THE USE AND APPLICATION
Use Eighth. But what is all this to you that is not concerned with this privilege? The children, indeed, have the advantage of an advocate; but what is this to them that have none to plead their cause? (Jer 30:12, 13); they are, as we say, left to the wide world, or to be ground to powder between the justice of God and the sins which they have committed. This is the man that none but the devil seeks after; that is pursued by the law, sin, and death, and has none to plead his cause. It is sad to consider the plight that such a person is in. His accuser is appointed, yea, ordered to bring in a charge against him: Let Satan stand at his right hand," in the place where accusers stand. "And when he shall be judged, let him be condemned." Let there be none to plead for his deliverance. If he cries or offers to cry out for mercy or forgiveness, "let his prayer become sin" (Psa 109:6-7). This is the portion of a wicked man: "Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealthy him away in the night, the east wind carried him away, and he departed, and as a storm hurled him out of his place, for God shall cast upon him and not spare; he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him and shall hiss him out of his place" (Job 27:20–23). And what shall this man do?
Can he overcome the charge, the accusation, the sentence, and condemnation? No, he has none to plead his cause. I remember that somewhere I have read, as I think, concerning one who, when he was being carried upon men's shoulders to the grave, cried out as he lay upon the bed. I am accused before the just judgment of God, and a while later, I am condemned before the just judgment of God. Nor was this man as strict as the religion that was then on foot in the world, but all the religion of the world amounts to no more than nothing. I mean as to eternal salvation if men be denied an Advocate to plead their cause with God. Nor can any advocate save Jesus Christ the righteous avail anything at all, because there is none appointed but him to that work, and therefore not to be admitted entering a plea for their client at the bar of God.
Objection. But some may say, There is God's grace, the promise,
Christ's blood and his second part of the priesthood are now in heaven.
Can none of these severally, nor all of them jointly, save a man
from hell, unless Christ also becomes our Advocate?
Answer. All these, his Advocate's office not excluded, are few enough, and little enough, to save the saints from hell; for the righteous shall scarcely be saved (I Peter 4:18). There must, then, be the promise, God's grace, Christ's blood, and him to advocate too, or we cannot be saved. What is the promise without God's grace, and what is that grace without a promise to bestow it on us? I say, what benefit have we thereby? Besides, if the promise and God's grace, without Christ's blood, would have saved us, wherefore then did Christ die? Yea, and again I say, if all these, without his being an Advocate, would have delivered us from all those disadvantages that our sins and infirmities would bring us to and into; surely in vain and to no purpose was Jesus made an Advocate. But, soul, there is need of all, and therefore be not thou offended that the Lord Jesus is of the Father made so much to his, but rather admire and wonder that the Father and the Son should be so concerned with so sorry a lump of dust and ashes as thou art. And I say again, be confounded to think that sin should be a thing so horrible, of power to pollute, to captivate, and detain us from God, that without all this ado (I would speak with reverence of God and his wisdom) we cannot be delivered from the everlasting destruction that it hath brought upon the children of men.
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