The Advocate
The Advocate
1 John 1:5-2:2
I inherited a bit of an adventurous streak from my father. We were moving from Eastern Oregon to Ashland and had to make a couple of trips. On the trip back to Baker County, driving a U-Haul truck, my dad saw a dirt road take off from Highway 97 somewhere south of Bend. As has often happened, he said, “I wonder where that goes.” So we turned off the highway onto the dirt road to see where it went. Now, if you’ve ever driven those kinds of roads, you know they can lead to all sorts of disasters. Shortly before Marsha and I were married, we took a day-trip to the coast. Driving down Highway 101, I saw a road that I thought might lead down to the beach. Marsha remembers this one! I turned to see where the road went. About a hundred yards from the highway, that narrow dirt road ended at a steep cliff. While she panicked, I managed to do about a 12-point turn so I could drive forward out of our predicament. We have road maps for a reason. And I don’t do that much anymore. We stick to the good roads, the well-lit streets, and we follow the map – that is, if we hope to arrive at our destination in one piece.
John provides us a road map. And it begins here: God is light: in him is no darkness at all. Isaiah 35 is a prophecy of the day of the Messiah. We’ve sung a song from verse 10 - “ the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” But that’s the end of the chapter. The redeemed return on a highway, Isaiah says, a holy highway (v 8) upon which only the redeemed of the Lord may travel (v 9). Isaiah 30, a bit earlier, is a warning to wandering Israel. They keep straying from the marked-out path. Through the prophet, God warns them against straying from that path: Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it” (Isa 30:21). Pay attention to the map. It gives directions so you won’t get lost. Twice, Proverbs warns, There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death (Pro 14:12, 16:25). I could have used that warning on some of the roads I took.
If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. I had to go to the hospital for a test and as I was checking in another lady came up to the counter asking for a certain office. What she wanted was at Vancouver Clinic, across the street, but she had followed her GPS and it led her here. I commented to the clerk that a man in Arizona followed his GPS 20 miles out into the desert where he got stranded. A man in Oregon followed his GPS into the mountains where he got snowed in. He left to get help and died while his family in the car were rescued. GPS is not necessarily reliable. Marsha’s aunt lives in a cul-de-sac where the GPS shows the road going through. We can claim we’re following directions, but we get our directions from an unreliable source, or a wrong source, or a source that deliberately leads us astray. That’s why we have a map.
But John’s point is that there are many people claiming to follow Christ, claiming to walk in the light, who are actually walking in the darkness, and walking at a distance from Christ. You and I both know people who want to claim to be Christians while walking their own way, doing their own thing. There are people who think God simply calls us to be good, and if we are good, that’s all that’s required. There are people who want an emasculated Jesus, a soft and sweet Jesus, who will not only let them live as they wish but will even approve their sin. They will purr that “Jesus just loves everybody” and so should you. It’s truth that Jesus loves everybody, but Jesus’ love does not approve sin. Jesus’ love is a quite intolerant love. It is a love that demands change. It is a love that sets a standard. It is a love that does not tolerate demons, but casts them out. It is a love that does not tolerate evil. In the gospel, John wrote, This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ... [they] will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed (Jn 3:19-20). If you are walking in darkness, you are not walking in light. If you are walking in darkness, regardless of what you call yourself, you are not walking in fellowship with Christ. God is light: there is not darkness at all in him – not even shadows.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. Now I want to note that “fellowship with one another” is not about us. If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with him. John is not talking about the church being together, but about the church being united with Christ. The “one another” here is us and Jesus, not you and me.
Before I go on, I want you to notice that John uses a particular word twice. This is really important, so pay close attention. The Greek word is kaqarivzw (katharidzo), which means to cleanse or to purify. It’s what happens when you wash your hands after working in the garden. It’s what happens when you clothing is dirty and you put it in the laundry. It means “to get the dirt out.” It does not mean “make the dirt look pretty,” or “make the dirt acceptable,” or “forgive my appearance.” When you wash your clothing you don’t want the dirt to look pretty or to look acceptable; you want the dirt out, gone.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we walk in the Light of Christ, and are in fellowship with Christ, his blood, the blood Jesus shed on the cross, purifies us – from all sin.
Skip a verse - we’ll come back to it. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins AND purify us from all unrighteousness. The impact of this verse is too much for one message, but bear with me. The work of Christ is not just to forgive us, but also to cleanse us, to purify us. The point I was making in regard to our clothing a moment ago applies to our relationship with Christ. He does not simply “accept” our sin. He does not make our sin look pretty. He does not forgive our appearance. The work of the cross is to get the dirt out. The work of the cross is to destroy our sin – all of it – to make us clean before our Maker. We have sung the song, “I am covered by the blood, I am covered by the blood, my sins are all covered by the blood.” No, our sins are not covered, they are washed away. God does not cover our sin. God does not look at us through tinted glasses so that he cannot see our sin. He purifies us from all sin. He gets the dirt out.
