(b.) As they are called his spouse, so they are called his flesh and members of his body. Now, said Paul to the church, “Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (I Cor 12:27; Eph 5:30). This relationship also makes a man plead hard. If a man were to plead for a limb or a member of his own, how would he plead? What arguments would he use? And what sympathy and feelings would his arguments flow from? I cannot lose a hand, I cannot lose a foot, I cannot lose a finger; why, saints are Christ’s members; his members are of himself. With what strength of argument would a man plead the necessaries of his members to him and the unnaturalness of his adversary in seeking the destruction of his members and the deformity of his body? Yea, a man would shuck and cringe and weep and entreat and make demurs, halts, and delays for a thousand years, if possible, before he would lose his members or any one of them.
But, I say, how would he plead and advocate it for his members if judge, law, reason, and equity were all on his side, and if, by the adversary, there could be nothing urged but that against which the Advocate had long before made provision for the effectual overthrow thereof? And all this is true as to the case that lies before us. Thus we see what strength there is in this second argument that our Advocate brings for us against the enemy. They are his flesh and bones, his members; he cannot spare them; he cannot spare this, nor that, nor any, because they are his members. As such, they are lovely to him; as such, they are useful to him; as such, they are an ornament to him; yea, though in themselves they are feeble and, through infirmity, weak, much disabled from doing as they should. Thus, “If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” But,
4. As Christ, as Advocate, pleads for us against Satan, his Father’s interest in us and his own, so he pleaded against him that right and property that he hath in heaven, to give it to whom he will. He has a right to heaven as Priest and King; it is also his by inheritance; and since he will be so good a benefactor as to bestow this house on somebody, but not for their deserts, but not for their goodness, and since, again, he has to that end spilled his blood for, and taken a generation into covenant relation to him, that it might be bestowed on them; it shall be bestowed on them; and he will plead this if there be a need if his people sin, and if their accuser seeks, by their sin, their ruin and destruction: “Father,” saith he, “I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me” (John 17:24). Christ’s will is the will of heaven, the will of God. Shall not Christ, then, prevail?
“I will,” saith Christ; “I will,” saith Satan; but whose will shall stand? Christ in the text indeed speaks more like an arbitrator than an Advocate; more like a judge than one pleading at a bar. I will have it so; I judge that it ought to be and must be. But there is also something of plea in the words both before his Father and against our enemy, and therefore he speaks like one that can plead and determine also; yea, like one that has power so to do. But shall the will of heaven stoop to the will of hell? Or the will of Christ to the will of Satan? Or the will of righteousness to the will of sin? Shall Satan, who is God’s enemy, and whose charge wherewith he charged us for sin, and which is grounded, not upon love to righteousness, but upon malice against God’s designs of mercy, against the blood of Christ, and the salvation of his people-I say, shall this enemy and this charge prevail with God against the well-grounded plea of Christ, and against the salvation of God’s elect, and so keep us out of heaven? No, no; Christ will have it otherwise; he is the great donator, and his eye is good. True, Satan was turned out of heaven for that he sinned there, and we must be taken into heaven, though we have sinned here; this is the will of Christ, and, as Advocate, he pleads it against the face and accusation of our adversary. Thus, “If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” But,
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