Know Your Advocate

Chapter two, our text today flips the script for us and says, by this we may know. It says that twice, by this we may know. Today, John's giving us a way to test what we say, to determine how we can know. And notice where he starts. Two, one, he starts not with ourselves, but with knowing our advocate. This morning, here's the main takeaway from our text. Know your righteous advocate. It's that simple. Know your righteous advocate. There are three things that John wants us to know this morning, all related to that central one, but the first one is this. It's point one. Know your advocate.

First one begins, my little children, I'm writing these things to you. Here we sense the warmth of the apostle John as he writes with pastoral care and tenderness like that of a father. My little children. This aged apostle was here writing with affection to those that he considered spiritual children of the faith.

And right off the bat, it's worth pausing to reflect as an aside, the way that the gospel creates this sort of familial beauty for us as a church. how it creates these sorts of bonds between followers of Jesus. That we can have spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers who nurture our faith and who care for us. So that even for those who didn't grow up with a father who spoke with that kind of warmth, we can all together hear the voice of the Apostle John. And also here at Lord Willing over other saints in this body, other fathers and mothers of the faith who would speak over us with warmth and care. And the great beauty of that is that's just an echo. It's just an echo of the warmth of how our Heavenly Father speaks over all of his children who are in Christ Jesus. How beautiful is that? My little children, I am writing these things to you.

John's writing seems to reference back to chapter one, these things that he had just been talking about. A warning about saying that you're doing one thing, but then actually walking a different way. And then in verse nine, where he declared God's faithfulness and justice to forgive sin. Here he says, I write these things to you so that you may not sin. It's right off the bat, this is cutting straight through two false ideas.

First, it's confronting the possibility of forgiveness without mortification of sin. Forgiveness without putting sin to death. Important caveat here, that's not to say that forgiveness pre-requires the death of sin, but instead that confession and repentance, forgiveness freely given, produces by the Spirit the death of sin within us, necessarily. Forgiveness doesn't wait for sin to be completely dead before it's given, but forgiveness doesn't lounge around comfortably with sin either.

It fights to put it to death. Second, this is a warning against the cheapening of grace. The lie sounds something like this. If I've been forgiven, if I've received grace, then my sin doesn't really matter that much. I'll just apologize to God and say I'm sorry. It can produce laxity.

We know that this cannot be true. Because grace, though it is freely given, freely given, it was not cheap. As Bonhoeffer says, grace is costly because it cost God the life of his son. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Yes, it is freely given, it is a free gift, but it is not without cost to God.

And for us, that means suffering must be embraced. God's rule, which we'll see later in this text, it must be submitted to. His law followed. Sin must decrease. Some of us maybe grew up swimming in the waters of this kind of church talk. We know that grace is a free gift. We know how to talk that talk all day long. Maybe for some in this room at some point we've stopped walking that out practically in our lives. Free grace is basically turned into permission. Permission to do what we want and ask for forgiveness later.

Brothers and sisters, beware of presuming on grace. Beware of cheapening grace in your lives. heed John's warning right here. These very truths are written to all of us so that we might not sin. And in the same breath, in the same breath as saying that, John says something in the next sentence that sounds like the opposite. But if anyone does sin, he's not backpedaling here. He's instead describing what's an inescapable reality that the Bible lays forth again and again. We are commanded not to sin. We must not sin. And yet we continue to sin again and again.

Notice he says anyone here. That means anyone, truly anyone. The one who you feel like you messed up again this week. The teenager who's sitting in the room right now who's hiding something that no one else knows about. The one who's been a Christian for a long time and you feel like you should be past this particular sin in your life that you're still struggling with. John says, anyone, anyone.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous. Notice the tense of that sentence here. It says, we have an advocate. Not had, but right now. If we are in Christ, we have an advocate. Jesus Christ, the righteous. That word advocate is the same word that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit in John 14, where he says, he, God the Father, will give you another helper. Advocate.

It's the same word. Notice Jesus here says, another advocate. Why? Well, John tells us here why. It's because Jesus Christ is our advocate. The Holy Spirit is another. And right now, if you are in Christ, he is at your father's right hand, interceding for you before the mighty judge. This is the imagery of a courtroom. God, the mighty just judge, and you, no one in this room excluded, are on trial.

