Many children of God have been thrown into doubt and perplexity from not seeing their unchanging place in Christ. As long as their consciences are clear and they are going on happily with the Lord, all goes on well, but if through unwatchfulness, neglect of the word and prayer, or the cares, pleasures, or business of this life, they get away from the Lord, the happy feelings are all gone, appetite for the word of God is lost, and the things that are not seen lose their reality, and they feel truly wretched, and have often thought “I have got all wrong, and God is angry with me, and has turned His face away from me;” and often doubts come in, “Have I ever been converted at all? Perhaps I have been deceiving myself all the while?” But no, thank God, He never hides His face from a real Christian: Why? Because He never hides His face from Christ, and we are accepted in Him. God hid His face once from Christ when He was, in love and grace, taking our place, and was made sin for us on the cross, and uttered that terrible cry, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” when He cried and was not heard, Psalms 22:1,21<<To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.>> My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. (Psalm 22:1‑2). But that is all over, and He is now the risen Man before God, in the most perfect acceptance and favor; and “As He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:1717Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)): Does God ever hide His face from that blessed One I Never; therefore, He never hides His face from those who are accepted in Him; so that nothing can touch the acceptance of a true child of God, because it is not a question of what we are, but of what Christ is.
Does this blessed truth give a license for sin? God forbid: on the contrary, I am convinced the knowledge of it gives us a power over sin, and a proper motive for not sinning. If I am accepted in Christ, I am to walk as He walked (1 John 2:66He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. (1 John 2:6)). If He is the measure of my acceptance, He is also the standard for my walk. But if we get away from the Lord in our souls, or should sin come in, though our acceptance is unchanged, we lose the sense and joy of it; or, in other words, our communion has been interrupted: it is as though a cloud came between us and the sun; the sun remains unchanged, but we do not feel its rays. It is here that the blessed service of love of our Lord as the Advocate comes in, when we have sinned, to restore us to the enjoyment of the communion we had lost through it: not to put the sins away, for that was done once for all by the “one sacrifice” on the cross. We read in 1 John 2:1,1My 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: (1 John 2:1) “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” The common thought is, that when we have confessed our sins Christ goes to God and intercedes, and the sin is passed over. It does not, however, say, “If any man confess his sin,” but “If any man sin (before he confesses it) we have an Advocate with the Father.” An advocate means one who undertakes the cause of another, one who manages our affairs, and maintains our interests. What a comfort this is for us to know, that if we do sin there is One who loves us perfectly, understands us thoroughly, takes up our case, and undertakes for us with the Father: not, as before said, to put the sin away, or to procure righteousness for us, but to bring us back to communion. And who is the Advocate, the One who manages our affairs? Jesus Christ the Righteous, not the loving or merciful, as we might be inclined to think, but “the Righteous One,” “and He is the propitiation1 for our sins” (Ch. 2:2). It is very beautiful, and divinely perfect, the way this is brought in here. He is the Righteous One, our unchanging Righteousness; He has also done a work upon the cross, by which our sins have been put away, “and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” The terms “the Righteous One” and “the propitiation for our sins,” would imply that a believer has an abiding righteousness before God, and that the question of his sins has been settled forever. Thus, if a child of God sins, his righteousness (Christ) remains unchanged, and the value of the “propitiation for our sins” is the same, and because this is the case it is now not a question of the sin being put away before God, or of procuring righteousness for us, but of restoration to communion. The very expression, “Advocate with the Father,” would show this. Father, is a name of relationship: “The Father judgeth no man” (John 5:2222For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: (John 5:22)). So that we may lay it down as a general principle, that when we find the word “Father” in relation to us, it is never a question of acceptance or of justification. It is not said it is the Father that justifies, but, “it is God that justifies.” “We have peace with God,” &c. Thus, if a child of God sins the Advocate is with the Father, who is also “the Righteous One” and the “propitiation for our sins;” and the result of His advocacy is, that the word of God is brought home to our consciences by the power of the Spirit. It is this action of the blessed Lord, in applying the word to us, that is spoken of in John 13, the Lord washing the disciples’ feet.
