God's Comforting Word: Advocate (1 John 2:1-6)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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Our second lesson is taken from 1 John chapter 2, verses 1 to 6.

1 John 2:1–6

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments.

Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.

By this we may know that we are in him.

Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Generous Lord, give us your grace to enter through the narrow way so that we can recline at your very wide table.

Give us the comfort of knowing our Advocate is interceding for us, even in this moment, right now.

And all this we pray in his precious name, our Savior Lord Jesus.

Amen.

Please be seated.

It was good.

So one of my favorite scenes, of all scenes, is from uh a little known work called Les Miserables.

Maybe you've heard of it.

There's uh, I mean, what's not to like about Les Miserables, really?

Maybe Russell Crowe's singing, I suppose, but aside from that, it's a book that is full of uh, well, it's rich to the marrow.

One of my favorite scenes is very early on in this book.

This is, it's 1815, and we meet uh Jean Valjean.

He's a um uh uh he's he's been in prison.

He's been in prison for 19 years in France.

Five because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her starving family, and 14 more years because of all of his escape attempts.

This is a man who is a victim of uh serious injustice.

And it has left him bitter and resentful, and now he's been released from prison and he finds himself without anywhere to go.

So he he ends up in this uh village, and uh he uh he's invited into the home of uh the local bishop.

And when he's while he's staying with the bishop, he's again just so overcome by the the his his hard-done-biness of of his life that he steals from the bishop.

He steals the bishop's collection of silver plates and uh and his money, and he takes off.

And he's caught by the police with a bag full of this money and uh and silver.

And the police grab him and they bring him back to the bishop.

And it's this scene that I just I keep coming back to from time again, time and time and time.

The door opened.

This is the police with Jean Valjean heading into the bishop's room.

The door opened.

A strange and fierce group appeared on the threshold.

Three men were holding a fourth by the collar.

These three men were police officers, and the fourth was Jean Valjean.

A brigadier who appeared to head the group was near the door.

He advanced towards the bishop, giving a military salute.

Monseigneur, he addresses the bishop.

And at this word Jean Valjean, who was sullen and seemed entirely cast down, raised his head with a stupefied air.

Monseigneur, he murmured, uh, then that it is not the cure.

Silence, said the gendarme, it is the Monsignor, the bishop.

In the meantime, Monsignor Bienvenue, the bishop, had approached as quickly as his great age permitted.

And what he says next determines the course of the rest of the story.

Maybe you know where it's going from here.

What do you think Jean Valjean is ready to hear at this moment?

This guy stole my stuff.

Send him back where he came from.

If this is a man of exacting and brutal justice, we'll meet another character of exacting and brutal justice.

That's exactly what we'd expect to hear.

And what does Jean Valjean feel at this moment?

He feels sullen and cast down.

He is shrinking away because he knows he has nothing to plea.

Everything hinges on this moment.

And Jean Valjean is fearful of his condemnation.

Do we sometimes feel fearful as Christians of a sort of condemnation?

That we're going to stand before the Lord God Almighty, the greatest authority there is, and be left without excuse and be told, depart from me, you worker of evil?

Do we feel sullen and cast down, fearful of this kind of condemnation?

We've been exploring God's comforting word these last couple of weeks, and these four comfortable words that we've been reading together following the confession of our sin and hearing the words of absolution, forgiveness of our sins.

Here are four rock solid verses that remind us of the gospel, of God's comfort for us, of his very heart for us.

God's desire that we find rest and our deepest longing met in Jesus from Matthew 11.

God's heart full of love and mercy towards us, for so he sent the world, his son into the world to save sinners.

Today we have another comforting word, and that word is the word advocate.

And that's a very, well, Might Strix is a strange word, maybe a clumsy word, maybe it doesn't seem to fit with the sequence, but I want us to see just how wonderful and consoling and assuring and rich this word advocate is.

Our just and merciful advocate, Jesus, pleads for the penitent sinner.

Our just and merciful advocate Jesus pleads for the penitent sinner.

