Whose Side Do You Take?
This is a practical question for Christians today — do we take sides with the Advocate or with the accuser of the brethren? The advocacy of Christ is founded on His righteous person and His perfect work (1 John 2:1-2). His work clears us from all the guilt of our sins, and in His Person we have entire deliverance from our Adam state. It is on this ground that He intercedes and does the work of an Advocate. If we sin after our relationship with the Father, as children, has been settled, 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).
Relationship and Fellowship
The office of the Advocate, then, is not to get righteousness for us, nor to put away our sins, or to make us God’s children. This is all settled, in virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by faith in Him. He is Advocate to maintain us as children before the Father without sin, 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 then pleads against Satan who accuses. The Father hears the pleadings of the Advocate, who applies the Word to our walk (John 13:4-5) and brings us to the confession of the sin. Upon confession, the Father is faithful to the righteous Advocate and just to Him 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. In this way 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.
The Two Services
The Advocate does two things. He pleads with the Father for us, and He applies the Word to us. The one maintains our cause against the accuser; the other brings our practical state up 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, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Rom. 7:25). By faith, and in Spirit, we are no longer in the flesh, yet actually flesh is in us (though by faith we reckon ourselves dead); hence there is failure when we are careless and let the flesh act. This will not do for the Father’s presence. What does the Advocate then? He applies the Word to us, washing our feet; the Word judges us, leading us to confession and self-judgment. The remembrance of our Advocate who made propitiation brings us back on our knees to our Father who forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Thus the blessed work of the Advocate is, on the one hand, to plead for the children before the Father, if they sin; on the other hand, to wash their feet with the Word, bringing their practical walk and state up to their standing before Him.
The Accuser
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 (Rom. 16:17-20). He would hire Balaam to curse the people of God, and, failing in that, he would use the same prophet to teach Balak to mix them up with the nations around and partake of their sinful practices. He would excite Jehovah to try Job, speaking bad things of him before Jehovah’s face (Job 1-2). He would tempt David to sin in numbering the people of Israel (1 Chron. 21:1) and move Jehovah against Israel to destroy them (2 Sam. 24:1). 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 that follow him are called false accusers and slanderers.
Whose Side?
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 and pray for him? If you know he has failed, do you go in love and humility, 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 and 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 intercede with God against him or pray in anger at him at prayer meetings (1 Tim. 2:8) and so accuse him? This is to do the devil’s work.
But how happy is it for us to be associated with the blessed Advocate — on the one hand, pleading for our brethren if they sin and, on the other, 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 (Prov. 10:12)! May they act in faithfulness to their brethren if they sin, so that they might be cleansed from their defilement!
A. P. Cecil (adapted)