OBJECTIONS REMOVED.
SIXTHLY, I now come to answer some objections.
First Objection. But what need all these offices of Jesus Christ? or, what need you trouble us with these nice distinctions? It is enough for us to believe in Christ in general, without considering him under this and that office.
Answer. The wisdom of God is not to be charged with needless doing when it giveth to Jesus Christ such variety of offices, and calleth him to so many sundry employments for us; they are all thought necessary by heaven, and therefore should not be counted superfluous by earth. And to put a question upon thy objection-What is a sacrifice without a priest, and what is a priest without a sacrifice? And the same I say of his Advocate's office is an advocate without the exercise of his office? And what need of an Advocate's office to be exercised, if Christ, as sacrifice and Priest, was thought sufficient by God?
Each of these offices is sufficient for perfecting the work for which it is designed, but they are not all designed for the same particular thing. Christ as sacrifice offereth not himself; it is Christ as Priest does that. Christ as Priest does not do for our sins; it is Christ as sacrifice who does so. Again, Christ as a sacrifice and a Priest limits himself to those two employs, but as an Advocate he launches out into a third. And since these are not confounded in heaven, nor by the Scriptures, they should not be confounded in our apprehension, nor accounted useless.
It is not, therefore, enough for us that we exercise our thoughts upon Christ in an indistinct and general way, but we must learn to know him in all his offices and to know the nature of his offices also; our condition requires this, it requireth it, I say, as we are guilty of sin, as we have to do with God, and with our enemy the devil. As we are guilty of sin, so we need a sacrifice; and as we are also sinners, we need one perfect to present our sacrifice to God for us. We have need also need him as a priest to present our persons and services to God. And since God is just, and upon the judgment seat, and since also we are subject to sin grievously, and again, since we have an accuser who will by law plead at this bar of God our sins against us, to the end we might be condemned, we need, and also "have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."
Alas! How many of God's precious people, for want of a distinct knowledge of Christ in all his offices, are to this day sadly baffled by the sophistication of the devil? For instance, no more than this one thing, they have committed some heinous sin after receiving light. How are they, I say, tossed and tumbled and distressed with many perplexities? They cannot come to any anchor in this their troubled sea; they go from promise to promise, from providence to providence, from this to that office of Jesus Christ, but forget that he is, or else understand not what it is for this Lord Jesus to be an Advocate for them.
Hence they so often sink under the fear that their sin is unpardonable and that therefore their condition is desperate, whereas if they could but consider that Christ is their Advocate, and that he is therefore made an Advocate to save them from those high transgressions that are committed by them, and that he waits upon this office continually before the judgment-seat of God, they would conceive relief, and be made to hold up their head, and would more strongly twist themselves from under that guilt and burden, those ropes and cords wherewith by their folly they have so strongly bound themselves, than commonly they have done, or do.
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