Christ is Our Advocate

Christ is Our Advocate.

1John 2:1,2

          In the beginning of this book we learned that God is Light and in Him there is no Darkness.  We learned to walk in the light not claim to be in the light.  Also, we learned that we still must fight the battle over sin in our lives.  The Apostle John opens the chapter by saying, “My little Children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;”. 1John 2:1  As you can see one of the purposes of this letter is that we may not sin.  Sin is a battle we will fight for all our earthly life.  Walking in the light will lead us to confess our sins when they come up and will also help keep us from sin.  It has been said, “we are who we are around,” so if we are walking in the light we are going to be around others who walk in the light, and most importantly we will be in the light of Jesus.

          Yet, it also says, “if anyone sins.”  I as a human being would like it to say when you sin.  It’s easy to think that way because we all like to have the excuse for our sins.  The old saying of nobody’s perfect.  Yet, here John is trying to keep us focused on walking in the light which will protect us from sin.  We will have trouble with sin but it’s better to have a positive focus on it then negative.  Negative energy does cause us to be brought down and John is trying to build us up here.

          The New International Version of the bible does a good job of defining what an advocate is: “we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense.”  When a person commits a crime, or breaks a law they often hire an attorney to plead their case before a judge.  The Father, here in this scripture, is the LORD.  The LORD is a righteous and holy judge.  Jesus, when we sin, speaks to the Father for us. He makes our defense.  To top this off Jesus is righteous too, like the Father.  What an amazing thought we are defended by someone who is righteous just like The Father is Righteous.

          Verse two says that “He Himself”, that is Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins.  Propitiation is the act of gaining ones’ favor.  Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  He paid the price for our sins to gain us favor with God.  He is our advocate and the payment for our sins.  This was done through His love for us that lead Him to the cross.  Ask yourself what does your sin look like to God?  When you see it how the Lord sees it you will understand better the Love of Christ.  This will also move you to walk in the light.  Even to do your part to not sin.  How much do you love Jesus?

Thomas Carter February 19, 2017

Be Like Christ.

Be Like Christ

The Scripture in Philippians says; “Do nothing from selfishness and empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourself; do not merely look at your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Phil. 2:2-3 (NASB)  What is selfishness? Merriam-Webster says its: “concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself :  seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others; and arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others.” (Mirriam-Webster.com)  As I look at this definition one thing is repeated and that is “without or disregard of others.”  We are told not to be selfish which at times can be a hard thing to do.  Today we live in a very self-serving world and let us look at selfishness and what we can do about it.

The greatest commandment in scripture is: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:3-40 (NASB)  When you look at just the ten commandments you will see that the first five deal with loving God.  The Second five are all about loving others.  Maybe, that is why we want to remove the ten commandments from public view so we are not reminded to love others.  If you didn’t follow them you could disobey parents, murder, committee adultery, basically do what every you wanted.  Yet would that be paradise?  When we obey those commandments, we show true love for others and the impact can be great.  When you obey parents, it goes well with you.  When you cheat on your spouse it leads to pain far greater than just your spouse. Love is an amazing thing and can change the whole course of one’s life.

Some might say it would be so awesome to just do what I want.  To live this life, and have a complete disregard to how what you do would affect others.  Take what you want do what you want causes pain that maybe you won’t feel until those actions are taken against you.  The golden rule is what it is because it has truth to it.  To do unto others as you would have don unto you, is to live a life above self.  We might think this is only for children but it’s a truth for all of us.  A life lived in love and above the line will also, in most cases, protect you from being known as a hypocrite. Many Christians who don’t live by the golden rule are known to be this because they say one thing and their actions show the opposite. Then to make matters worse they get mad when they aren’t treated the way they should have been treating others.

Paul in this passage also talks about conceit. Which has its roots in pride and strong opinion about one’s self. It walks hand in hand with being selfish.  The world teaches to look to self and take care of self as number one yet most don’t like it when they are around a conceited person.  There are somethings that we might do exceptionally well at, which we all want to boast about.  We can cross that line to conceit when we forget others.  Even worse is when that conceit is empty, meaning we aren’t as good as we thing we are.  Those people really will drive us nuts because we can see their faults. We need to check our self, because humility is something we all could spend more time on.  We are truly small when compared to the greatness and might of the Lord.

Sometimes people can be hard to love or even seem to not be as great as we think we are.  It is hard at times but we most view them the way Christ does.  We need to love them and look out for them.  That is for all people the easy to love and the hard to love.  Ask yourself, what a world would look like if we each lived according to Phil. 2:2-3?

Thomas Carter Feb. 1, 2017

Works Cited

Mirriam-Webster.com. n.d. 31 January 2017.

"NASB." New Amercan Standard Bible. Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA, 1995.