ADVOCACY

^[p. 382] ADVOCACY

1 John 2: 1, 2; Numbers 19: 1 - 22

Observe the contrast, beloved friends, between 1 John 1: 4 and 1 John 2: 1. “These things write we to you that your joy may be full”; “These things I write to you in order that you may not sin”. These are the two keys to the epistle. In chapter 1 he had been writing about the eternal life which was with the Father, and had been manifested to the apostles. There was that which they had heard, which they had seen with their eyes, which they had looked upon and which their hands had handled of the Word of life; and they have declared unto us that which they saw and heard that we may have fellowship with them. Surely no privilege could be more exalted, more supremely blessed than to have fellowship with the men who could say that their fellowship was with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Such a privilege must be fulness of joy for every one who enters into it.

But from verse 5 down to the end of the chapter are things which he writes to us that we may not sin, and in this section he does not speak of the Father but of God, and tells us that “this is the message which we have heard from him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. Sin can only be measured by God. I am quite sure that a great many believers have never weighed this great but simple fact. A well-known and widespread definition of sin is that it consists of a conscious violation of a known law. That definition leaves God out altogether. It measures sin by our knowledge or our conscience, so that if I am in the dark and do what is wrong without knowing it, it is not sin! You might as well say that black is white if a man is such a fool that he thinks it is.

Then we cannot measure sin by our consciences, for a man’s conscience may be so seared and defiled that he is positively not conscious when he does violate a known law.

^[p. 383] If we do not measure sin by God we have no proper thought of what sin is. It is my conviction that one of the greatest needs of the present time is a right thought of sin. The different ‘holiness’ movements of the present day are characterised by total ignorance of what sin really is. And I may say that the definition of sin which I have quoted would never have been invented by any man unless there was a desire to support an entirely unscriptural idea of holiness. If a man wishes to be able to say that he has not committed a sin for a year or a month or a week he must invent a definition of sin for himself that will meet his own ideas, but these ideas are darkness and not light, and the definition is in the face of it unholy and false.

How different the language and the reasoning of the apostle! It will not do for me to make my conscience or my knowledge the standard. Our minds and our consciences are often darkened so that we do not know right from wrong. As the hymn says,

‘Deeds of merit as we thought them, He will show us were but sin’.

Have you never been very well pleased with yourself for doing a certain thing, and perhaps afterwards you have discovered that vanity was the motive which was largely at work in connection with it? The most holy person on earth is often sensible of different motives working in the mind. Often we have to consider and balance our motives, and it is not always easy to find out the source of them. It would be blasphemous to suppose there was anything of that kind in God. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, our whole life is a lie. If a man says he has not committed a sin for six months, he is walking in darkness, and while professing to have fellowship with God his whole life is a lie. He is not near enough to the light to judge the darkness, and his professed holiness is a falsehood from ^[p. 384] end to end, because it amounts to saying that darkness is light. If a man does not judge the darkness that is in him, he is walking in it, and if he professes to be walking in fellowship with God his whole life is a falsehood.

Verse 7 is christianity pure and simple. We walk in the light and everything is exposed and judged by it, and this is the true basis of christian fellowship. It is not the fellowship of people who are deceiving themselves and others as to what the flesh is, but the fellowship of those who are walking in the full light of God and judging the darkness that is in them in that light, those who, through grace, have a common judgment of the flesh, and have no confidence in it.

But if there is the judgment of sin, there is the knowledge of that which removes it altogether in righteousness from before God. “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. This is very different from saying that we have no sin; indeed if we thus say, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Then the work of Christ has made it a matter of faithfulness and justice on the part of God to forgive sins when they are confessed, and in the confession we get such a judgment of them that we are practically cleansed from them. No one ever truly confesses sin to God until he abhors it.

Then finally, it is said, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us”. These are the solemn things which the apostle writes to us that we “may not sin”. Who could consider the solemn nature of these things and remain in a state of indifference to sin?

