Now let us turn prayerfully to the first
epistle written by John and to the second
chapter, reading verses one and two.
Before we read these verses, may I remind
you that as we have been meditating upon
this very remarkable treatise, we have seen that
beginning with verse six in chapter one and
proceeding to verse two in chapter two, there
would appear to be three subsidiary sections.
Each begins with the words, if we say.
If we say, you have it in verse
six, if we say we have fellowship with
him and walk in darkness.
Then you have it in verse eight, if
we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves.
Then again in verse ten, if we say
that we have not sinned, we make him
a liar and his word is not in
us.
Now, these three sections are very similar in
that John does the same thing in each
case.
In the first place, he states a claim
made by some folk or other that is
of no substance.
It is false, it is futile.
It is the claim in verse six to
have fellowship with God whilst we walk in
darkness.
That's not possible.
In verse eight, it is the claim to
have no sin in our nature.
It can't be true, says John.
And in verse ten, if we say we
have not sinned, we have not committed acts
of sin, that again simply cannot be.
There is no man who sins not, says
the scripture.
Now, having thus presented the faulty approach, John
corrects it.
He passes judgment and then he proceeds to
a correction of that which is false.
Now, in this particular little passage before us,
beginning with verse ten in chapter one and
proceeding to verse two in chapter two, there
are three divisions, two of which we've considered.
We've considered the abortive profession concerning acts of
sinning, verse ten in chapter one.
If we say we have not sinned, then,
says John, we make him a liar and
his word is not in us.
We've dwelt upon that.
Then also, we have dwelt upon the opening
words in verse one in chapter two.
The avowed intention of the apostle in writing.
He says, these things I write unto you,
my little children, their chief sin not.
Here, then, is the avowed intention.
This is the purpose, this is the goal,
this is the reason for his writing.
And those two things we have considered.
Now, one thing remains, namely, God's adequate provision
for Christian living.
And that is what we have in the
remainder of verse one and going on into
verse two, which I will now read.
My 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.
And he is the propitiation for our sins.
And not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world.
Here, then, is our theme for today.
And we can easily divide what remains in
these two verses into two main sections.
First of all, we are going to look
at the solemn predicament that is here envisaged,
and then the sufficient provision that is here
assured.
The predicament that is envisaged is the predicament
of a Christian having fallen into sin.
And I think you will see in a
moment why I deliberately choose the word predicament.
That is suggested, I believe, by the entire
language of the section.
But let's take it little by little.
The solemn predicament envisaged, that if any man
sin.
Once again, we encounter what appears to me
to be the wonderful equipoise, the balance of
Scripture.
We have here, on the one hand, Christian
idealism at its very highest and loftiest.
These things I write unto you, that ye
sin not.
But then, on the other hand, we have
what we may speak of as Christian realism.
The New Testament writers never bury their heads
under the sand.
They never shirk the facts of the case.
They look into the eyeball of reality, and
they see what is there, and they address
themselves to real situations.
If any man sin.
Now, Christian idealism, as we have it here,
is not to be glossed over.
It is enshrined in the faith.
It is an essential ingredient.
These things I write unto you, that ye
sin not.
Such is the provision of divine grace.
Such is the glory of our Saviour.
Such is the power of God unto salvation
in Christ.
That sin is no longer inevitable for any
believing man or woman.
Now, my friends, I don't know whether we
have really pondered over this.
Such is the nature of Christian salvation.
Such is the glory of God in Christ.
Such is the provision of God through Christ
by the Spirit and the Word.
That sin is no longer inevitable.
I fear that many of us fall into
sin because we have a sneaking suspicion that,
well, there is no other way.
Everybody sins.
It's through Jesus Christ as the Saviour, but
God doesn't expect me to overcome every temptation.
And we treat sin as if it were
inevitable.
Now, we can't have it both ways.
Jesus Christ is a perfect Saviour.
He is able to save to the uttermost
those that come to God by Him.
Thou shalt call His name Jesus because He
shall save His people from some of their
sins.
Now, don't throw your shoes at me.
I know I misquoted the scripture.
That's not what it says.
Thou shalt call His name Jesus for He
shall save His people from their sins.
Now, some of them.
