Post-Salvation Sin; Christ's Advocacy; 1 John 2:1
The purpose of this epistle is to instruct the recipients in how they can enjoy and maintain fellowship with God. What was happening among these churches was that they were being impacted and affected by certain false doctrines that were coming in from the surrounding pagan culture. John is talking to a group of believers to warn them against the influence of pagan thought and to teach them how to maintain truth and their walk of fellowship without losing it because they have been taken in and sought false doctrine. So fellowship with John is not merely a matter of relationship, or losing fellowship being the idea of committing sin, but it is breaking fellowship again with learning and applying false doctrine. It starts with doctrine, not with an overt act or mental attitude act of sin. Fellowship is grounded upon sound doctrine. By that we should understand that he is talking about basic doctrine, not every little fine-tuned point of doctrine in the Scriptures.
For John fellowship is not the term we tend to use, "in fellowship," which implies almost a passive idea that we are just in fellowship, in a position, in Christ; but he uses the word "having fellowship," that we are to have fellowship. It is a much more active concept, something we are enjoying and participating in. The concept of fellowship has to do with a partnership. Sometimes it emphasises the receiving into that partnership and sometimes it emphasises the giving side of that partnership. The giving side of the partnership is how Paul uses the word when he talks about the various congregations who gave freely and liberally of their financial resources to help other congregations who were going through times of trouble. In that sense it was sharing, a participation, a giving, and that emphasises the active side of the partnership. But the passive side of the partnership is our fellowship with God where we are enjoying the benefit of that relationship with God which is primarily activated through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, and it is through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit that we are matured and spiritual growth in us is activated. So fellowship is more than just being in a position, it is an active process and what Paul calls in Galatians 5:16 walking by means of the Holy Spirit. There is something active about it; there is forward momentum in it.
The word "unrighteousness" in 1 John 1:9 is the Greek word adikia [a)dikia] from the basic root dike [dikh] which means righteousness. What exactly does this unrighteousness mean? If we look at the context of 1st John we discover what John means; he defines the term for us. In 1 John 5:17 he says NASB "All unrighteousness [a)dikia] is sin …" The point is that the word "unrighteousness" is defined by John himself in the context of the epistle as meaning sin. So when we have the statement in 1 John 1:9 that God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, that relates to those we confess. It is an important principle for believers to understand that when we confess our sins as far as God is concerned it is over and done with. We may still have discipline to go through because of the sin but now we are back in fellowship and we are going to have the divine resources of all the stress-busters, the ten spiritual skills, the problem-solving devices, to handle whatever the discipline is, whatever the suffering is.
In the first two verses of chapter two we see the heavenly dynamics of forgiveness. 1 John 2:1 NASB "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." The "these things" refer to what he has said starting in 1:5 down to this section. [2] "and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for {those of} the whole world." In those two verses John hits on at least four crucial doctrines: the doctrine of the advocacy of Jesus Christ in His present position and session in heaven, the doctrine related to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of propitiation, and the doctrine of unlimited atonement.
"My little children" is teknia mou [teknia mou]. By adding ia to teknon it makes it a neuter plural vocative and it is a term used for a little child, a term of endearment that a parent would use for a young child. That tells us that John is addressing them as believers. This is important because there are those who will say that in this epistle John is contrasting the life of the genuine believer with the life of the unbeliever. That is false for a number of reasons, but this indicates that He is writing to them as believers. The issue isn't believer versus unbeliever, it is the believer in fellowship versus the believer who is not in fellowship. This is crucial to an overall understanding of the epistle. "…I am writing these things to you [for your advantage]." The "you" is the dative of the second person plural and it is a dative of advantage. They are written in order to help the believers with their spiritual life. "…so that you may not sin." That always raises a question in the minds of a lot of people because they think by looking at that in the English
what John is saying is that as a believer you have to learn these things so that you won't ever sin. But that is not what it says in the Greek. The Greek has a hina [i(na] clause—hina expresses a purpose—and it is used as an aorist active subjunctive of the Greek verb hamartano [a(martanw]. The word means to sin, to miss the mark; it has the idea of falling short of the glory of God. The subjunctive mood indicates possibility or potential, but it is also used in Greek, when it is used with a hina, to express purpose or result. When it is combined with the negative here it is so that you will avoid this possibility or potential of sinning. The aorist tense is often expressed as summing up a series of events in terms of a point of action. But it is not really just one event, it summarises it, so in this sense it is called a cumulative or constative aorist. He is basically saying, I am writing these things so that you don't commit sins. Part of the Christian life is that we should be doing battle with the sin nature and not sinning. It is the battle in the soul between the sin nature and the Holy Spirit. When we sin we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit, we stop the sanctifying growth producing ministry of God the Holy Spirit, so that means don't sin.