“And if any one sin, we have a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”. I do not know any scripture that is more solemn and suggestive than this as to the gravity of sin, nor any more calculated to give deep and gracious exercise to a godly soul. The smallest sin of my life demands the attention and consideration of divine Persons! Think of Jesus Christ and the Father having been together occupied this day about something in my life which has probably not ^[p. 385] as yet cost me a single thought! My sin needs to be taken into consideration by divine Persons; taken up in infinite grace, I need hardly say, for it is “with the Father”; but I do not think anyone could consider this without a deep effect being produced in the soul.

Then how blessed to know that while Jesus Christ is with the Father about my sin, it is as “the righteous”. Every movement of His on my behalf brings afresh before the Father the wonderful fact that He has been glorified to the full about sin. He is not, in this connection, ‘the merciful’ or ‘the gracious’, but “the righteous”. He can be with the Father about my sin as One who has maintained to the full the divine glory in reference to the very sin which He is concerned about. Hence the conference between divine Persons which my sin calls for is entirely with a view to my deliverance and restoration. It is not a criminal question which is raised. It is not one who appears in a court of justice to turn aside a just sentence from being executed. You may get a better idea of it if you think of a child who has got into debt and deeply disgraced and displeased his father by so doing. But one has paid all the debt, and the one who has paid it is now conferring with the father as to the terrible condition of the boy, and they are together considering how he may be exercised about his conduct and brought back to the right affections and behaviour of a child. The object which the advocacy has in view is to bring us to a divine judgment of the sin; that is, to bring us to confess it.

Confession is not such an easy and trifling matter as some people think. I do not believe there is any true confession until we go deeper than the wrong action, and recognise the act as the outcome of what we are. An unconverted man will acknowledge a wrong action, but I do not think an unconverted man every truly judges himself. He thinks he will be more careful in future, and do better another time; he has no true judgment of the root and source of the evil. In Psalm 51, David does not occupy himself so much about ^[p. 386] the wicked action as about the person who did the action.

He judged himself. The terrible fruit that had come out brought before David’s conscience what he was as a child of Adam. There cannot be true restoration or true confession, until we arrive at this. We have to learn and to own that we have been allowing the flesh — that we have been living after the flesh — and that the flesh can yield nothing but sin.

But in order to see how this is brought about, let us turn to Numbers 19, which illustrates very fully what may be called our side of this subject — the way in which the advocacy of Christ has its practical effect upon our souls. “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without blemish, wherein is no defect, and upon which never came yoke” (Numbers 19: 2). Unblemished perfection and absolute freedom from the yoke of sin were essential to the One who alone could bear the holy judgment of God upon sin. None could ever fill the requirements of divine judgment but the Holy One of God — His beloved Son.

Then we find in verse 3 that Eleazar the priest was to “bring it outside the camp, and one shall slaughter it before him”. The camp was a congregation of men in the flesh, and if God brought the judgment of sin into connection with such a people it could only bring death and judgment upon them. Hence the burning of the sin-offering is always “outside the camp” (see Hebrews 13: 11). If God is solemnly raising the question of sin He cannot recognise the camp or man in the flesh, except to bring death and judgment upon him.

Death and judgment must pass upon the man in whom sin is; that is, upon man in the flesh. Then the blood of the heifer was sprinkled before the tent of meeting seven times (verse 4), setting forth the deep, divine truth that it is only on the ground of death that God can have to do with man in grace, or that man can come to God.

Further, the heifer must be burned; “Its skin, and its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall he burn” (verse 5). All must ^[p. 387] go into the consuming fire of judgment. Think of the unmitigated judgment of that awful hour when the One who knew no sin was made sin for us, and all that God’s holiness must be against sin was expressed! It is beyond measure solemn for each one of us, for if we think of ourselves as children of Adam — men in the flesh — there is positively nothing in us but sin. Sin is woven into every thread and fibre of our being as men in the flesh, and God can only deal with sin in consuming judgment.

