Jesus: Our Advocate

Financial Update. Thank you to those that gave last year. Numbers were flat the past few years. Every year our expenses have increased. Challenge, look at your giving and ask God if what you are giving is pleasing to Him or if you need to up that amount?

Introduction

Starting with story of my school bus fight.

I had someone standing up for me even though I had punched a kid. I had an advocate. Today, we are going to be continuing our series in 1st John and we are going to be looking at Jesus, who is our advocate.

I want to focus on one central idea today as we look at this.

Can Christians sin after they are save? Do people who are truly Christian sin? And if they can sin, what happens?

To find out, let’s look at our text for today. We are in chapter 2 and will be reading verses 1 to 6. The words will be on the screen and I have notes loaded into your app.

Main Text

1 John 2:1–6 ESV

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 Apostle John is finally getting to the meat in his letter. The first chapter could be considered the prologue. He essentially takes that first chapter and says, this is what being a Christian looks like. You are in fellowship. You are walking in the light. You are confessing your sins, etc.

Starting with chapter two, he is addressing this letter to the church, as if to say, if you believe all the things in chapter 1, keep reading. So we will keep reading today.

He addresses his letter to the church by calling us dear children. Now, he means this affectionately as we are all children of God.

And what you will notice is throughout his letter, John uses a lot of familial language. He calls us children. He refers to Father God, just as Jesus did. He sees the body of Christ as a family. He sees God as our father.

Now I’m going to highlight five things in this passage and my goal today is encourage you in the same way the Apostle John encouraged his followers in the early church.

First we need to note John’s purpose in writing this letter. He says in verse 1, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”

In other words…

Sin Is The Problem

After his many years of life, John is addressing the big problem that we all have. We all sin. The church folk that John was sending this letter to sinned.

The Apostle John had likely visited and possibly pastored some of the churches that received this letter and guess what? The people in those churches still struggled with sin.

If they struggled with sin, guess what, so do we.

Sin is a difficult problem even after you become a Christian. To define sin, it means to miss the mark. If perfection is the mark or the goal, whenever you miss that mark, whenever we fail to hit that goal, we sin.

If you are breathing right now, you have sinned. You have missed the godly standard of perfection. And that’s a problem. Sin brings death.

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you have sinned and you have not put your trust in Jesus, not only will you die in this life, but you will experience eternal death in hell.

The Bible is clear on this. Sin is a problem. It is every thought and action that leads us away from God. Or to put it even stronger, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

And the goal of John writing this letter is that we would not sin. That we would cease sinning. John wants his followers to stop sinning. That’s one of the points of this letter, that it would help encourage and empower us not to sin.

But here’s what John knows and we know. We will sin again. At this church we do not teach or believe in the doctrine of sinless perfection which says that as new creations in Christ we can live the rest of our lives sinless.

This is false teaching. While we are a new creation in Christ, that old man, the flesh is still active and it will win some battles along the way. You will not live a perfect life, indeed you cannot, which is why…

Christ Is The Solution

John finishes his statement with this thought, “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins.”

Sin is the problem and Christ is the solution.

Here’s what we believe, that the blood of Jesus shed on the cross is the propitiation of our sins, as John says in verse 2. Now, propitiation is a big theological word that many of us may have not heard before, so I want to explain that for a moment.

The greek word used here is “Hilasmos”. It means atoning sacrifice. In other words, the death of Jesus was a sacrificial offering that brings us into right relationship with God. That’s the atoning part. Its a payment for our sins.

Now some scholars debate on whether this word should be translated expiation or propitiation. Almost every bible translation I could find translates this as propitiation or atoning sacrifice.

Expiation as a word focuses on the means by which our sins are forgiven whereas propitiation focuses on the fact that God is satisfied by the means. In other words, because its translated as propitiation here, the thought and context of this is focusing on the fact that God’s wrath was satisfied and he looks on the sacrifice of Jesus as pleasing.

This makes sense when we look at verse 1 again and see that Jesus has been named our Advocate with the Father. Jesus has satisfied the requirements of the law and became the sacrificial lamb that is without spot.

Now we see it says that He is our propitiation, but not only ours, but he is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Now this leads me to a question…

Are We Universalists?

Or…to put it another way, does that mean everyone is saved?

No. Keep in mind the context that we’ve been talking about. John is telling people how to know if they are True Christians. If you walk in the light, if you confess your sins. Logically, he would not need to do that if we are all saved.

So what does he mean?

Here he is talking about what I’m going to call the “blood applied.” There’s a difference between the blood shed and the blood applied.

Let me give you a story for some context. During the last plague on Egypt, Moses instructs all of Israel to kill a lamb and take the blood of it and paint it on their doorposts and they would be spared from death.

This is a picture of what Jesus did. He was the lamb slain for us. His blood is readily available for everyone in the world. There is no limit to the number of people who can receive salvation from death by the blood of the lamb.

