is translated “Comforter” in John 14:16; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7. In the Gospel Jesus spoke of the “Comforter” that the Father will send in His name. The Comforter-the Spirit of God-comes from the Father and is sent both by the Father and the Son. The Lord said in effect, “I am going away, but I will send the Paraclete-One who will come to your side to help in every time of need.” On the other hand, in 1 John 2:1 we read that we have a Paraclete or “advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” In other words, God sent the Holy Spirit down to earth to dwell in me, to be my Advocate here on earth-to look after God’s interests in me. Then He took the blessed Lord up to Heaven to be my Advocate with the Father-to look after my interests with the Father.

Why do I need an Advocate in Heaven? Because I have a great adversary. An advocate is someone who goes into court to represent you and to plead your case. You cannot defend yourself, but, when you go to your advocate, he defends you and pleads your case against your adversary. Satan is called in Revelation 12:10, the “accuser of [the] brethren…which accused them before our God day and night.” When you sin, the devil appoints himself the prosecuting attorney in the high court of Heaven. The devil goes right into the presence of God and says, “Is this one of your Christians? Listen to what he is saying now; see what he is doing!” He is there to accuse, but the blessed Lord is there. He shows His wounds and spreads His hands, and says to the Father, “I took all that into account when I died on Calvary’s tree.”

1 John 2:1 does not say, “If any man repent, we have an advocate; if any man confess his sins, we have an advocate; if any man weep over his sins, we have an advocate.” Instead it says, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” It is not just when I am repentant that I have an Advocate, but the very moment I fail, Christ takes up my case, even before I am sorry about it. The moment that unkind word left my lips, the moment I did that spiteful thing, the moment I was thoughtless in some business matter, that very moment before my conscience was exercised and I was troubled, the devil was in the presence of God to accuse me. But the same instant the Son of God was there to represent me. As a result of His advocacy, the Spirit takes the Word of God and applies it to my conscience, and I confess my sin. It is possible that my conscience was not troubled until some time after my failure. Perhaps I did not realize the true condition of my heart until the night I could not pray, and I said to myself, “What is the matter?” Then I cried, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts” (Psalms 139:23). In answer to the advocacy of my blessed Lord, the Spirit of God says, “Don’t you remember that unkind word, that unholy thought, that spiteful thing you did, that unforgiving spirit, that selfishness, that worldliness?” The guilt overwhelms me, and I break before God and say, “O God, I cannot go to sleep tonight until I have told You all about it.” Then I tell my story, confess my failures, my weakness and my sins, and as I do so, I know the blessing of the promise, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). You see the wonderful truth is that all the experiences I have gone through have not touched my relationship in the family of God.