This is the difference between a Christian approaching God, feeling sullen and cast down, fearful of condemnation, and boldly approaching the throne of God above, with an assurance that his love or his heart is full of love and mercy towards us.

It's the difference between shrinking away and running boldly.

And friends, this is the comforting word, the good news I want us to catch in 1 John this morning.

Our advocate Jesus pleads for and not against the penitent sinner.

So if you have your bulletin, if you have your Bible, please open with me to 1 John chapter 2.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

This is a pastoral letter written by John, who wrote the Gospel of John.

He's a pastor, in fact, he's an apostle.

So he's uh he's the he's the pastor of pastors.

He's pastoring uh uh um parishes, as it were, and offering them instruction.

He's offering them correction in this moment because there's a few uh uh bad theologies, false teachings floating around these communities of the church.

We've got nothing like that these days, right?

We've got it all sorted out.

Um He's correcting some false ideas that seem to take root uh in this church.

And one idea in particular is this idea that the whole of the Christian life is a matter of uh of perfect moral striving, of complete moral perfection.

That if we're going to earn God's favor, if we're gonna be righteous and acceptable in his sight, then we have to do everything flawlessly in keeping with his commandments.

And so John writes uh in chapter 1, verse 9, to correct such an idea.

He says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Our Christian life hinges not on our moral perfection, but on God's generous mercy towards us.

So this is the purpose for which he's writing.

He tells us his purpose right in verse 1, chapter 2.

I'm writing these things to you, that's you plural, so that you may not sin.

John's purpose is that Christians will not abide by sin.

Sin doesn't have a proper place in the Christian life, as though we should make room for some more sin in our life.

This is not a kind of antinomialism, this is not a kind of, you know, sin all the more so that all the more grace can abound, kind of theology.

Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

This understands that the life of grace, captured and captivated uh by the grace of God, is antithetical to the life of sin.

Well then, you might conclude with this uh these false teachers that that requires of us moral perfection.

We better do everything flawlessly to be without sin.

But John wants us to catch not a harsh news of moral striving, but good news of what God has done on our behalf.

What happens if I do sin?

This is what John wants to answer.

If anyone does sin, verse 2, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.

The answer is not found in our striving, it's found in our perfect advocate.

This is the comfortable word for us this morning.

This word advocate is the Greek word parakletos.

It means helper, it means counselor, and it carries a few different senses to it.

One is a sort of legal sense.

We can picture a courtroom drama with a barrister pleading someone's case for them, coming alongside a defendant or one of the parties and pleading their case on their behalf.

There's a legal sense in which we have an advocate with Jesus who pleads innocence, his own innocence, on our behalf, coming alongside us to make intercession.

But there's also a very personal sense.

There's a legal sense and a personal sense, and that personal sense comes out in this word comforter.

Jesus is not just interested in coming alongside us in theory and, you know, doing work that he's paid to do, so to speak.

He cares for us.

His heart is full of compassion for us.

And so he wants to come alongside us to console us, to offer us assurance and comfort.

He's our comforter, our advocate.

And what qualifies Jesus to be our advocate?

This is what John wants us to catch.

John goes on to say, he goes on to describe Jesus in two ways.

He describes Jesus as righteous.

He is the righteous one.

Jesus is just or innocent or correct.

Hebrews chapter 4 describes him as identifying with sinners in every way and yet being without sin.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

He is the one who uh who knew no sin and yet became sin for us.

Jesus is the only one who can lived a life to fulfill completely the moral commands of God.

He alone fulfills the whole law in a way that sinners fall short.

He is the righteous one.

So when he pleads innocence, he alone can do that.

Not because we're made to be innocent, not because, you know, God just kind of sweeps the sins we commit under the rug, so to speak.

Jesus pleads his own innocence.

I've kept the law, and I've kept the law on your behalf.

Jesus is the righteous one.

And John says Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, and that's a five-dollar theology word right there.

One dollar per syllable.

It means propitiation is this idea of expiation, of a sin offering, of satisfying wrath, of doing away with guilt.

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.