In Him, all the fullness of the Godhead
resides bodily.
By Him, the unfailing grace of God is
mediated and we may avail ourselves of all
that.
So that sin is not a necessity in
any life.
With the temptation, says Paul, there is always
a way of escape.
Now, it's very difficult for us to take
this in, isn't it?
We want to excuse ourselves and we want
to say, well, I couldn't do anything else.
It's not true, my friends.
You cannot have the doctrine of a perfect
Saviour and a full salvation and then say,
it was necessary for me to sin.
The provision of a Saviour such as Jesus
Christ means that sin henceforth is inexcusable.
I don't have to sin.
Satan is strong.
The world's enticements and allurements are many and
equally strong.
But I have a Saviour who is stronger.
Where sin abounded, grace much more abounds.
He reigns in life and He ever lives
to make intercession for us.
The fact that the total mastery of temptation,
over-temptation, is only being slowly and gradually
appreciated by any man and appropriated, does not
mean to say that Jesus Christ cannot serve
to the uttermost.
Now, this Christian idealism is not a false
teaching introduced by one apostle more than another.
It is not a false train in the
biblical doctrine of grace.
What John is doing here is really applying
what he's heard from his master.
Jesus Christ Himself taught men, for example, and
this is purely illustrative of the principle, He
taught men that they should not simply abstain
from committing adultery, but from looking to lust.
And He went on to say to them
that it was better in the cause of
righteousness to tear out an offending right eye
rather than sin, and to dismember a right
hand rather than sin.
He treated sin as something terrible, and it
is possible for us, if we're prepared to
pay the price, to overcome Christian idealism.
But nevertheless, and this is the balance of
it, you see, oh, that the Lord would
make us balanced like this.
This is the summons, this is the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus, and we
must never allow anything else to dominate our
thinking.
Anything that detracts from this.
I write unto you that ye sin not,
but if any man sin.
Now, that word if, that hypothetical if there,
does not imply that John considers that there
are only a few who do sin.
I'll tell you how I can say that
so dogmatically.
It's just because of what he says in
verse 10.
If we say we have not sinned, and
the implication is at any given time, then
we make him a liar and his word
is not in us.
In other words, John is conceding that God's
people do sin, all of them sin, and
we sin with a measure of regularity.
Now, I'll have to qualify that later on.
So that we cannot say at any given
time that we have not sinned.
But even so, says John, it is not
necessary, it is not inevitable that we sin,
though it is the general practice among us
that we do.
Moreover, the imagery of the passage envisages precise
exigency that emerges at this point.
Now, what happens when a Christian sins?
When a Christian sins.
Let's ask another question first of all.
What image may we take from the New
Testament to describe the relationship between God and
His people as His people walk in obedience
to Him?
I suppose the best picture is the picture
of a father in relation to his children,
his family, with the perfect relationship coming to
fruition more and more.
Father, children.
The father enjoying the confidence of his children,
delighting in the obedience of his children, and
the children correspondingly having confidence in their father,
having a respect for him so that they
honor his laws and they worship his person
and they receive his word and they trust
him implicitly.
Now, this is one of the images that
describes the general and what ought to be
the consistent experience of Christian people.
We ought to be enjoying the fatherly countenance
of our God and His fatherly care and
His fatherly interest in us.
This surely is what our Lord has in
mind when He teaches His disciples, taught His
disciples of old, and teaches us today to
pray in the way the Lord's prayer suggests
we should pray.
We should ask our Father for all our
needs, spiritual and material, everything we need, and
then we should live a life of dependence
upon Him under His fatherly care and His
fatherly eye.
But now, what happens when a Christian sins?
What happens when a Christian sins is something
of this order, and you see it reflected
here.
The Christian knows better than anyone else what
sin is.
He knows that sin is a violation of
God's law.
What's more, the Christian knows that when he
sins, he sins against the very one who
loved him in eternity and who loves him
still.
So that there is something to a Christian
sinning which is distinctive.
The sin of the worldling is terrible.
The sin of the unbeliever is gross and
serious.
But the sin of a Christian is, in
a sense, far more so.
Because, you see, the Christian does not only
sin against the law of God and the
God of the law, he sins against love.