The “hour was come when He should depart out of this world unto the Father” (vs. 1), a significant word which enables us to understand better the application of the truth in this chapter. The Lord said in verse 10, “he that is washed2 (washed all over) needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit, and ye are clean.” Here the figure is water, not blood. It may refer to Leviticus 8, when the priests were consecrated, they were washed with water, verse 6; this was never repeated: but they had to wash their feet constantly in their service. Exodus 30:17,2017And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, (Exodus 30:17)
20When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the Lord: (Exodus 30:20). Water is used in Scripture constantly as a symbol of the word of God. See Ephesians 5:2626That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, (Ephesians 5:26); John 3:55Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:5); also 1 Peter 1:23,23Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. (1 Peter 1:23) as a practical comment on John 3:55Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:5). The word is the instrument which is employed by the Holy Ghost in giving us life (1 Peter 1:2323Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. (1 Peter 1:23)). This is never repeated; but we get defiled in our walk through this wilderness, so the Lord, in His grace, applies the word to our consciences, in order to remove from us that which would hinder our communion; for the Lord would not have us at a distance from Him, but would have us near to Himself, not merely satisfied because we are saved, which is a cold heartless thing, but in the enjoyment of His love and of what He is Himself Nothing else satisfies His heart of love! This action of the Lord, in applying the word to us, would be rather the result of His advocacy or its application to us: and when the word is applied to us by the power of the Spirit, we are made to feel how we have sinned, and, humbled about it, we go to God our Father, in the full confidence of children, and confess it to Him. How blessed it is that we can do so! And the very fact that the sin can never be imputed to us because Christ bore it, only humbles us the more as we think that Christ suffered all that agony on the cross that very thing that I have done. It is the advocacy of Christ that leads us to confession: His grace in restoring our souls; and when we do confess, we have the blessed assurance in 1 John 1:9,9If 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) “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Mark the expression “faithful and just,” not loving or merciful; but “faithful and just,” not to the sinner, as some have thought, but to Christ, who is our Advocate and “the propitiation for our sins;” and not only does He “forgive us,” but He cleanses us from all unrighteousness; He removes every trace of the “sins” from us: otherwise there would be a distance between us and the Lord. How blessed it is to think of the Lord’s unchanging love and service to us He loved us and gave Himself for us, and answered for all our sins, and though now He is away, and we are left in this evil world, His love is still the same, and should we sin and get away from Him, He restores us to the communion we had lost “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:11Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13:1)).
So now the answer is simple as to what a child of God is to do with his sins: we are to confess them to God our Father. But how blessed to know that when we have sinned and confess, that Christ has already been to the Father for us, and that we have the word “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” So, that if we have truly confessed and judged our sins, we ought to believe on the authority of the word that we have forgiveness. Confession is not merely a general confession of sins at the close of the day, that would be no real confession at all; but every time a sin is on our conscience it should be judged and confessed; and not only to judge ourselves for an act of sin, but for the state of soul we were in at the time, which is a far deeper thing; for if we had been in communion with the Lord we should not have committed it at all: for, depend upon it, a child of God does not fall into positive sin when in communion with the Lord; but there has been a getting away from Him first; and neglect of the word of God and prayer is generally the first cause of our departure from the Lord, and of positive falls. But what a blessed privilege, when we have sinned to be able to go to God our Father, and confess it all to Him; not as sinners to get salvation, or to be saved again; but as children to a Father who loves us perfectly, but at the same time is God who is “Light,” and cannot have fellowship with anything that is evil or inconsistent with that “Light.”
May you and I know more what it is to have enjoyed “fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ,” that “our joy may be full” till we enter that blessed home where “there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life;” where there will be no need of an “Advocate with the Father,” because our walk will be perfectly in accordance with our standing; no more inconsistencies, failures, or sins, but we shall be “holy and without blame before God in love;” the world the flesh, and the devil, and everything that hindered or marred our communion here, gone forever, and to know throughout eternity what uninterrupted communion means in the place of everlasting love and glory.
Priesthood in Hebrews is with God not for sins, but for weakness and to uphold us in our wilderness journey. Advocacy is with the Father, if we sin, to restore communion. Intercession is a general term that would include both (Rom. 8:3434Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. (Romans 8:34)).