Some people want to believe in a sinning Christianity – that so long as they “believe in Jesus” they can pretty much do as they please. They don’t seek holiness; they just want to be “good enough” to make it to heaven. As you read the Bible, it won’t take you long, however, before you discover that God doesn’t accept “good enough.” Sin and holiness cannot coexist anymore than light and darkness. Light drives out darkness. Holiness drives out sin. And John will have nothing to do with a sinning religion.
Now the problem is that we want to try to redefine sin. I read recently that Los Angeles has completely solved their homeless problem. Amazing. But it’s just a vocabulary trick – they renamed the homeless as “unhoused.” Voila, no more “homeless.” We try the same trick with sin. We call it “an unfortunate choice,” or a “mistake,” or some other such word. Or we find ways to excuse it. He had a “bad home life,” or “fell in with the wrong crowd,” or, lately, “he came from a different culture.” Listen to John (and we’ll pick up the verse we skipped) –
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (v 8). And if we claim we have not sinned, we make him (God) out to be a liar and his word is not in us (v 10). The reason for the flood was – The LORD saw how great the wickedness of mankind had become ... and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time (Gen 6:5). The Psalmist responds, All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one (Ps 14:3). We live in a fallen world, corrupted by sin, and we are constantly influenced to sin. It is easy to sin. We join in the corruption of the world. We know it’s true, and we know that God has seen it and judged it. If you think you have never sinned, think again. And if you think you can be a Christian and continue in sin, you’ll have a problem with John.
But, see, that’s precisely why Jesus came. Jesus shed his blood on the cross to be an atonement, a corrective, for sin. I heard someone once say that just one drop of Jesus blood is enough to forgive all our sin. If that were true, Jesus would not have needed to die – just prick his finger, squeeze out a drop of blood, and the whole thing is done. No. It cannot be. It was not Jesus’ blood, but Jesus’ death that brings us salvation. It was not his blood that was the atonement, but his life. Without his death there would be no resurrection, and it is the resurrection that gives eternal value to Jesus’ death.
Do holy people sin? They can, certainly. Sanctification does not remove our ability to sin, does not remove our ability to choose, does not remove our humanity. We are human, living in a corrupted world, and the corrupt influence has not changed. But God gives us something new – the power, the ability to say no to sin. Some people say that we “sin every day in thought, word, and deed.” When a man said that to me, I asked him why? Why do we continue to sin when we have the choice and the power to not sin? Why do we continue to sin when we know how God feels about it? And, why, when we do sin, do we somehow think it is okay to sin and excusable because we “have faith”?
John recognizes that we live in a corrupt world and that we still have the ability to sin. He recognizes that we are sometimes taken by temptation and feel overwhelmed by it. But look how he responds: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. Exercise your will. John says, I don’t want you to sin. I want you to follow Christ in holiness. I want you to respond in love and obedience to the command of Christ. It is a loving concern, as a father to his child. I want you to be better. I want you to be the best you can be. But I know that things happen.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. John applies the same description to Jesus that Jesus applied to the Holy Spirit – one who comes alongside, one who is called to our defense – an advocate. The Holy Spirit to John is the Spirit of Jesus. Though physically absent from us, Jesus is still present with us by his Holy Spirit. And his work in us is to be our Christian conscience, alerting us to our sin and showing us the path back to forgiveness and holiness. I don’t want you to sin, but if you do, there is a way home. I don’t want you to sin, but if you do, Jesus is waiting with his arms open, just like the prodigal Father.
If anyone does sin ... If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Because he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. Marsha and I were shopping a couple weeks ago and saw an ambulance with a Biblical symbol on it. Not many people know it’s a Biblical symbol. It’s called the rod of Asclepius. - the serpent on the pole, supposedly an ancient Greek symbol representing the god of healing. But where do we find it? Numbers 21, where people complained against God, resulting in God sending a plague of poisonous snakes among them. Moses was instructed to put a bronze snake on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived (Nu 21:9). And Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (Jn 3:14-15). John responded, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life (Jn 3:16).
My dear children, I write this so that you will not sin, but if anyone does sin God has provided for us an atoning sacrifice, a way back home, and a place of forgiveness and cleansing. There is a place of peace. There is a place of hope. I don’t want you to sin, but if you do, God has provided a remedy. Jesus Christ the Righteous One is our atoning sacrifice for all our sin. Look to Jesus.