And for John's readers who are very familiar with their Old Testament scriptures, this takes them right back to the Levitical sacrificial system.

We can remember goats and lambs being offered to God on behalf of the sins of the people of Israel.

John is saying that par excellence, Jesus has offered himself to satisfy the wrath of God against sin.

God's just wrath against sin has been satisfied completely in Jesus' own offering of himself upon the cross.

And that's why John Calvin can say that the intercession, the advocacy of Christ, is a continual application of his death for our salvation.

Whenever we sin, I wonder what our imagination tells us about what happens with God when we sin.

My imagination tells me that God is tut-tut-tutting me.

Again, really?

John is saying, in fact, and what Calvin is picking up on, is what God hears when I sin is, yes, though I sin, Jesus once again plead the cross.

And Jesus invites us into that into that moment of intercession where his cross is applied on our behalf in very real time.

That means that our sin is not an occasion to shrink away from the Lord, but an occasion to boldly approach him.

He's pleading on our behalf.

He's made satisfaction for our sin in history in real time.

For our sins, it's effective for those he calls his own and for the sins of the whole world, which is to say that the cross is sufficient propitiation for all.

There's no one for whom the cross is not sufficient to save.

Whoever we meet on the street corner, that person who annoys us at work, that is a person for whom the cross is offered, to whom the cross is offered.

Jesus is the righteous one who pleads his own innocence.

He is the propitiation for our sins.

He has made ransom for our sins, satisfied God's wrath, and taken away the barrier of fellowship between us sinners and our holy and righteous God.

So whereas all other religious systems seem to expect us to make that propitiation, John wants Christians to know that the gospel is not about what we do to earn God's forgiveness, it's about what God has done on our behalf to apply Christ's work to us.

God has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

So we rest in that and we take confidence from that.

Now we should note that Jesus doesn't plead for penitent sinners to the Father despite the Father's heart towards sinners, as though the father's displeased, and Jesus is like, no, no, no, it's cool, they're cool.

We're like little puppies, like, can I keep them?

You know.

The father's heart is not set against sinners despite the son's pleas.

No, Jesus pleads to the Father because of the Father's heart towards sinners.

I quoted Pastor Dane Ortland last week.

I want to do so again, because I just think this is so rich.

He he talks about Christ's advocacy, his intercession.

It doesn't mean that the father is reluctant to embrace us, or that the son has a more loving disposition toward us than the father does.

The atoning work of the Son was something that the Father and the Son delightedly agreed to in eternity past.

Christ does not intercede because the Father's heart is tepid towards us, but because the son's heart is so full towards us.

But the father's own deepest delight is to say yes to the Son's pleading on our behalf.

The Son is delighted to plead mercy and grace for us sinners, and the Father is delighted to receive his son's pleas for us.

What amazing grace.

So John's question for the rest of the passage here.

He says, if we've sinned, we have an advocate.

In every way we have good news.

The question for the rest of this passage is: do you know the advocate?

Do you know that you know the advocate?

Do you know that you know him?

You know what I mean.

This is not a philosophical question.

This is a very real and personal question for John.

And this is his pastoral concern for this very precious flock.

See, there's a difference between knowing about and knowing personally.

We know that to be true of our own relationships.

I know a lot of things about Rachel.

But if all I'd ever read is Rachel's Wikipedia page, well, she probably should have a Wikipedia page, if I just read about Rachel, that's a very different thing than knowing Rachel.

Which is to say, when you know someone and you know them deeply, they affect you.

They change you, they transform you.

Our best friends and our closest relationships should be those who change us the most for the better.

And John is concerned that this precious flock knows Jesus not just in a Wikipedia way, not just knows a couple of things about Jesus, but they know Jesus deeply.

Knowing Jesus for John means a couple of things.

Knowing Jesus deeply means keeping his commandments.

Verses 3 and 4.

If you love me, Jesus says to his disciples in John 14, you will keep my commandments.

Which seems kind of counterintuitive to us because commandments have a way, it seems like they curb love.