The only just outcome in this situation is our punishment for the sin that John rightly diagnoses in us, if anyone does sin, and we do sin. Before a just judge, there's nothing for us to say. But instead, another voice speaks up, our advocate, not to lie and say that we haven't sinned. In fact, what he says to the father is less about us and it's much more about saying something better about himself. So put aside any notion that this is a picture, an advocate of a son who's begging and crying to his father, who's a mean guy, just pleading for mercy for you.

No, this is Jesus Christ, the righteous one, speaking about himself and speaking about your position in him through faith. Right here, we're told who Christ is. He is Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is Jesus. He was a man, humbled, who took on a real body, who shed real blood, and who still bears that same body at the Father's right hand right now. He is Jesus Christ, Christ meaning Messiah or anointed King, and he is the righteous one. Apart from the judge, Jesus Christ the righteous is the only one in the courtroom with a perfectly clean record.

And yet it is that very advocate that has willingly been counted guilty. This is who stands interceding for us. The spilled blood of Jesus Christ the righteous cries out on our behalf to the Father that his justice has already been done. Sin has been punished, just not in us, praise God, but it has been punished in him, our advocate instead. which is how John could say in the chapter previous in verse nine, he said God is just to forgive. It's because of Jesus Christ the righteous, that's the same word, just and righteous in the original language. It's because of Jesus Christ the righteous that God's justice in forgiving us has been fully satisfied in the one who is righteous and counted guilty for us. Christ was made sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. John goes on with this idea here in verse two. He says, he, speaking of Jesus Christ the righteous, is the propitiation for our sins.

Propitiation for the kids, teens who are in the service. This is not a word that we use every day. But my task for you today is this is your memory word for the service today, propitiation. In fact, everybody, kids and adults, let's say that together. Repeat after me, propitiation.

Propitiation. Yes. Propitiation means that God is right to be angry at our sin. And because God loves us, Jesus took all of that anger in our place if we believe in him. Perpetuation. In a word, it basically means satisfaction. More technically, we could say that propitiation means, sorry, it means averting the wrath of God by the offering of a gift. Averting the wrath of God by the offering of a gift.

Because God's wrath is real. He is just. Some of us, maybe you hear that, that God's wrath is real, and inside you kind of recoil, that idea of God's wrath. But God's wrath isn't some kind of divine temper tantrum. No, it's his settled, holy opposition and anger against everything that destroys what he loves and what is good. Chiefly, that's sin, all sin.

For some who are here and in your lives, you've been severely sinned against, abused or betrayed, slandered. The wrath of God isn't bad news for you, it's good news. Because it means that what has been done to you matters to Him. wonderful good news of the gospel. The message of propitiation means that the same justice that won't overlook sin done to you has been fully satisfied for sin, has been fully satisfied for sin done by you. It's been fully satisfied for sin done by you in the sacrifice of Christ. Every sin ever done against you will be answered for, either at the cross or at the final judgment.

None of it will be shrugged off by God. His sacrifice was once for all. The lamb who was slain, his wounds have made us whole. The Bible talks about this all kinds of ways. The key here is that he doesn't just offer sacrifice. Jesus is the propitiating sacrifice. The advocate and the atonement are united in one man who is Jesus Christ. And propitiation isn't Jesus just prying the love out of the hands of a reluctant father either. No, it's the one love of the triune God providing the very sacrifice that justice might be satisfied. And the practical applications of this to our lives are really immense.

When you sin this week, because you will, what will you do? Will you run away from God? Hide? Avoid prayer and the word for a few days because you feel ashamed? Waiting until you feel clean enough to come back? Maybe say a little prayer of penance in your head, punishing yourself? I get it, kind of. These tactics kind of make sense in the moment. They feel reasonable. It kind of feels like humility. The penance makes us feel better.

But the truth is, it doesn't change the reality that you're still in the courtroom. And when you take that approach, you're choosing to stand there alone, arguing your own case against a holy judge. And friends, that will not end well. Take confidence in the reality of your advocate. No self-representation in this courtroom, no matter how good you may think your own defense may be, will render any verdict but guilty. Guilty. So when you sin this week, Believe this truth. Run straight to your advocate who testifies of his righteousness freely given to you. Verse two continues.

