"AND IF ANY MAN SIN, WE HAVE AN ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER, JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS."—-I JOHN 2:1.
Let me, therefore, for a conclusion as to this, give you an exhortation to believe, to hope, and to expect that though you have sinned, (for now I speak to the fallen saint), Jesus Christ will make a good end with the "Trust," I say, "in him, and he shall bring it to pass."I know I put thee upon a hard and difficult task for believing and expecting good, when my guilty conscience doth nothing but clog, burden, and terrify me with the justice of God, the greatness of thy sins, and the burning torments is hard and sweating work. But it must be; the text calls for it, thy case calls for it, and thou must do it if thou wouldst glorify Christ; and this is the way to hasten the issue of thy cause in hand, for believing daunts the devil, pleaseth Christ, and will help thee beforehand to sing that song of the church, saying, "O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life" (Lam 3:58). Yea, believe, and hear thy pleading Lord say to thee, "Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again" (Isa 51:22). I am not here discoursing of the sweetness of Christ's nature but of the excellency of his offices and of his office of advocateship in particular, which, as a lawyer for his client, he is to execute in the presence of God for us.
Love may be where there is no office, and so no power is to do us good; but now, when love and office shall meet, they will surely both combine in Christ to do the fallen Christian good. But of his love we have treated elsewhere; we will here discuss the office of this loving one. And for thy further information, let me tell thee that God thy Father counteth that thou wilt be when compared with his law, but a poor one all thy days; yea, the apostle tells thee so, in that he saith there is an Advocate provided for thee. When a father provides crutches for his child, he doth as good as say, I count that my child will be yet infirm; and when God shall provide an Advocate, he doth as good as say, My people are subject to infirmities. Do not, therefore, think of yourself above what, by plain texts and fair inferences drawn from Christ's offices, you are bound to think. What doth it bespeak concerning thee that Christ is always a priest in heaven, and there ever lives to make intercession for thee (Heb 7:24), but this, that thou art at the best in thyself, yea, and in thy best exercising of all thy graces too, but a poor, pitiful, sorry, sinful man; a man that would, when yet most holy, be certainly cast away, did not thy high priest take away for thee the iniquity of thy holy things? The age we live in is a wanton age; the godly are not as humble, low, and base in their own eyes as they should, though their daily experience calls for it, and the priesthood of Jesus Christ too.
But above all, the advocateship of Jesus Christ declares us to be sorry creatures, for that office does, as it were, predict that some time or other we shall basely fall and, by falling, be undone, if the Lord Jesus stands not up to plead. And as it shows this concerning us, so it shows concerning God that he will not lightly or easily lose his people. He has provided well for us—blood to wash us in; a priest to pray for us, that we may be made to persevere; and, in case we foully fall, an advocate to plead our cause and to recover us from under and out of all that danger, that by sin and Satan, we at any time may be brought into.
But having thus briefly passed through that in the text which I think the apostle must necessarily presuppose, I shall now endeavor to enter into the bowels of it and see what, in a more particular manner, shall be found therein. And, for my more profitable doing of this work, I shall choose to observe this method in my discourse
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