“And the priest shall take cedar-wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the burning of the heifer” (verse 6). The cedar is symbolical of man in his greatness and loftiness — it must go into the fire. If I had the most wonderful character, if I were great in moral excellence as Job or Saul of Tarsus, what is it in presence of the cross? Then there is the hyssop — symbolical of man in his littleness, in his vileness and wretchedness, or, if you like, of man in his most humble guise. Some people are proud of their humility, and always saying disparaging things of themselves. This is only a subtle form of self-occupation and self-righteousness. There is nothing in it for God; the hyssop goes into the fire as well as the cedar. I take the scarlet to be typical of everything in which man can glory. A man may glory in being tall or strong; he will make a scarlet robe for himself out of any bit of physical or mental ability that he possesses; but everything of that kind is under judgment with God; all the glory of man must go into the consuming fire. If you want this truth in the plain words of the New Testament you may find it in 2 Corinthians 5: 14, “One died for all, then all have died”. There is nothing more solemn than that. It is the divine judgment upon man in the flesh, with all his pretensions and voluntary humility and glory. Everything that is of man in the flesh finds its true place before God in the consuming fire of judgment.

In the light of the cross we come to a true estimate of what sin is. Not one particle of man in the flesh has escaped ^[p. 388] the judgment of God, and this conclusively proves that he is incapable of yielding anything for God. Every phase of his conduct and character only presents some aspect of sin.

There is not a movement for God in him — his whole condition is morally one of death, and in the death of Christ he is seen to be judicially dead before God. “All have died” is God’s sentence upon the race of Adam. Man in the flesh cannot yield a single thing for God; he is under death; and if we touch him or come within the circle of his influence we are defiled. If we sin, it is the outcome and activity of the flesh; that is, we come morally into contact with that which cannot yield anything for God but sin. We touch the dead man and are defiled. Observe that it is man under death who is the great source of uncleanness (see verses 11, 13, 14, 16).

If my body acts in virtue of its own life it will yield nothing but sin. Hence it is written, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness” (Romans 8: 10). The Holy Spirit is the only divine controlling power or source of life in the Christian.

The wonderful thing is that though the believer still has the same body as when he was “in the flesh”, the life that is connected with that body no longer controls it, but the Spirit of God. As to its own life, the body of the Christian is dead, and now it is moved by the Spirit of God. Of course, I speak of the Christian as such. If we sin, it is the activity of the flesh. We have allowed that to act which yields nothing but sin. To use the typical language of our chapter, we have come into contact with a dead man.

Just a word, at this point, about the “tent” (verse 14). I take the tent to be the sphere of man’s influence — in a word, the world. Man in the flesh has formed round himself a circle of things which takes its character from him. “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2: 16). That is the circle of things in which the dead ^[p. 389] man is found, and you cannot get into it without becoming unclean.

The world is a system of things perfectly according to man in the flesh, and all the elements of the world are in me as a man in the flesh. It is easy enough to get away from the outside world, but not so easy to keep entirely clear of the inside world. Indeed, there is only one way to keep clear of it, and that is by having our hearts filled with the divine affections proper to the children of God. Take the verses I referred to at the beginning. If you and I were in the fulness of joy that belongs to the divine fellowship into which we are privileged to enter, we should be entirely clear of the dead man and his tent. We should be basking in the sunshine of a brighter world, and in the enjoyment of the Father’s love.

May I add a practical word as to verse 15. “And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, shall be unclean”. As to our surroundings in the world we are passing through, everything is permeated by the influences and principles of man in the flesh, and if we are not careful to keep ourselves “covered” we shall soon find how quickly these influences will steal into our hearts and draw us away from the Father’s world and the Father’s love. I think the covering on the vessel is something like the girding of the loins. You cannot let your affections and thoughts be loose and free in a scene like this. You cannot leave yourself open to the influences that are about without quickly being rendered unclean.