He despises the love that has sought him
and found him and blessed him and cares
for him.
And he says, no, no, I will not
let that love curb me.
I'll leap over it.
Now, what then happens is this.
I become less and less aware of the
fatherly countenance and the fatherly interest of God
in me, and I become more and more
conscious of God as judge, of God as
standing over against me, of God as being
displeased with me, of God as being able
justly to condemn me.
And if my standing before God depended upon
my own righteousness, I would immediately there and
then be lost.
And so, you see, when a Christian sins,
he loses his peace.
He loses his composure.
He loses his hope.
He loses his joy because he loses the
sense of the fatherly care and goodness of
God and he becomes more and more aware
of the fact that his father is now
the judge, a judge who is holy and
righteous and has condemned the very thing that
the man of God has done.
In other words, the image that emerges now
in a man's mind, in a man's thought,
in a man's consciousness, is the image more
of a court of law than of a
home.
And I become aware of the accusations against
me.
I become aware of the fact that God
may judge me and has every right to
judge me.
And I become afraid of God.
Now, this is the exigency.
When a man or woman is afraid of
God in this sense, you see, prayer loses
its virtue, loses its value.
Fellowship with God becomes non-existent.
And all the promises of the Bible, they
mean next to nothing to me.
Life has become something altogether different from what
it was meant to be.
Now, I may be speaking to someone who
is in that precise condition today.
Because you know that you have sinned, you
have ceased to have confidence in God, you
feel that He is against you rather than
for you.
Because of that, you cannot come to the
throne of grace with any confidence at all.
That's the exigency.
That's the predicament I'm talking about.
The predicament that has arisen is this.
Because a believer has sinned, a believer who
knows God to be holy, a believer who
knows sin to be ugly, a believer who
sins not only against law but against love
at one and the same time, then when
he sins, his conscience is aroused and his
memory becomes a chamber of horrors and everything
accuses him.
And it puts him in such a turmoil.
Or it ought to.
Now, that is the predicament envisaged here.
And my text provides us with what John
announces as the sufficient provision for such an
exigency.
If any man sin, what then?
Must I break my heart?
Am I lost forever?
Does God the Father condemn me to outer
darkness when as a Christian I sin?
What then?
Listen to my own text.
We have an advocate with God.
Jesus Christ the righteous.
And He is the propitiation for our sins.
And not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world.
Which in a nutshell means this.
We have one with the Father who can
cope with this situation too.
The sufficient provision assured.
We have an advocate with the Father.
Now, this morning I simply want to say
a word about the advocacy of Jesus Christ.
And I want to proceed, God willing, next
Sunday morning to say something about its total
adequacy.
We need nothing more.
The advocacy of Jesus Christ.
Over against the fearful situation caused by the
believer's transgression of God's law and disregard of
His love, the Apostle points the true Christian
to the glorious objective fact that there in
the presence of God we have what he
speaks of as an advocate.
However grave the sin, however angered God may
be, however enraged our own consciences, however frightened
our spirits, however downcast our souls, if you
are a true believer and if Jesus Christ
is your Saviour, right then, in the presence
of God, you have an advocate.
Now, it is illuminating to remember that the
word used here for advocate is the same
word as Jesus used of the Holy Spirit.
When in John chapters 14 to 16 He
was introducing the coming Holy Spirit to the
disciples.
You remember the occasion.
Jesus said that He was going to be
with the Father, going to prepare a place
for them.
And then He said, I'm not going to
leave you comfortless, but I will send to
you another comforter, paracletos.
Now that's exactly the same word that we
have here.
Jesus says, I am sending you another paracletos,
implying of course that He was one paracletos.
John tells us exactly that here.
We have a paracletos with the Father, a
paraclete in heaven.
Now, in rabbinical literature, the corresponding word has
reference to a friend of an accused or
of a prisoner who comes alongside of him
into a court scene to speak on his
behalf.
In other words, the whole imagery now is
one of a court of law.
Someone is accused of something.
Into the court there comes someone who knows
the individual that is accused, who can say
something on his behalf and perhaps who can
plead for leniency or something of that kind.
Stott puts it in his IVF commentary, it
was particularly used in the law courts of
a barrister, whose responsibility it was, as counsel
for the defense, to plead the cause of
the person on trial.
