WHEN the soul enters into this, tenderness of conscience will be cherished, distrust of self and watchfulness before God, with a spirit of prayer, which is the simple expression of our dependence on God. But one may be easily unwatchful; then open sin ensues ere long. Therefore says John the apostle, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” This is the word of God to the Christian practically. I speak of His word now, of course, as the ordinary rule of our daily ways. His servant writes, “that ye sin not.”
But then, if all are warned against sin, the Spirit of God fully provides for any one that may stray; not as if evil were coolly looked for, but with guarded terms and careful regard to holiness: “And if any man sin.” He does not say, “If we sin.” How could he say of the family, “If we sin”? Had it been said, “And if we sin,” it would be as good as allowing the thought that all must sin. Never does the Spirit of God say anything of the sort. And if any man—any one” sin,” it is a lamentable alternative to the Spirit of God; but still such a fact may be. It is, alas! in the believer's history what one has to face and feel and humble one's self before God for. “If any man sin, we have an advocate.” He does not merely say “he,” but “we.” How perfect is His word, even in that which to a Grecian would be sure to sound an irregular or peculiar phrase! Can one doubt that they of old criticized John's words, or Paul's, just as much as or more than anything that we poor creatures might write now? This clause would have sounded harsh enough to Attic ears. Yet the men who flatter themselves that they understand writing so well know but little about the divine accuracy of scripture. Let us delight in the perfection of that sentence, and maintain against all corners the perfect accuracy of what the Spirit of God has written there. Not all the world could improve on it; and the very singularity too, which embarrasses them—which they count so strange in the structure of it—seems to be one proof of its perfectness.
An ordinary man of letters, if writing the sentence, might have said, “If any man sin, he has an advocate with the Father;” or if he had intended “we have,” he would have changed it to “If we sin.” But no; the Spirit of God has exactly given the right thing; because by saying “If any one sin,” He makes it a sorrowful individual case. He keeps up the sense that it ought never to be. It is a contingency that may be, and it is always to be regarded as a most painful humiliation for our own souls, the sense of which we ought to maintain undimmed—in no way making light of sin, or treating it as if it were a common thing that we must all do sometimes. We may fall, doubtless; and we should never lose sight of the danger. On the other hand, we have an Advocate with the Father. There He is; and we have Him as Advocate: that is, Christ belongs thus to every Christian. He acts thus in the presence of God. It is the fullness of love which has given Him there to meet this great and distressing need of the soul. But still we have, not merely he has. If it had been said “he has,” this might have given the idea that it was his need that created the office, so to speak, or that it was this which set Christ to work as an advocate. No; He is always there, not simply as Priest with God, but as Advocate with the Father. “And if any man sin, we have an advocate.” He is the common portion of all in the blessed fullness of the grace that takes up the deepest want of any created by sin. And this is exactly what is expressed best by the language of the Holy Ghost in the sentence” If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”
Now observe how he goes back to the language of grace. He introduced the coming down of divine love in the person of the Lord Jesus, the Eternal Life which was with the Father before the world was, to spend Himself upon us, to give us what He alone possessed, what was peculiar to Him; for no man, nor angel, had it. Neither Adam, fresh created, nor the archangel, had that eternal life: only the Son of God. “In him was life,” and “he that hath the Son hath life.” Communion with the Father and with the Son was the consequence. “And these things write we unto you, that your joy might be full.” It is not merely a question of peace with God, nor anything which only tends to that end, as we have said, but the great and blessed truth of a communion which flows out of having Christ the Son of God, and eternal life in Him.
Thus, whatever in our conduct may be inconsistent with the action of divine life, Christ, as Advocate, takes up. Nor is the result uncertain. The effect is revealed to us. So absolute is the grace that the apostle says, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” If any uninspired Christian had written such a sentence as this, can one hesitate to affirm, that men would have called it downright antinomianism? I am persuaded that the only thing which shields many a word of the apostles from such a calumny is because most are as yet unprepared openly to speak ill of the Bible. There are men that so much the more do so, and not a few, and they are growing; and in this country, as in others, they lose shame and become bolder. In some neighboring lands, Romanist and Protestant alike, they are practiced in modern forms of the skepticism once rampant here, but abashed till of late; alas! now it spreads, the reaction from ritualism—this the religious, that the profane, enemy of the gospel; and you must be prepared for it and far greater abominations than these.
Many godly people then, but, if godly, not established in grace, are just such as find most difficulty in the fullness of God's provision. Incredulous minds are not troubled in general by such things, being rather glad to fasten on any inspired words which might seem to give them a loophole and excuse for sin; for so it is that they wretchedly pervert the scriptures to their own destruction. I speak now of such as love the Lord, but have never been brought to naught in their own eyes, nor to rest only in the grace of God; and such are apt to be particularly tried by what exceeds their measure.