But, just like the Israelites, the blood must be applied. The Israelites who believed God and trusted in his word, took the blood of the lamb and painted it on the doorposts.

We have to do the same thing. We have to apply the blood. If you want salvation today, you need to apply the blood. That means you have to receive the forgiveness of Jesus in faith. You have to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and you will be saved. That’s how you apply the blood.

So when John says this is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, he is saying its available for everyone to apply.

John then moves into how do you know you’ve applied the blood? The Apostle in this letter, keeps circling back to the assurance of salvation. How do you know you are a true Christian?

True Christians Keep His Commands

Look at verse 3 & 4, he says “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.”

True Christians will keep the commands of Christ. That’s what John is saying. This is how you will know that you have applied the blood…you are doing what Christ commanded.

John doesn’t tell us here what those commands are, but he mentions it in the next section, which is verses 7 to 14 and then he states it bluntly later in his letter.

1 John 3:23 ESV

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

John identities two key pieces to obeying the commandment of Jesus. We have to believe in Jesus and we have to love one another.

You cannot just claim to believe…many people claim to believe, demons certainly believe, many people from other religions even say they believe in Jesus, but our actions must match our words.

If we truly believe, we will love others.John says that if you love one another, which is another big theme of his letter that he introduces in this chapter, then you are a true Christian. You know him and it’s evident that you know him because you love other people. That’s what Jesus did and that’s what you should be doing.

He actually doubles down on this idea, because he follows up with this…

True Christians Walk Like Him

In 1 John 2:5–6 he says “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.”

In other words, True Christians don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. I spent a large part of last year in a sermon series called “Like Jesus,” where we looked at the things Jesus did and determined that in order to be a disciple of Jesus, you will do those things.

So in no particular order, here are some of the things Jesus did:

He Loved God.

He Loved People.

He spent time in silence, solitude and stillness before the Lord.

He spoke the truth.

He was full of grace.

He healed people.

He was generous.

He lived a simple life.

He was led by the Spirit.

He lived a life on mission to save others.

He was fearless.

He transformed people’s ashes into beauty.

And there were a lot of others things I spoke on in that series. You can go back and listen to those, they are in the app and on the website.

My point is this though, John says that if we say we know Jesus, we will act like Him. We will walk the way he walked on this earth. His heart, his mission, his goal will become our goal.

Now most of us, if we are honest, we know we don’t live like him. We don’t look like him. In fact, most of us would probably say this… “I am a poor example of who Jesus is.”

I’m still battling sin. I still fall short.

And its at this point, I want to pull us back to the beginning of this chapter again and give us some encouragement.

Christ Is Our Advocate

In verse 1 it says, 1 John 2:1 “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.”

In other words, John is answering this question…What happens if I sin once I become a Christian?

First note that John, in even addressing this question, knows this is something we will struggle with. I got saved when I was a teenager and I have struggled with sin since that day. I believe that if you are breathing, you are in that same boat.

What happens when you sin? We have an advocate.

Hebrews 7:25 (ESV)

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Now I recognize advocate and intercessor may be words you aren’t as familiar with or you don’t use in your daily conversations, so let me help by painting a little picture.

Imagine heaven around God’s throne as a courtroom. God the Father is the judge of everyone, both the living and the dead.

Now in this courtroom there are two people there. One of this is known as the Accuser, the other is known as the Advocate.

The Accuser’s role is to accuse you of everything you are doing wrong at any given time. His job is to sow doubt and discord in the Father’s heart toward you. He stands before God and says, “Look at what they’ve done. They don’t love you. They only love themselves. He’s a mistake, he should have never been born.”

And even if you are living a pretty decent life, the Accuser still stands before God saying things like, “He only loves you because of the good things you give him. She only treats other people that way because she wants to be liked. She doesn’t really care for those people, she wants to get something from them. They all have the wrong motives.”

Now the hard part of hearing this is, the Accuser may be right on some of these things. The best lies have a thread of truth in them. You may have really bad motives. You have sinned.

And in the midst of this courtroom, here’s how I see it anyway, in the midst of these accusations, the volume and the intensity keeps getting higher and a smile starts to come across Satan’s face as he thinks, “I’ve got em! This is it, there’s no way God will let them pass after all they’ve done.”

It’s at that very moment, Jesus stands up stretches out his hands and says, “Silence! It is FINISHED! I died for those sins you foul creature! Go back to the pit from which you came. You have no legal authority to bring any accusations against him. He has been washed clean by my blood. He has been set free from sin by my death on the cross! Your accusations have no standing here!”

That’s what it means to have Jesus Christ as our advocate. Though our sins were like scarlett, behold they are white as snow!

So listen to me church, if you have sinned and it doesn’t matter if you have been a Christian for one day or for 80 years, Jesus Christ is not mad at you, he’s not disappointed in you, HE IS ADVOCATING FOR YOU!

Conclusion

Let’s stand and sing.

Perhaps you are here and you need prayer today, please feel free to come forward, someone will pray with you.