“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1, 2).
These two verses constitute the second part of the message which we were studying last Lord’s Day. You remember in verse five of chapter one we read, “This then is the message,” and then in the verses following, down through that chapter, including the two verses of the second chapter, we have the message in its entirety, the message which John and his fellow-apostles were commissioned by Christ to carry throughout the world. It is the message of man’s utterly lost condition in the darkness, of the atoning value of the precious blood of Christ, of the importance of facing our sins in the presence of God, and when we thus face them we find forgiveness. And now John goes on to take up the question of the failures of believers, the ones 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.
I remember last summer I was rather amused listening to an address. The speaker was telling of a little girl who had been left by her parents with another family while they were away, and when at last the mother and father returned for her and she was on her way home, she said to her father: “Daddy, there are four little boys at that house where I have been staying.”
“Yes, I knew that,” he said.
“Daddy, they have family worship there every night.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Daddy, every night their father prays for those four little boys.”
“That is very nice.”
“He prays, Daddy, that God will make them good boys, and that they won’t do anything naughty,” said the little one.
“That is very nice.”
She was silent a moment and then said, “But, Daddy, He hasn’t done it yet.”
There are a great many folk like that. We are praying that God will make us good, that God will make us holy, that our lives may be lives of victory, but I am afraid that many of us have to confess that “God hasn’t done it yet.” We recognize the, fact that we do sin, that we do fail. Our hearts are nearly broken by our failures. What about the sins of believers?
In the first place, believers should not sin. John tells us, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The word translated little children might better be translated children, or dear children, because this original word has no reference whatever to age or size. It is a word that takes in all who are born of God. It literally means born ones, those who are born into God’s family. “My children, these things write I unto you, that ye should not be sinning:” It is then, the desire, the will of God for His children that we should not be sinning. God has redeemed us to Himself, not only to take us to heaven at last, but that we should live to the praise of His glory in this world.
A little farther on we read, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin” (1 John 3:9), in the sense that they do not live in the practice of sin. When people are converted, a change takes place. If there is no change they have never been born of God. From that time 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 doeth good, and sinneth not” (Eccl. 7:20), not one that does not fail. It is not that there is not power in God to deliver us, but there is not always in us the steadfastness to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, to reckon ourselves “to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The moment a believer becomes self-occupied, unwatchful, neglectful of prayer, you have sin. Let us remember that sin consists not merely in doing overt evil acts, but just as truly in not doing the good that you might. “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).
I frequently meet people who say they never sin. I ask them, “Just what do you mean by that? Do you mean that you never break any of the ten commandments?” “Yes,” they say. “Do you mean that you never commit any actual overt acts of iniquity?” “Yes.” “Do you also mean that you do everything that you know you could do for God, that you take advantage of every opportunity of doing good, of every opportunity of speaking for Christ, of every opportunity of in any way glorifying your Lord and Saviour?” If there is the least bit of honesty, they bow their head and say, “No, I am afraid that I do not.” Then you sin, and sin is not merely the violation of certain moral principles, it is also failure to do the good that you might do.
“If any man sin”— here it is the Greek aorist 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 some definite failure. “If any man sin,” what then? According to the thought that some have, if any man sin, that immediately severs the link that binds the believer to Christ. Oh, no. If that were true, not one of us would have the assurance that he was really a Christian for an hour at a time; but see, 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 that link when 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. That is so delicate, is so easily broken, that one unholy thought will snap it, one un Christ like action will destroy it, one minute given to levity and foolishness will break it, and that link could never be formed again if it depended entirely upon us. We often speak of the finished work of Christ, and rightly so. Our blessed Lord as He hung upon that cross cried, “It is finished,” and 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 anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him” (Eccl. 3:14). That finished work of Christ stands alone in its absolute perfection, and on that finished work we may well rest our souls.
A dear saint was dying, and somebody leaned over him and said, “Do you feel that everything is all right?” He said, “‘It is finished;’ upon that I can rest my eternity.”
“Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die,
Another’s life, Another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.”
“It is finished, yes, indeed;
Finished, every jot!
Sinner, this is all you need!
Tell me, is it not?”
We cannot add anything to a finished work.
But 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, for 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. Up there in the glory “He ever liveth to make intercession for us,” and that work is looked at in two aspects. We read in Hebrews that He is there as our High Priest with God. As the High Priest He is there to give us a perfect representation before God. We are seen in Him, and He is there to minister grace in every time of need. As a High Priest, He who can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” sympathizes with us in all our weakness. His sympathy has nothing to do with our sins, it has to do with our infirmities, with 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, and obtain mercy and find grace for every time of need.
Scripture not only presents Him thus, but also as our Advocate, and as such He has to do with the question of our sins as believers. He is said to be a High Priest with God, but He is our Advocate with the Father. The more I read this Book the more I realize the exactness of Scripture; the more I hear people talk about the Bible and the more I read it, the more I am impressed with how inexact we are when talking about divine things. It is quite natural for us to talk about the High Priest with the Father, or the Advocate with God, but that would dissipate the truth of Scripture. My sins are all 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” (Heb. 7:25).
