Jesus Advocated

What Did Jesus Do?

…we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
1 John 2.1b

The Boy Scouts have this little thing called a Totin’ Chip Card, which all Scouts and leaders are supposed to earn before they can carry and use woods tools (axes, knives, and saws). The intent is to instruct Scouts in the safe and proper handling of these tools so as to ensure no accidents occur and no one gets hurt. But if someone should get hurt, every Scout troop and every Scout camp also have first aid kits and trained responders to deal with the emergency. In reality, the “But if” really means “when,” because sooner or later accidents are bound to happen.

In a similar way, the canonical letters of John are his Totin’ Chip Card to the Church, if you will. By carefully and thoroughly instructing the Body of Christ regarding the message he and the other apostles had heard from Jesus himself (1 John 1.5), John seeks to ensure that the Church will walk in the light; essentially, that her members maintain fellowship with one another and with the Father and Son (1 John 1.3), and that they “may not sin.” (1 John 2.1a) Yet, like the Scouts, John realizes that sins, just like “accidents,” is inevitable, so he too provides for the inevitable “when” by inserting his own “But if…” clause. (1 John 2.1b)

Having made it abundantly clear that it is only the worst sort of self-deception for a believer, or the Church, to say that we have no sin (1 John 1.8-10), John adds “But if anyone does sin,” because he knows everyone, even the Church herself, will sin. The key is that John, and all believers, and the Church at all times in all places, have an answer, a response, first aid in the form of our great First Responder—“Jesus Christ the righteous”—who has, and who continues, to deal with sin. We have in the Son, John tells us, an advocate with the Father.

By advocate (Greek parakletos), we should not think of Jesus as merely some kind of divine defense attorney who goes before the Father to plead on our behalf. Yes, Jesus truly does intercede, pleading for us before God’s mercy seat (Romans 8.34; Hebrews 7.25), but as our advocate Jesus has done something more. A paraklete was one who physically came and stood alongside others, sharing their affliction and burden, even to the point of bearing it. Christ’s advocacy on our behalf must be understood in this way—he came into the world, literally came alongside us, and laid down his sinless life in exchange for our lives full of sin. It was and is the sacrifice of the Righteous One for all the unrighteous that gives us hope when we sin. For it is his own sacrifice, the shedding of his blood which alone cleanses from all sin (1 John 1.7), that the Son lays before the Father on our behalf.

We make no pretense of our perfection (1.8-10), nor do we imagine that sin does not matter since Christ died once and for all to forgive our sins. Forgiven in and through Christ Christians practice advocacy, in that we come alongside and pray for and forgive one another. It is with great thanksgiving that we receive and believe, and as the Church, testify to, the great gift of forgiveness the Father has given us through the Son, Jesus Christ, who was perfectly willing to be our Advocate.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4