Our Advocate, Jesus Christ
Some nights, our conscience needs no help assembling its case. Words we cannot take back, sins we thought were buried, and promises to change that we have broken return with unwelcome clarity. We lie awake rehearsing explanations that sound less convincing each time, until we scarcely know whether we are defending ourselves or adding to the charges.
At such moments, we need more than reassurance that things are not as bad as they seem. We need an Advocate who knows the whole story, including the parts we would rather forget, and whose willingness to stand for us rests on something firmer than our innocence.
An Advocate for the Guilty
John writes, “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
Notice when we need this Advocate: not after proving our innocence, but when we have sinned. John has just urged his readers not to sin; he does not want us to make peace with our disobedience. Yet he knows that believers still stumble. And so, before we can despair over our failure, he directs our eyes to Christ.
What comfort there is in those little words, “we have an advocate.” Not merely that an Advocate exists, or that we might persuade him to take our case, but that he is already ours. Even when we have sinned, we are not left to face our guilt alone. John immediately identifies this Advocate as “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2), showing that His advocacy rests on a sacrifice that satisfies divine justice.
Scripture gives us a striking picture of this in Zechariah’s vision of Joshua the high priest. Joshua stands clothed in filthy garments, with Satan at his right hand to accuse him (Zechariah 3:1–5). His garments speak for themselves. He has no righteousness of his own to offer. Yet the Lord rebukes the accuser and commands that his filthy garments be removed. Joshua does not talk himself clean; grace cleanses him.
Jesus pleads his own satisfaction and obedience on our behalf, the very ground on which à Brakel explains that condemnation cannot stand (The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:550–51). Our hope, then, is not that the Judge will overlook the evidence, but that our Advocate has answered it. Nor must we imagine a reluctant Father being persuaded by a merciful Son. It is the Father himself who has given us this Advocate. The One before whom Christ stands is the very One who loved us and sent Him.
More Than a Sympathetic Friend
Wilhelmus à Brakel calls Christ our Surety because he takes responsibility for the sinner’s obligation: “He bears the punishment due upon sin, and fulfills the law” (The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:483). He is not merely a lawyer arguing our case. He has himself met the demands that stood against us.
This is what makes Christ unlike every earthly advocate. He does not simply speak on behalf of the guilty. He has stood in their place. He has borne their judgment. The righteousness he pleads is his own, and it is counted as ours through faith.
And His priestly ministry did not end when he rose from the dead. Hebrews declares that he saves “to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
À Brakel therefore joins Christ’s sacrifice and intercession. The One who offered himself for his people now appears before the Father as their Surety. His intercession is not another sacrifice, nor an attempt to repair an inadequate cross. Rather, it rests upon his once-for-all offering, whose saving efficacy never diminishes.
The hands that were pierced have not abandoned our cause. We do not have a dead benefactor whose kindness we remember, but a living High Priest upon whom we may depend.
And because he lives forever, his care for us does not falter. We may grow weary of our struggles against sin. We may wonder how we could have fallen yet again. But our hope rests not on the strength of our grip upon Christ, but on the unchanging faithfulness of the Christ who holds us fast.
When the Accusation Follows Us Home
Satan cannot overturn God’s justifying verdict; Revelation celebrates the accuser’s defeat through the blood of the Lamb. Yet an accusation that cannot condemn us before God may still terrify our conscience. Here is the danger: we begin to treat our sins as reasons to avoid the very Savior who answers for them.
The accusations can sound painfully familiar:
“You have done it again. After all your promises to change, after all those prayers for help. Surely you cannot go to him now. He is too holy to understand someone like you. Wait until you have something better to bring.”
Perhaps you know something of this struggle. You have confessed the same sin before, and now you are ashamed to confess it again. You believe that Christ forgives sinners but struggle to believe that he will welcome you in your present condition. So, you withdraw. You pray less. You open your Bible with reluctance. You tell yourself that you will return when you have made some progress.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne recognized that temptation in himself:
“I feel, when I have sinned, an immediate reluctance to go to Christ. I am ashamed to go. I feel as if it would do no good to go, as if it were making Christ a minister of sin, to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe, and a thousand other excuses; but I am persuaded they are all lies, direct from hell.” (Memoir and Remains, 151)
Such reluctance can dress itself as reverence. We imagine that staying away honors Christ’s holiness, when it actually questions the sufficiency of his mercy.
Of course, there is a sorrow over sin that we ought to feel. The Christian should never become comfortable with what grieves the Lord. But genuine repentance draws us towards Christ, not away from him. The answer to our sin is neither to excuse it nor to hide it, but to bring it into the light of his mercy.
And what sort of Savior will we find when we come? Not one who is impatient with the weak, nor one who has forgotten what it is to suffer and be tempted. He has been tempted as we are, yet without sin, and therefore summons us to approach the throne of grace.
À Brakel assures the fearful that “the Lord Jesus is as compassionate now as He was then.” Heaven has not made him indifferent to those he came to save. Think of the tenderness of Christ in the Gospels. He welcomed those whom others despised. He touched the unclean. He received the tears of the brokenhearted. And à Brakel wants us to understand that his exaltation has not diminished that compassion. The Jesus who now reigns in glory is the same Jesus who showed such tenderness to sinners on earth.
À Brakel even anticipates the objection that Jesus cannot sympathize with grief over sin because he never sinned himself. His answer distinguishes committing sin from bearing its consequences: Christ “tasted, however, all the bitter fruits of sin in such a manner as if He Himself had committed them.” He knows the weight of what he came to remove.
We cannot say to Christ, “You do not know what sin has cost.” He knows its bitterness more deeply than we ever will, for he bore its judgment at Calvary. And having borne it, he does not turn away the believer who comes grieving over sin.
What tenderness there is in this truth! The Savior who knows our worst sins is the very Savior who invites us to draw near. We need not conceal our guilt from him. He already knows it and has made provision for it in his blood.
Make Use of Your High Priest
À Brakel’s practical direction is wonderfully plain: “One must first of all make use of Christ as High Priest in reference to both His sacrifice and His intercession.”
Do not merely admire the doctrine. Come confessing the sin you are tempted to conceal, asking for pardon and strength to forsake it. Perhaps the hardest thing is to believe that you may come immediately. That you need not spend several days in misery before you are permitted to pray again. That your tears, however fitting, do not purchase your forgiveness. That your renewed resolutions, however necessary, are not the ground of your acceptance. Christ himself is.
You do not honor your Advocate by attempting to represent yourself. You do not honor his sacrifice by waiting until you feel worthy of it.
So come to him with the sin you cannot excuse and the weakness you are ashamed to admit. Come not to make peace with your sin, but to find mercy and grace to fight it. Come through Christ to the Father who loves you.
When you sin, run to him who is your Satisfaction, your Surety, your Advocate.