It can stand for anybody that says anything
in favor of the person in the dock,
but very especially of the barrister for the
defense.
Dare I rephrase my text then?
If any man sin, we have a barrister
for the defense.
We have one who is able to plead
our case and our cause, not before men,
but before God.
There are therefore two advocates in Scripture.
And though it is not my purpose this
morning to speak at any length about the
two, will you notice this, we really need
to appreciate this, if we are to be
encouraged by the Scriptures as we ought to
be and need to be encouraged.
There are two advocates that function in the
salvation of men.
Jesus Christ is our advocate with the Father.
He pleads our case before God.
The Holy Spirit is Christ's advocate in the
hearts of His people.
The Holy Spirit has come into our hearts
to plead the case of Jesus Christ, to
plead His merits and deserts when we would
tend to rebel, to remind us of His
claims and of His lordship and of His
resources, to bring into our minds and into
our memories all we need to remember about
Him so that we may honor Him and
have faith in Him and obey Him and
respect Him.
If you forget either of these two advocates,
my friend, you'll be the poorer because of
it.
But now we have an advocate with the
Father, whilst aiming, as John has been saying
in this context, whilst aiming at not sinning,
we nevertheless sin.
At that very moment, says John, don't be
over downcast because at that very moment there
is standing before God one who is able
to deal with your case.
We have an advocate with God.
As usual, some of the hymn writers have
said this very well.
I've been browsing this week, for example, on
C.O. Bancroft's lovely hymn and Charles Wesley's,
and there are others too.
Can I just refer to one or two?
Do you remember these words?
Before the throne of God above, says Bancroft,
I have a strong, a perfect plea.
A great high priest whose name is love,
whoever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on his hands.
My name is written on his heart.
I know that while in heaven he stands,
no tongue can bid me thence depart.
When Satan tempts me to despair and tells
me of the guilt within, upward I look,
see the eye of faith.
Here's the man of faith.
Upward I look and see him there, who
made an end of all my sin.
I'll take Charles Wesley.
Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty
fears.
The bleeding sacrifice in thy behalf appears.
Before the throne my surety stands.
My name is written on his hands.
He ever lives above for me to intercede,
his all-redeeming love, his precious blood to
plead, his blood atoned for every race, and
sprinkles now the throne of grace.
And the last verse, the most significant of
all.
Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary.
They poor effectual prayers, they strongly plead for
me.
Forgive him.
Oh, forgive, they cry, nor let the ransomed
sinner die.
We have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ the righteous, and he's the propitiation
for our sins.
Here then is a truth of the profoundest
import and of the most far-reaching significance.
Jesus Christ does not simply forgive the totality
of a person's sin at the moment of
his conversion.
He does that.
But he stands with us, and he is
able to meet the exigency that arises when
at any moment in my life I as
a believer sin and sense the frown of
the heavenly Father upon me.
At that very moment when I fear and
when I dread and when I cannot look
into my Father's face, we have an advocate
with God.
Now, I just want to say a word
in application of this, and then we're through
for this morning.
Here, my friends, is something that we simply
cannot gloss over.
I believe this morning that it is not
going too far to say that according to
the measure that we appreciate this cardinal truth,
do we learn to know not only peace
with God but the peace of God in
the midst of the world's turmoil and temptation
and evil.
Now, here is a confidence that we should
all enjoy.
John has been describing and announcing a genuine
comfort given to God's people and given us
to enjoy.
He told us in the first chapter, I'm
writing these things, he says, that your joy
might be full.
God is concerned about your joy and mine.
And it is only insofar as our joy
is full and our peace is like a
river, the river of God, that we can
be a testimony to the world.
Now then, if our joy is to be
full, here is a confidence to enjoy.
Christ has died to save men from the
totality of the sin that was ours when
we turned to him.
We know that, don't we?
This is the gospel.
Whenever there is a man who is prepared
to repent of his sin and to believe
in Christ, we can say to him, Christ
died for all your sins.
He will cast them all behind his back.
But Christ lives who died.
And the Christ who died lives to deal
with individual sins as they arise.