But what if I sin? "And if anyone sins, "And if" is kai [kai] plus ean [e)an], and it introduces a 3rd class conditional clause, i.e. it could be one way or the other: maybe you will and maybe you won't. They probably will, John is a realist and he knows that we all sin. Now he is going to give us the other side of the solution that was expressed in verse 9. Verse 9 tells us what our responsibility is and verse 2 here is going to explain what happens in the heavenly realm. The kai here should be translated in an ascensive sense, it is not simply connecting. Ascensive means "even if," it steps up the intensity, and it introduces the possibility and potentiality of sin. And he uses the indefinite pronoun tis [tij] which means "anyone," it includes all believers. This introduces John's realism here, he knows we are going to sin. The solution: "we have," and there we have the first person plural pronoun from ego [e)gw], translated "we," plus the verb echo [e)xw], meaning possession. We possess "an Advocate with the Father." The word "Advocate" is parakletos [paraklhtoj], used only once in 1 John and refers to Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. However, it is not a word that is strange to John for he uses it four times in the Gospel of John—14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7—where he uses it to refer to the Holy Spirit. It can have different nuances and it is necessary to look at the context to see just exactly the best way to translate it. Here it has a legal connotation because of the context, the picture of what is going on here. It is a picture of Jesus Christ as a legal advocate defending a defendant against certain charges that are brought against him. It is a legal definition of the operation of Christ in heaven. What is going on in the heavenly realm is modelled on the terminology of a courtroom. It has to do with legal function.
When we confess our sins it comes before the bench of the Supreme Court of heaven. It is a portrayal of the fact that we have been accused by Satan and Jesus Christ is going to come as our defence attorney, our advocate, before the Supreme Court of heaven, to defend us. That is based on who Jesus Christ is. Notice it says: "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." It emphasises His qualifications, that He is sinless, impeccable, and therefore qualified to stand before God as our representative. When John says here "Jesus Christ the righteous" it should immediately bring to our minds what he has just said two verses earlier that if we admit our sins God is faith and just [righteous] to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So there is a connection there between Jesus Christ called the righteous because John wants us to think in terms of who God is and His characteristics. Remember, the righteousness of God is His standards; the justice of God is the application of those standards to man. What the righteousness of God approves the justice of God blesses; what the righteousness of God rejects the justice of God condemns.
When we come before God in confession we are saying that we performed a certain act that comes under condemnation, but that that was paid for at the cross. Because at the cross when all of our sins were imputed to Christ on the cross God the Father in His righteousness could not approve of Jesus Christ at that point and the justice of God poured out the penalty for sin on Jesus Christ during those three hours when His suffering was beyond anything that we could ever possibly imagine. Yet He remained sinless. He did not commit those sins, He just bore the penalty.
The doctrine of advocacy
- Every believer continues to sin after salvation, 1 John 1:8, 10.
- Satan accumulates a sin file on every believer and periodically accuses every believer in heaven. Job 1:9ff; Revelation 12:9, 10.
- Jesus Christ, then, is retained as the believer's defence attorney in the court of heaven, and He defends every case.
- The basis for our Lord's defence is the fact that all of our sins were judged at the cross in Him by God the Father. 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24; Psalm 22:1-6; 1 Peter 3:18.
- Under the law of double jeopardy those sins can't be judged again. Romans 6:10.
- Every case is thrown out of court by God the Father. Zechariah 3:1, 2. Nevertheless, the believer doesn't get off Scott free from his sins, there is still divine discipline. But the sin sins of the believer are not a court matter any more but a family matter for the imputation of divine discipline. Hebrews 12:6.