And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. For the sins of the whole world. This phrase has been debated since early in the history of the church, so I want to be careful here how we speak about this. So first, I want to say what this cannot mean, what it cannot mean in light of the whole counsel of God's Word. It cannot mean that God's wrath against every sin of every single person on earth has been satisfied. It can't mean that. Because if that's true, then there's nothing left for anyone to face.

In that case, it's everyone saved, whether they believe in Christ or not. It's basically universalism. Or maybe you could kind of twist it and say it's God's justice in hell becomes something very different than what the scriptures actually describe. It's kind of how you get to ideas like purgatory, some sort of temporary punishment where sin is eventually worked out and we're made right. That cannot be true. God's word stands in direct opposition to that. For the sins of the whole world cannot mean that. So what then?

There's at least three different possible meanings. First possibility, Christ's propitiation is not only sufficient for those who are in the church, but for all, whether they're currently in the church or not, who will eventually believe across the whole world. In other words, it's for all people without distinction. Not just Jews, not just Gentiles or men or women, just those who are in these four walls of the church today, but for all of the world who will believe in Christ. It's possibility number one. Second possibility. Christ's propitiation saves believers specifically and brings real but non-saving benefits to all the peoples of the world. A familiar verse to many of us, John 3, 16, kind of gives us a framework for understanding this second perspective.

It says, for God so loved the world, the world, that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So eternal life, wrath propitiated, is for those who believe. And yet, John still says there that God so loved, in some more general sense, the world, the whole world. The effects of that love, though not salvific, they do not save the whole world, they're nonetheless real.

You could think of this in a theological term used called common grace, grace that's given broadly. These non-saving benefits to the world, you could chiefly think of things like what James read for us earlier from Romans 3, God's divine forbearance, his patience in passing over former sins. The New Testament talks about God's patience toward the whole world, even now, not judging them immediately, though that's what all the world deserves, so that there would be a chance to repent. All people now, in some general sense, enjoy the benefits of this already and not yet world of the kingdom of God being at hand that we live in.

So that's the second option. A common grace, non-saving application of Christ's work to the whole world. Option number three, Christ's propitiation is effective for the results of the sin and fall in all the cosmos, in all of the created world, the created universe. This is an idea you could pull from texts like Romans chapter 8, where Paul tells us there that creation itself is going to be set free from its bondage to corruption.

And it longs and yearns for that even now. Which is kind of a strange thing to say unless, which is true, creation itself is also under the curse. also feeling the effects of sin and needs to be redeemed and will be redeemed fully in the new heavens and the new earth through Christ's work. So all three of these understandings are theologically true. They're all true theologically.

So the real question for us here is, which one does John mean in this particular context? What is John saying right here? So much of how we interpret this and where we land on this comes down to how we understand John's use of the word world here. There's a huge diversity, even just in 1 John, of how the word world is used.

Is it used like in option one of those currently outside the church who will believe? Is that what the world is? Or is the world like option two, every single person, but in some more general sense? Or is it more like option three, is the world all of creation, the cosmos? My inclination is toward option one, the idea that the grace of propitiation would be applied not just to those currently in the church, but to all of those out there who are yet to believe from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation.

One kind of argument for this perspective, John uses this exact kind of not, not only, but also language in his gospel to refer to the same idea, that Jesus would die not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the children of God who were scattered abroad. It's the same idea there.

Practically, this means for us, though, that no one, No one, even if they're not in the four walls of the church, is beyond the grace of God, is beyond the propitiating work of Christ. Not the coworker who rolls his eyes at you whenever you mention God, not the animalist villager in Zambia, not the atheist businessman in a sprawling East Asian megacity.

The promise of the grace of Christ for the whole world is why we as a church pray for our missions partners. It's why we give to missions and send teams and even personally send missionaries. It's even why some of you in this room here today must personally consider investing a season of your life in the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. Christ did die for the sins of the whole world. People of every tribe who will believe. Will you go? Will you go personally that they might hear? On the other end of the spectrum, maybe you're here today and you hear the words, the whole world, and you think, oh, great, I'm covered. I can just keep coasting and kind of figure this Jesus thing out some other time.

The advocate's work is not your excuse. It's your reason to repent today. So we know our advocate. We must begin there. But how do we know that we actually know him? Not just know about him, but know him. Brings us to point two. Know that you know him. Know that you know him. Points two and three are brief. Verse three, and by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. So don't miss the order here. This is important. The advocate must come first. Because if we begin with these commands to keep commandments before we know him, it can lead us to two dangerous places.