When I was converted, God became my Father. There is no such thing in the Bible as the universal Fatherhood of God, but He is the Father of those who are born again. As a believer if I fail, if I fall into sin, I read, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” Not an Advocate with God merely, but with the Father. Why with the Father? Because the Spirit of God would teach me that relationship has not been disturbed! You remember that time you lost your temper and the devil said, “Now then you have done it; you were a Christian before, but not anymore. God isn’t your Father anymore.” That was simply one of the lies of the devil, for it is written, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” Relationship was undisturbed. This word translated Advocate is exactly the same as the one used by our blessed Lord in John 14:15, and 16, where He speaks of the Comforter that the Father will send in His name and whom He will send from the Father; for the Spirit of God is sent both by the Father and by the Son. In the original the word Paraclete means one who comes to your side to help. The Lord says, “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, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate—a Paraclete, a Helper—with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” In other words, God has sent the Holy Spirit down to earth to dwell in me, to be the Advocate here on earth to look after God’s interests in me, and then too, the blessed Lord is up in the glory to be my Advocate with the Father, to look after my interests with the Father.
Why do I need an Advocate? Because I have a great adversary. An advocate is one who goes into court to represent you and to plead your case. You cannot do it yourself, but you go to your advocate, and he goes to plead your case against your adversary. So Satan is called in Revelation 12:10, the “accuser of our brethren, which accused them before our God day and night.” The very moment we sin the devil constitutes himself the prosecuting attorney in the high court of heaven. You remember that time when you were guilty of that evil thing—you know the thing that you cannot forget—that moment the devil went right into the presence of God and said, “Is that one of your Christians? Listen to what he is saying now; see what he is doing—a Christian?” He is there to accuse, but the blessed Lord is there, and shows His wounds and spreads His hands, and says, “My Father, I took all that into account when I died on Calvary’s tree.”
“I hear the accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more,
Jehovah findeth none.”
“Though the restless foe accuses—
Sins recounting like a flood,
Ev’ry charge our God refuses;
Christ has answered with His blood.”
I realize my unrighteousness when I fall into sin, and may well give up in despair, but I see I have there in the presence of the Father the absolutely Righteous One to give me a perfect representation, and God sees me in Him. So I plead not my own righteousness but that of God as manifested in Christ Jesus, and you see I can plead with power, I can plead with efficacy, because He has actually died for the very sin that is now troubling me. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins.”
This word, propitiation, as used in John’s epistle is a different word from that used in Romans. The one in Romans means the mercy-seat. When we there read, “Christ is the propitiation,” it is the mercy-seat, the meeting-place between God and man; but the word used here and in the fourth chapter means an atonement or an expiation, and my failures cannot undo the work of the cross. Thank God, Christ has died and has been raised, and has gone up to God’s right hand, and is there as my Advocate interceding for me, and there He undertakes my case. He Himself is the propitiation.
It 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.” What it does say is this, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” It is not merely when I am penitent that I have an Advocate, but the very moment I fail Christ takes up my case, yes, even long before I have been exercised about it. The moment that hasty word left my lips, the moment I did that crooked thing, and did it thoughtlessly in some business matter perhaps, or something like that, that very moment before my conscience was exercised, before I was troubled, the devil was in the presence of God to accuse, but the same instant the Son of God was there to represent me, and as a result of His advocacy the Spirit takes the Word of God and applies it to my conscience, and then I begin to be exercised; I am troubled; I confess my sin. Possibly that exercise did not commence until some little time after my failure, perhaps I did not realize the true condition of things until that night I could not pray; I did not have liberty; and I said to myself, “What is the matter?” And then I cried, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts” (Psa. 139:23). Now in answer to the advocacy of my blessed Lord the Spirit of God says, “Don’t you remember that hasty word, that unholy thought, that crooked thing you did, that unforgiving spirit, that vanity, that carnality?” And it comes home to me, and I break before God and say, “O God, I cannot go to sleep tonight until I have told Thee all about it,” and I tell my story, confess my failures, my weakness, my sins, and as I do so, I know the blessing of the Word, “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 the question of my relationship in the family of God.
We have raised two boys, and sometimes those boys, for they are just like other boys, were mighty good, and sometimes they have given us a great deal of trouble. Sometimes they have given us a great deal of comfort, and then there have been other times when they have not been just all they ought to be, everything they should be, and it has troubled us a bit. We have had to discipline them and perhaps say to them, “You go up to your room and stay there until you can face this thing, until you are ready to acknowledge the wrong and ask forgiveness.” Sometimes the child’s will would set itself against the will of the parents, and hour after hour would go by and no acknowledgment would come, and then supper would be coming on and there would be the rattle of the dishes, and we would hear the call, “Father!” I would go upstairs and he would say, “Am I not going down to supper?” “That depends on you; confess your wrong and you may come down.” “Well,” he would say, “if you think I have done anything wrong, I am sorry.” “No, that won’t do,” and so I had to leave him and go down. Then I would begin to serve the meal and the odor would be wafted upstairs, and he would be getting hungry, and then another call, and again there would be a kind of shunning of the thing and he would say, “Since you and Mother both think it is wrong, I guess it is, and I am sorry.” “No, guessing will not do,” and I would have to turn again, and maybe half-way down the stairs I would hear the call, “Father, Father, please forgive me; I know I have done wrong; please forgive me; I have been awfully stubborn.” Oh, how glad I was to throw my arms about him and put the kiss of forgiveness upon his forehead, and say, “Come on down; we will all enjoy dinner better with you there.”
So it is with our God and Father. Sin does not touch the question of relationship, but it does touch communion, or fellowship; but our blessed Lord is in the presence of God the Father to plead for His people, and as a result of His advocacy we are brought to repent and confess, and He graciously restores our souls.