For instance, take such a word as this, “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace.” What can they make of it? For their part they had been diligently trained to think, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or any others, that, saved by grace, they were now put under that very law as a rule to live by. This the apostle declares they are not under; yea more, because they are not under law but under grace, that sin shall not have dominion over them. As it never occurs to them to suspect the prevalent tradition, they are thereby incapable of understanding this scripture. So, lack of appreciating the fullness of redemption hinders souls from attaching any intelligible idea to that great privilege of the Christian— “no more conscience of sins” in Heb. 10:22For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. (Hebrews 10:2).
It is the same here again: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” Wondrous way of God, in such a connection to tell us that we have Christ in all righteousness, making good our cause with the Father There is precious assurance of communion in John 14; 15 to such as walk in obedience; but here it is, “If any man sin,” —not if any man adhere to the good and holy and acceptable will of God. “If any man sin,” says the apostle; not even “If he be made sensible of his sins;” nor yet, “If he spread it out, and humble himself for his sins.” It cannot be that the holy and true God could lessen one's moral horror of evil: how comes it then that He should set forth our having an Advocate with the Father, and such an Advocate— “Jesus Christ the righteous”? There is a confessor of Christ who, we will suppose, has fallen into some deed of unrighteousness: what then does he need? “Jesus Christ the righteous;” not the miserable idea of substituting His perfect ways for his own evil ones.
Most precious truth in its own place is the scriptural doctrine of Christ's substitution, the true Azazel, on the cross. Viewed as a sinful man, I have my substitute in Him there, suffering for my sins, not sympathy then. Even He must suffer for them to the uttermost, Just for unjust. God forbid that any one should look for sympathy in his sins! There we have the Substitute. And there, in my sorrow and trial and suffering, I have that blessed Priest Who Himself suffered, and is “able to succor them that are tempted.” But now, after God's grace to me, is found a sad practical contradiction to my place as His child and saint. Here is that with which God can have no fellowship—sin. I have sinned, and in the most bitter sense too, sinning against His grace, because I failed to walk watchfully and humbly in prayer and self-judgment, and so fell to the Lord's dishonor. “If any man sin” —not “he must begin again;” nor “he has lost his blessing;” nor “let him apply afresh to the Savior for life eternal.” Nothing of the sort: “we have an advocate with the Father.”
Thus, it is not the poor thought of comforting us because He was righteous, wherein we were all wrong. This is not God's way; but “we have an advocate with the Father.” It ought to be plain that the Puritan notion of substituting His rights for each wrong of ours would act as a continual destruction of the conscience. No; “we have an advocate with the Father.” We have One that takes up all our business, One that acts for us where we could not, One that enters thoroughly into the case with the Father. Men know what it is to have in court a man of business worthy of all confidence in what they might compromise through many causes, and what would certainly be for them a source of the greatest possible perplexity. Here you, a Christian, are in exceeding trouble through your own fault; and you hate yourself the more, because you know His love against Whom you have sinned. Yet oh the comfort of grace! He tells you of One in Whom you have the fullest trust, Who, knowing all your history, state, and heart, is entirely identified with you, and gives what is more—the perfect certainty that, as He is all-prevailing and righteously so before God, so surely He will extricate you to God's praise, if to your humiliation. This, and no less, is what our Advocate is; and this He is too, not with us, though He does wash us every whit clean, but “with the Father.”
It is not said “with God” in this case, as if it were a question simply of our justification. But is all hope of communion gone after such failure? after having so disgraced His name and our own confession of it? No; “we have an advocate with the Father.” It is for the restoration of the communion that had been interrupted. For though the sin of the believer in his walk may not destroy his nearness to God (his access to God being made good by the sacrifice of Christ on which he rests), it does interrupt the enjoyment of communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; and it is the very Son Himself who does set Himself as Advocate to enter into this otherwise hopeless necessity of the soul. Nothing shall separate from His love.
“We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” How blessed! His advocacy is as perfect to restore the saint's broken communion, as His blood to cleanse the once guilty sinner. But it is not simply the fact that He is my righteousness, which remains most true, unimpaired, and unimpeachable. The evil is dealt with, not spared. Not only does the Father feel that His child has so sinned, though there was grace to have kept right through, but I judge myself. And, in point of fact, this is the way in which the advocacy of Christ works. He is an Advocate with the Father; but then He deals with my soul also. It is not merely an exercise of what He is for me, though this is quite true and important, nor can one be too firm in holding fast one's standing. This abides according to its own perfection through Christ's work; but then it is not His advocacy. So here we have the standing supposed in “Jesus Christ the righteous,” in whom, as the Apostle Paul tells us, we are made God's righteousness. Even as advocate He probes the wound, and in very love to my soul does what makes me feel, more truly and hence acutely, my failure; for He heals me by the Spirit as well as manages my cause with the Father. He is Patron or Advocate no less then the Propitiation for my sins, and this too abides intact. The work is done by which the sins of the believer are effaced. But such riches of grace only cause the soul, where there is living faith, and so divine life, to feel the more anguish and shame for the sin against God; not because one dreads His judgment of ourselves, but just because we know His love so true and faithful, spite of unfaithfulness.
( To be continued, D.V.)