A. P. Cecil
This is a practical question for Christians in these days. It is not a question of whether we are Christians or not, though it may often test the fact. Happily, simple faith in the Person of the Son of God and His work settles that question. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Acts 16:31. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." John 3:36. "Being now justified by His blood" (Rom. 5:9), and many other passages. But the question is, as professedly saved ones, Do we take sides with the Advocate, or with the "accuser of our brethren"?
The advocacy of Christ is founded on His righteous Person, and His perfect work. (See 1 John 2:1, 2.) His blessed work clears us from all the guilt of our sins, and in His blessed Person we have entire deliverance from our Adam state, He Himself-the dead, risen and ascended One-being our righteousness before God. It is on this ground that He intercedes-does the work of an advocate. If we sin after we have been brought into relationship with the Father as His children, then the advocacy of Christ applies. "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we [children] have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 2:1, 2.
The office of the Advocate, then, is not to get righteousness for us, nor to put away our sins, nor to make us children. That is all settled by Christ's death and resurrection by faith in Him, for it is written, "This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." Heb. 10:12-14. It is, therefore, to maintain us as children before the Father without sin, after we are justified, in face of the accuser of the brethren. (See Rev. 12:10.)
When a child of God sins, communion is interrupted; the relationship remains, but the Father has no fellowship with the sin of His child. The Advocate pleads against Satan, who accuses. The Father hears the pleading of the Advocate, who applies the Word to our walk (John 13:4, 5), brings us to the confession of the sin, upon which the Father "is faithful" to the righteous Advocate, and "just" to the Advocate who made propitiation, "to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9.
Thus communion is restored, and the child of God walks in the joy and light of His Father's countenance. The Advocate is literally the Manager of our affairs in our Father's court, and has reference to His government of His children in this world. It reconciles the fact of a naughty child and a Holy Father. (Compare 1 Peter 1:17.)
The Advocate does two things: He pleads with the Father for us, and He applies the Word to us. The one maintains our cause, if we sin, before the Father against the accuser. The other brings up our practical state to our standing, which is always maintained without sin by the righteous Advocate who has made propitiation. The failure in our practical state is from the fact of our having the flesh still in us. Our actual state is that of having two natures in one person. With the mind I myself serve the law of God, with the flesh the law of sin (Rom. 7:25). And though by faith and in spirit we are no longer in the flesh, yet actually it is in us (though by faith we reckon it dead, hence the failure).
There is no excuse, but the fact is that we fail. Our standing as children always remains the same, even though we sin, owing to the righteous Advocate who has made propitiation. "If any man sin, we have an advocate." But we have failed in our walk. We are defiled. We stand forever cleansed from our sins by the blood of Jesus. It never needs to be applied again (Heb. 10:12-14; 1 John 1:7). Thus we always have access to God for worship. Our bodies are also washed with pure water (Heb. 10:22); we have had once the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5). We are born again (John 3:3) and we need not then to be put into the bath over again. But we have sinned, we have our feet deified, as it were, in passing through this sin-defiled world. This will not do for the Father's presence. What does the Advocate do? He applies the Word to us, washes our feet; the Word judges us and leads us to confession and self-judgment.
The remembrance of our Advocate who made propitiation leads us back on our knees to our Father who forgives us and cleanses us from all our unrighteousness. Thus the blessed work of the Advocate is, on the one hand, to plead for the children before the Father, if they sin, and, on the other hand, to wash their feet with the Word and to bring their practical walk and state up to their standing before Him.
Satan, on the other hand, is the accuser of the brethren. He accuses them before God day and night (Rev. 12:10). He is the author of divisions between the children of God by accusing them one to the other. "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil." Rom. 16:17-19.
Satan would have Balaam hired to curse the people of God, and failing in that he would use the same prophet to teach Balak to mix with the nations around, and partake of their sinful practices. He would tempt David to sin in numbering the people of Israel (1 Chron. 21:1). He would resist Joshua the high priest, and seek to prevent his filthy rags being taken from him, and his being clothed in new raiment (Zech. 3:1). This is the accuser's wretched work.
Those who follow the accuser are called false accusers, slanderers (literally "devils"), because they are doing the devil's work. He whispers in the ear of a minister's wife (1 Tim. 3:11) some false story about some brother or sister in Christ. She spreads it about, and so the evil spreads, which perhaps may end in an assembly being broken up. Some aged sister sits leisurely at home (Titus 2:3), and not having much to do is ready to hear stories perhaps from some worldly person about some child of God. She spreads it about to others who come to see her. It is a slander, a lie, and so the devil does his work, and perhaps some child of God gets a wound or gets hindered in the work of the Lord for years.
I would solemnly ask every child of God who reads this paper: on whose side are you working? When some slander is uttered about a child of God, do you plead for him and go home to pray for him if you know he has failed? Do you go in love and humility and take the Word to him and wash his feet? (John 13:14.) This is the blessed work of the Advocate. Or do you listen to the story, go and spread it lightly to someone else without knowing whether it is a fact or not? And if you are hurt by some brother, do you go in a huff to God and pray in anger at him at prayer meetings (1 Tim. 2:8), and accuse him? This is to do the devil's work.
But how happy it is for us to be associated with the blessed Advocate, on the one hand pleading for our brethren if they sin, on the other hand carrying the Word to them and washing their feet. May the Lord grant His people increasingly this grace, so that the saints may see their blessed privilege of love to cover sins. "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins." Prov. 10:12. And then to plead for our brethren if they sin, acting in faithfulness in carrying the Word to them, washing their feet, so that they might be cleansed from the defilement, and so overcoming the accuser by the blood of the Lamb on the one hand; on the other hand openly resisting him by the Word of their testimony like the blessed Lord Jesus Himself. He answered the devil when tempting Him by, "It is written." So should we.
If we sin, thank God we can always answer Him by the blood of the Lamb which is the balm for every wound. Thus the blood of the Lamb and the Word, the sword of the Spirit, are our instruments against the devil down here, while our Advocate maintains our cause before the Father up in heaven. In every case we are maintained, and we are over-comers, more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.
"There hath no temptation taken you
but such as is common to man:
but God is faithful, who will
not suffer you to be tempted
above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation
also make a way to escape, that ye
may be able to bear it.”
1 Cor. 10:13