It seems like they limit or put restrictions on love.

Kind of like here's the conditions you have to meet.

But again, if we're thinking of the context of marriage here, we submit ourselves to moral obligation when we take our vows.

And I think I'd be very foolish to say that those vows are a limiting thing in my life.

They're very restricting and constrictive.

Rather, by entering into the obligation of those things, the commands that come with that, I discover of greater freedom than I otherwise wouldn't have.

Maybe another example would be a musician who spends hours and hours and hours practicing their scales.

How restrictive and constricting can practicing be?

And yet, by submitting themselves to that discipline, they discover a greater freedom with their instrument than they otherwise wouldn't have.

Submitting ourselves to his commandments is a way of abiding in his love, of taking up his way of life, of submitting ourselves to his lordship.

And John wants to remind us in chapter 5 of his letter that his commandments are not burdensome.

They lead to a more abundant life than we otherwise wouldn't have.

So if we're going to keep his commandments, we ought to be those who know his commandments.

And I just don't know how we can know his commandments without taking time regularly, daily, and soaking up his word, not to find the easy answers that we need today, but to spend our life in the rhythms of grace being shaped by his word towards us.

We need to take the time to dwell and meditate and soak in God's word so it permeates our whole being, so his commandments become a way that we engage with and know our good advocate Jesus.

And when we know his commandments and we put them into action, we put them into practice, we obey them, then we start walking the way that Jesus walked, which is what John says in verse 6.

When we know his commandments, they give shape and direction to our behavior.

We can't claim to be a Christian unless his commands give shape to our lives.

You know, I guess I had this thought this week, and I thought it was a bit of a convicting thought for me.

If I stopped meditating on scripture today, if I stopped praying today, if I never had fellowship with another Christian for the rest of my life, would my life look significantly different?

If not, then perhaps I only know God in a Wikipedia way.

But if my life would not have the shape, would not have the direction, would not have the abundance of life that I have now in not knowing God, then surely I must know him in a deep way.

That's something I suppose we all have to work out in our hearts before the Lord.

But when we keep his commandments, when we walk the way he walked, we discover that the love of God is perfected in us.

It's made real, it's fulfilled, it's completing its purpose.

And notice that this is a passive verb.

This is not something that we do.

We strive and strive and strive to perfect God's love more and more and more.

It's something that God is doing to us and in us and drawing us to his very self.

Again, this is not a life of perfect moral striving.

The Christian life is a life animated by God's compassion and mercy, being lived out in real time wherever we go.

And in this way, knowing Jesus is eternal life.

Just like Jesus says in John 17.

It's the love of God welling up more and more and more into an abundance of eternal life.

So, dear friends, we have an advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous, who pleads for penitent sinners who turn to him.

Do you know this advocate?

Do we fear condemnation?

If you've sinned, you have an advocate, Jesus, who pleads for you and not against you.

What an alluring thought.

What a wooing thought.

He will not leave you the same as he found you.

Let's go back to Miserabla for a second here.

Here's Jean Valjean, the police officers are standing in front of the bishop.

What's the bishop gonna say?

It'd be a short story if he sent him back where he came from, wouldn't it?

The bishop turns to Jean Valjean, he says, Ah, there you are.

I am glad to see you.

I gave you the candlesticks also, he says.

He pretends, he's even more generous.

He pretends that he wants, you know, that this was the plan all along, right?

I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest and would bring 200 francs.

Why didn't you take them as well?

In other words, this bishop pleads for Jean Van Jean on his behalf, and he's delighted to do so.

This is his compassionate heart towards him, and this is the heart of our advocate, who doesn't pretend, by the way, but who seriously is generous and merciful towards us.

And then he turns to Jean Valjean after the police leave.

He says, Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good.

It is your soul that I am buying for you.

I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.

Friends, the advocate will not leave us where he found us.

He will plead on our behalf, and he is delighted to do so, just as the Father is delighted to hear his pleas, and we will be transformed by that mercy and grace that we discover only in him.

So come to Jesus, your advocate.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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