Either pride, where we feel like we're doing pretty well, got things figured out, which is a lie. It's not true. Or despair, because we know that we're not. John wants his readers to know, to know that we know Christ, the righteous advocate. And this isn't describing a process where we know by collecting lots of facts to build a case for him in our own minds. You might love a good theology book. I do.

Maybe you're really confident in your ability to explain the difference between propitiation and expiation. We're not even going to go into that today. And the terrifying part of that is you could explain it perfectly, with absolute precision, and your heart could still be cold and unmoved toward the one that you're describing. John doesn't ground our confidence in knowing him and our ability to explain him, but instead in the fruit of our lives, if we keep his commandments. The fruit, not the root of true knowing.

Keep here, that word means to guard or to treasure, to love. Reminds us of, I could quote dozens of verses from Psalm 119, but one that captures this well is verse 11. It says, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Friends, we can't perfectly keep God's commandments. We can't do it. We've just spent all this time talking about that. But what we can do is to keep them, to guard them as precious, to store them up in our hearts. And not just the ones that we like, but all of them, all the commandments of God. So it's worth asking, are you prioritizing storing up the word of God in your heart?

Personally, around the dinner table, in small groups, Bible studies, Verse four continues with the contrast echoing chapter one, whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. This kind of person is who John Calvin calls, he calls this type of knowledge an empty phantom of knowledge. It's not true knowledge. The outline of it might be there, but the truth is not truly in this kind of person. And we can know this because that kind of person does not keep Christ's commandments. This isn't meant to frighten those of you who are here this morning who have a sensitive conscience. It's meant to wake up those of you who are asleep.

Verse five says, but whoever keeps his word in him truly, the love of God is perfected. The love of God is perfected. The love being perfected here is your love for God flowing from his love for you. This is exactly what he says later in his letter. He says, we love because he, God, first loved us.

But wait, love and commandments don't always feel that compatible. How is it that it's keeping commandments is how God's love is perfected in us. Maybe that feels off to you. Because if we're honest, sometimes the commandments can feel more like a fence, fences, walls that keep some people out and keep others in. They don't feel like love.

GK Chesterton illustrates this idea really beautifully when he says that the doctrine and discipline may be walls, but they're the walls of a playground. He paints this picture of a bunch of kids who are happily playing on top of a grassy field on a tall island in the middle of the sea. There's walls, fences, all the way around the edges of the cliff. And because of that safety, the kids run and scream and yell and play, and they sing joyful songs at the top of their lungs.

Then somebody decides that the walls are too restrictive, that freedom would be better, and they knock the walls down. Now there's nothing between those kids and this drop to their death. Rather than risking a fall, terrified, the children huddle together in the middle of the island, shaking and trembling. And they've stopped singing. God's word, God's commandments are the walls of the playground. They're not a fence to keep joy out. They are the loving safety that makes joyful singing possible.

The word kept is the very shape of true love in the Christian life. Not keeping God's word is at its core a lack of trust, a lack of belief that the commandments that we're called to walk in actually come from love, from a God who is love. Yet how often do we treat the commandments of God as a burden and a hindrance to true loving joy?

We love to love things that are not lovely, at least not ultimately. Whether it's approval, the approval of man, me time, classic ones, but pervasive, money, sex, power. We'd never outright call these things gods in our lives. But look at your life. They are a kind of master. as evidenced by the fact of what you're willing to sacrifice in order to obey their commands, their demands. Maybe you've metaphorically torn down the fences of your life, pursuing what you assumed would make you happy, only to find yourself just as empty, even more empty. Certainly not a life of joyful singing.

Our distaste for obedience is evidenced, evidenced enough that our trust in the goodness of God is not what we convince ourselves that it is. Which of God's commands do you resent? Which of God's commands do you resent? Name it. Because right there, you're beginning to pinpoint where you don't really believe that his commands are compatible with his love. Do you want the love of God to be perfected in you? Well, don't pursue emotionalism. That's not what this is describing.

Remember the children singing in the safety of the fenced island. Delight in keeping his commandments that you might lovingly sing his praise. Know the words of the advocate that you were called to keep. The one who speaks good commands is the same one who speaks in your defense.