“And a clean man shall gather the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the assembly of the children of Israel, for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin” (verse 9). The deep import and necessity of the use of this water of purification may be gathered from verse 20: “The man that is unclean, and doth not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from the midst of the congregation, for he hath defiled the ^[p. 390] sanctuary of Jehovah: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled on him: he is unclean”. If we allow the flesh without self-judgment we cannot go on with God — there is an end of our walk with Him. As I said before, there is no true confession without self-judgment, and this is not so easy and light a matter as some people seem to suppose. “He that toucheth a dead person, any dead body of a man, shall be unclean seven days” (verse 11). I have heard people say, after behaving very badly, in a jaunty way as if it was a very small thing, ‘I have confessed it to the Lord and got all right with Him’. I do not think a person who looks upon confession of sin as a light and easy thing knows much about the “seven days”. Of course for us it is not a literal week, but it is a sufficient period for us to learn what a defiling thing sin is, and to get a true judgment of what the flesh is in the sight of God. God cleanses us from all unrighteousness by giving us a perfect abhorrence of it. And observe that the water of purification was not sprinkled upon the unclean person until the third day (see verses 12, 19). In the first stage of exercise we learn what the flesh is by the painful consequences of allowing it, and by the darkness of soul into which it brings us. During the three days previous to the application of the water of separation, the unclean person was learning in isolation what sin was in the eyes of Jehovah. God allows us to prove in the experience of our souls what a defiling thing sin is. There was a dog that liked to kill chickens, and to break him of it they tied a dead chicken round his neck until it fell to pieces. After that he would not look at a chicken; he had had plenty of it. God makes us so feel the darkness in our souls that we turn with disgust from the thing that caused it. In this way sin, instead of being a gratification, becomes a real object of aversion to us.

Then on the third day the ashes of the burnt heifer were taken, and running water put thereto in a vessel, and this water was sprinkled with hyssop upon the unclean person. The ashes are evidently typical of the remembrance of fully ^[p. 391] executed judgment, and the running (or living) water is symbolical of the Holy Spirit. There is no full self-judgment, except in the active remembrance of the holy judgment which has passed upon sin in the flesh at the cross, and this known in our souls by the present power of the Spirit of God. We remember the judgment — its deep reality is brought home to our hearts — but we know it as completely and eternally exhausted. Nothing gives such true self judgment as this, but withal a deep sense of grace predominates in the self-judged soul who thus learns the terrible nature of sin and the flesh before God. The darkness of soul is past when grace is thus known, repentance is deeper and God more truly known.

Then on the seventh day there is a second sprinkling, and the unclean person becomes clean at even. It is only in the active remembrance of the complete removal of our “old man” from before God at the cross, and this now known in our souls by the Spirit, that we can resume that walk with God which has been interrupted by the allowance of the flesh.

Just a word about what people call ‘besetting sins’. It does not seem to me that Scripture supposes that a man would sin and confess, and sin again the same way and confess again, and so on. When people are not delivered from a ‘besetting sin’ I believe the secret is that they are not with God about it. There is a great reality in having to do with God. I believe if we are honestly with God about things of that kind their power is broken.

In conclusion, notice the significant fact that a “clean person” must sprinkle the water upon the unclean. One thing is very plainly suggested to us by this — that we are dependent on Another for purification and restoration. We are absolutely dependent upon our Advocate for this service. Of course He may use one of His servants, or may do it without human instrumentality, but in either case He is the Source of this ministry; it is He who sprinkles the water of ^[p. 392] purification upon us. There is no mistake more common than to try to restore ourselves by self-examination, instead of turning to the Lord. It is only He who can give us a true judgment of the source of our sin, and it is a great thing to have such a sense of His grace and to be so drawn to Him that our hearts really turn to Him for this service when a cloud comes over our joy.

The man who was unclean and not purified was cut off from the congregation (verse 20). The man who sins and is not restored is certainly not in the joy of the wonderful fellowship of 1 John 1: 3, 4, which may be called the fellowship of the assembly today. It is not that he is cut off from relationship, but he has not the joys proper to his relationship. But for the wonderful service which we have been considering we might go on days, months, and years without having fulness of joy. I need hardly say that the advocacy goes on, but I am persuaded that we do not get the good of it if our hearts do not turn to the Lord for it. I dare say there are hearts here tonight who could bear sorrowful witness to this. You know it is possible for a believer to go on weeks or months or years without ever having his joy full. It will be an immense gain to us if our souls are awakened to look more to the Lord for this precious service.

I have not spoken on such a subject without much exercise of heart, and I pray the Lord to grant us a true apprehension of what sin is, and a better knowledge in our souls of this wonderful service of the One who is our “patron with the Father”.