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A great deal of what could be said with the following passage was said last week, so I won’t repeat myself, but there is still plenty of wonderful truth in these words.

‘My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.’ (1 John 2:1-6)

Little children

I love this phrase, and it’s one which is used by Jesus, Paul, and liberally by John, we will see it again soon. It’s important to acknowledge that John is using it here, because it frames the passage well. This letter is not written to a friend, it’s written to John’s ‘little children’, just as Paul writes to the Galatians (see Galatians 4:19). The recipients of this letter are intended to see John as a father figure, and this shouldn’t be overlooked!

It’s very easy to apply our understanding of the world to Christianity, but that’s the wrong way round. Jesus’ Kingdom is topsy-turvy! When we’re at work we submit to our bosses and have to do what they tell us. Those who we must submit to the most (the owners of the company) are often those who don’t even know us – this is not the Christian way. As Christians we submit to our leaders because we choose to. And the one we submit to the most (God) has a more intimate relationship with us than anyone else. So, the first lesson from this passage is: Leaders (and we’re all leaders really), treat those who follow you as you would your own little children, not as members of a team at work. Followers (and we’re all followers really), treat your leaders as you would your own loving fathers, and not as boss.

Jesus Christ: advocate

This topsy-turvy Kingdom is made possible thanks to Jesus Christ, our advocate. Now the word advocate means ‘to speak, plead, or argue in favour of another’, and should conjure up images of a lawyer arguing a case on behalf of a client. The difference, of course, is that Jesus Christ presents this case before the Father (change this for your name): ‘Sam is free to go, because his debt has been fully paid. Sam is righteous!’ Jesus is the best advocate ever! Not only does he represent us before the judge, he presents his own work as his defence. I’m not sure I’m ever grateful enough for what Jesus does on my behalf.

Jesus Christ: propitiation

And this word is the reason why we must be grateful. To propitiate means to appease someone’s anger. It’s become Christian jargon recently to say that you are ‘saved’, but that word used on its own doesn’t make much sense – what are Christians ‘saved’ from? The answer to that question is that we are saved from the wrath of God against our sin, through eternal conscious punishment in hell. John doesn’t use this word lightly, he means to use it to impress upon us the weight of what Jesus did on the cross.

As Jesus died on the cross, he experienced the full divine wrath of God in our place – this is what is meant by the theological phrase of penal substitutionary atonement. Even when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, the ‘cup’ he saw and asked for deliverance from (see Luke 22:42) is a direct reference to the well-recognised Old Testament picture of the cup of Yahweh’s wrath: ‘Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending’ (Jeremiah 25:15-16). This picture is confirmed in Revelation: ‘anyone [who] worships the beast…will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night’ (Revelation 14:9-11).

Do you see what Christ has taken for us? It’s too easy to surround Christianity with sunbeams and cuddles but the truth is horrific – we were ‘by nature children of wrath’ (Ephesians 2:3)! Jesus Christ took upon himself the punishment we deserve. ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10). Amen.

"Bible verse and quote" from Jan Couns

Bible and Quote - March 11-15