1 John 2:1

OUR ADVOCATE

‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’

1 John 2:1

In the great Arbitration between God and man, Jesus, being God, lays His hand on God, and Jesus, being Man, lays His hand on every believing man, and brings them together in peace.

I. Christ is an authoritative Advocate.—‘All power,’ He said, ‘is given unto Me in heaven and in earth’ (St. Matthew 28:18). You notice the four ‘alls’—‘all power,’ ‘all nations,’ ‘all things,’ ‘all the days.’ But the first ‘all’ is the most important; without that the other three would be useless.

II. Christ is a never-ceasing Advocate.—‘He ever liveth to make intercession’ (Hebrews 7:25). I very much admire those lines in the Christian Year—

What, fallen again? Yet cheerful rise,

Thine Intercessor never dies.

III. Christ is a compassionate Advocate.—Christ’s was Divine compassion, Christ’s was Divine pity. Christ is more pitiful and more compassionate even than His Blessed Mother, because the pity and compassion of God are greater than the pity and compassion of man.

IV. Christ is a successful Advocate.—The greatest of human advocates have been unsuccessful and lost their cases, but Christ never. Ask from one end of heaven to the other and you will find that He has never failed. The Great Advocate has ‘gone before’ to plead for and to prepare for His people.

—Rev. F. Harper.