Works of John Bunyan – The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof; The Persons Interested In The Intercession Of Christ 197.

 

5. As Christ, as Advocate, plead for us, against Satan, his Father’s interest in us, and his own, and plead also what right he has to dispose of the kingdom of heaven; so he pleaded against this enemy, that malice and enmity that is in him, and upon which chiefly his charge against us is grounded, to the confusion of his face. This is evident from the title that our Advocate bestows upon him, while he pleads for us against him: “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan, O enemy,” saith he, for Satan is an enemy, and this name given him signifies so much. And lawyers, in their pleas, can make a great matter of such a circumstance as this, saying, My Lord, we can prove that what is now pleaded against the prisoner at the bar is of mere malice and hatred, that has also a long time lain burning and raging in his enemy’s breast against him. I say this will greatly weaken an enemy’s plea and accusation. But, says Jesus Christ, “Father, here is a plea brought in against my Joshua that clothes him with filthy garments, but it is brought in against him by an enemy, by an enemy in the superlative or highest degree. 

One that hates goodness worse than he, and that loveth wickedness more than the man against whom at this time he has brought such a heinous charge.” Then, leaving with the Father the value of his blood for the accused, he turned him to the accuser and pleaded against him as an enemy: “O Satan, thou that accuses my spouse, my love, my members, art Satan, an enemy.” But it will be argued that the things charged are true. Grant it, yet what law takes notice of the plea of one who professedly acts as an enemy? because it is not done out of love for truth, justice, and righteousness, nor intended for the honor of the king, nor for the good of the prosecuted, but to gratify malice and rage, and merely to kill and destroy. There is, therefore, a great deal of force and strength in an Advocate’s pleading of such a circumstance against an accuser, especially when the crimes now charged are those and only those for which the law, in the due execution of it, has been satisfied before; therefore, a lawyer now has double and treble ground or matter to plead for his client against his enemy. And this advantage against him comes from Jesus Christ.

Besides, it is well known that Satan, as to us, is the original cause of those very crimes for which he accuses us at the bar of God’s tribunal. Not to say anything about how he comes to us, solicits us, tempts us, flatters us, and always, in a manner, lies at us to do those wicked things for which he so hotly pursues us to the bar of the judgment of God. For though it is not meet for us thus to plead—to wit, laying that fault upon Satan, but rather upon ourselves—yet our advocate will do it and make work of it before God. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fails not” (Luke 22:31–32). He maketh here mention of Satan’s desires, by way of advantage against him, and, doubtless, so he did in his prayer with God for Peter’s preservation. And what he did here, while on earth, as a Saviour in general, that he doth now in heaven as a Priest and an Advocate in particular.