Know that you know him by keeping his word. John goes further, though. He doesn't just want you to know that you know him. He wants you to know that you are in him. Point three, know that you are in him. Know that you are in him. Verse five continues, 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 him.

These two words are incredibly important and we need to understand them well, what they refer to. In him is the doctrine of union with Christ. It's an idea seen all across the New Testament. It's this idea that all the blessings of God are given to all the people of God in and through Jesus Christ as they are united to him in faith. John Murray says that union with Christ underlies every single aspect of redemption. The simplest way I know how to say it is this.

Union with Christ means that what is true of Him becomes true of you by grace through faith. What's true of Him becomes true of you by grace through faith. Which means that He died, so you die with Him. He rose, so you're raised with Him. He's the Son. So you're adopted, he's the righteous one, and you're counted righteous in him.

So to know that you are in Christ, united to him is first knowledge of position, yes, but it's not just that, it's not just position. To know our union with Christ is also to have confidence in our experiential access to all of the blessings of God bestowed to his children. Think of passages like Ephesians 1, where Paul seems like he can barely catch his breath explaining all of these blessings in Christ. He says every spiritual blessing that in Christ we're chosen, in Him we're adopted, in Him we're redeemed by His blood, forgiven, given an inheritance, sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, and every one of them is in Him. Do you want to know that these blessings are yours? Do you want to know that you are in Christ? 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." So are you abiding in Christ? Walk in the same way that Jesus walked. Walk language again calls us back to chapter one, walking in the light or walking in the darkness, these two ways Christ walked definitely, perfectly in obedience to the Word, but there's more to it than that. Christ is in the light.

He was proclaiming what was true, loving with a love that surpasses all other loves. Ultimately, it was love because Christ walked into the garden. It was love that walked willingly into the hands of his persecutors who reviled him, beat him, tortured him. It was the love of Christ that walked to Calvary with the weight of his own cross on his shoulders, where he would bleed and die, enduring the judgment of God, propitiation. His body was carried to the tomb. Three days later, it was in love that he walked out. Alive. Darkness defeated by the righteous light of the world. Because Christ walked to the cross, if you are in him, you never will.

Praise God. And yet the strange tension in the Christian life is that even though we can be 100% certain that judicially we will not walk the road to the cross that we deserve, the Apostle Paul says in Romans 6, we know that our old self was crucified with him. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. So if you desire confidence in your union with Christ, walk as Christ walked. Not to get in the door, but because you are in. Sharing in his death, the death of your old sinful self, that you might also share in his life.

Walking in the footsteps of Christ means considering yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. If you are in Christ, you are dead to sin. But do you believe that to be true? Do you walk as if it's true? That means continually putting sin to death in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit and consider yourself alive.

Walk, walk in the joyful new life that Christ has won for you. What a glorious freedom it is to be able to live a life of walking in the way that Christ walked, to be able to live free from the shackles of sin, to be able to walk in the light of day rather than in the crushing darkness of the night. Walk in the same way that Christ walked. And it's not a guarantee of a life apart from suffering or sadness, but it's certainly a journey where not one second of that pain is wasted for your good, for your holiness. Some of you are here this morning, and if you tried to walk as Christ walked, just as you are right now, it would be fruitless. it would be an impossibly heavy weight to bear.

And how could it be anything other than that? When you lack the power and the strength necessary at hand, you don't yet know Him. Friends, apart from the propitiating work of Christ, you should hear these proofs of whether you know Him and are in Him. And for some of you, you fail those tests right now. And no amount of your own effort is going to change that.

But praise God. He offers grace. That free, propitiating grace of Jesus Christ is yours today if you would just turn from your life of slavery to sin and believe in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you. If you hear his voice today, if you hear him calling, believe in him, know him, walk with him. So I'll ask again, if you were to die today, how certain are you on a scale of one to 10 that you would go to heaven? Today, you are invited into certainty as your answer. 10 out of 10, 100%. because it does not depend on you, but on the grace of Christ the righteous.

Know your advocate. Would you pray with me? Christ, our righteous advocate, we praise you. We pray that you would give us grace to know you, to know that we know you and to know that we are in you. Lord, for any here that does not yet know you, I pray that today would be the day that they would hear your voice and believe. In Jesus' name, amen.