In the presence of God we have an
advocate who can deal with the exigency arising
from every single act of sin.
A confidence to enjoy.
Have you got that confidence this morning?
Do you see that Jesus Christ is not
a paper Savior, but a proper Savior?
Not an ideal in the mind, but a
real Savior to save.
Now, not only do we have there the
confidence that we ought to enjoy, but I
want to remind you again in these closing
moments of the context in which the whole
thing is explained.
If you take this out of its context,
you can make anything of it.
The context involves these two things.
Firstly, the advocacy of Jesus Christ is not
to be understood as if he were in
any wise to minimize the gravity of our
sin over against a God who frowns upon
sin.
Jesus Christ does not minimize the gravity of
sin.
He does not plead with an unwilling God
to forgive us.
That's not the point.
Jesus Christ, our advocate, is Jesus Christ the
righteous.
He is as righteous as the Father.
He is holy as the Father.
So he takes exactly the same view of
our sin as the Father does.
We must not, therefore, for one moment think
of Jesus Christ as pleading with the Father
to do something that the Father is unwilling
to do.
That's not the message.
Secondly, the advocacy of Jesus Christ is not
promised to men and women who trifle with
sin.
Please mark this.
This comfort is not for everybody.
It's only for the Christian man.
It's for the Christian man whose goal in
life is that we sin not.
Who has received a new nature.
The very nature of the Lord Jesus himself.
The Holy Spirit into the heart.
A new life.
And who, therefore, wants to avoid evil.
Or, put positively, who wants to please his
God.
Who wants to please the Father.
Now, this is a basic feature of every
regenerate man and regenerate woman.
A man who is born again of the
Spirit of God will want to please his
Father.
He will want to do what is right.
John goes on in this epistle to say
that we must be righteous.
That's what he means.
Basic to all righteousness is the desire to
please God.
The desire to obey Him.
And every Christian man is necessarily a man
who desires to do what is right.
Very well.
It's only to such people that this promise
avails.
In other words, if you're still not wrenched
from evil.
If the backbone of sin has not been
broken.
If your bondage with sin has not been
broken.
If Christ has not come into the prison
cell and made you free.
Then this promise is not for you.
Until you receive Him as your Savior.
And let Him tear you loose from the
Adamic stock.
Incorporate you into His own body.
Breathe His Spirit into you.
Make you a new creature and a new
creation.
That must be my last word.
Is Jesus Christ your Savior this morning?
Do your arms of faith move around Him?
Do you speak of Him honestly in your
heart as your own Lord Jesus Christ?
Has He wrought a work of grace in
your heart?
I'm not asking whether it's complete.
I'm not asking whether it's mature.
I'm not asking whether it's finished.
That's irrelevant.
The question is this.
Is Jesus Christ your Savior?
Has He begun a good work of redemption
and transformation?
Then as sure as He has.
Oh, take this.
Spirit of God, write it upon our every
heart.
As sure as that is so.
Then if any man sin.
He, she has an advocate with the Father.
At the moment of transgression.
Despite the gravity of it.
And the one who stands in the presence
of God is able to make all grace
abound toward us.
To forgive the sin.
To cleanse the unrighteousness.
To renew the fellowship.
And to build us up in our most
holy faith.
My friend, let's go out from this service
this morning in the knowledge that Jesus Christ
has not simply taken away the sins of
our past lives.
Blessed and glorious truth that that is to
every penitent sinner and believing man or woman.
But let us go out in the knowledge
that as sin emerges.
He is competent to deal with it now.
So that the Father's frown against sin does
not transform Him into a judge.
He still is my Father and receives me
in His Son.
Let us pray.
Blessed God our Father.
Thou knowest our need this morning of this
word from the scriptures.
Sometimes we are unaware of the measure of
our own need.
But Thou knowest us.
We believe that Thou hast ordained that we
should be meditating upon this theme today.
Arm us now we pray Thee.
Not only with the knowledge of the facts.
But with a confidence in Thyself.
And in Thy Son.
In Thy Spirit and in Thy Word.
And grant that as we go back into
the world.
With all its alluring temptations and voices and
influences.
That being armed we shall make war against
evil.
And be found always in worship Thou Lord.
Hear us in.
Amen.