1 John 2, verse 1, My little
children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.
And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous. Now, you know, John is writing
this epistle to believers, and he calls believers, my little
children. I like that. My little children.
I know he's writing to some babes in Christ who would be little
children in Christ. But remember, John's an old man
when he's writing this epistle. To him, everybody's little children,
aren't they? And he's an old man who's got
some fatherly affection for the people he's writing to, for the
people he's preaching to, ministering to. And that is a part of the
ministry that God gives to his servants. When you're watching
for someone's soul, you will care deeply about their well-being.
And the old man John is writing here with some fatherly advice
that'll help us if we'll listen to it and pay attention to it.
And he says, these things, right I am to you now, these things
are everything that we covered here in chapter one. That eternal
life is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That life was made manifest to
men. John and the other apostles,
they handled him. They touched him. They heard
him. That life was revealed to them. And believers, have life
in Him. Now, we still sin, but we walk
in light. We're not ruled by sin any longer.
So these things write unto you, He says, that you sin not. Now,
you can't lift that phrase out and make it stand by itself and
mean something it doesn't mean. You know John does not mean that
any of us for even a moment can live perfectly, can be without
sin. For even a moment we can't do
that. That would be contrary to these
things that he's written unto us. Last week in verse eight,
we looked at this. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So, of course,
he doesn't mean that we can live without sin wholly for even a
moment. What he means is that he writes
these things to us that we won't walk in sin. that the believer
will not give in to sin and indulge sin and the sin nature that's
in us. That we won't live our lives acting like someone that
doesn't know Christ. That Christ has not come and
made a difference in our life. A love for Christ will always
produce obedience. It will produce the desire to
be obedient to Him. It's just a natural reaction.
So the goal is that we sin not. I did not get up this morning
with the intention of sinning. Really and truly, I didn't. I
got up this morning with every intention of living a holy life.
I remember the psalm Brother Henry told us about. He said,
ain't it a shame to lie on Sunday when you've got Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Especially today, I
did not get up with the intention of sinning. You didn't either.
My desire was to be holy. was to be just like my Lord,
how I longed to be like Him. That was the goal. But I failed. Already I failed. Oh, my soul. So the goal is that we sin not.
But here's the reality. If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father. Now, we know we're going to sin.
That's what Scripture teaches us. We read that last week. We
know that from reading the Word. And we know it from our own experience.
We are going to sin. So why does John say, if any
man sin? Here's why. Because he's not
excusing sin. The goal is that we sin not.
Believers will not make an allowance for sin in themselves. Won't
do it. We won't say, well, I've got
a sin nature, so there's nothing I can do about my sin. I'm just
going to go ahead and keep lying and stealing and cheating and
dealing dishonestly with people in business because I'm just
a sinner and there's nothing I can do about it. We will not
accept that excuse. A believer will not accept that
excuse in themselves. Grace in the heart will never
condone sin in ourselves. Grace in the heart will make
us hate our sins. will make us mourn over it and
confess our sin. So we are going to sin. And the
good news is that even when we sin, God's children will not
be cast away when we sin. And the reason we won't be cast
away is we have an advocate with the Father. I looked this word
advocate up. I learned something this week.
That's good when you're studying that you learn something. An
advocate is one who comes to the aid of another. He'll plead
the cause before the judge. It also means an intercessor.
Well, our advocate is the Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever lives,
making intercession for the transgressors. And you do not want to go before
the judge without an advocate. A number of years ago, the company
I was working for, pretty much everybody in the company reported
to me. It was under my umbrella. So
if someone left the company for whatever reason, and filed for
unemployment, this was my job. And I went a number of years,
quite a while, and I never lost an unemployment case. And I was
proud of that, buddy. I mean, I didn't lose one case. Not one. And as happens, you know, in that
business, someone left and my wife fired her. She filed for
unemployment. We won. She appealed. We won the appeal. She appealed
again and won the appeal. She appealed again and we won
that appeal. Well, she appealed the last time
that she could appeal. And in this hearing, you have
to go before a judge. It could be a retired judge or
it could be an attorney hired by the state to hear these unemployment
cases. And I was not worried. I'd won
four previous times and I was going to win this time. I had
a good track record. I show up to the hearing and
she brought an attorney. She brought an advocate. And
I thought, well, you know, she's bringing out the big guns, but
the facts are on my side. The facts were clearly on my
side. I had a good track record. I'm
going to win. That woman ate my lunch. I mean to tell you,
she rendered me totally helpless. And even though the facts were
on my side, she won because she had an advocate. Now maybe we'd
have won if we had our own attorney that had the ability this woman
had to, you know, argue the fine points of the law. I mean, she
just, wow. Well, our advocate has never
lost a case. But unlike me, he never will. He will never lose a case. But
he's not like a modern day defense attorney like this woman was.
He does not deny that his clients are guilty. He says they're guilty.
He doesn't try to say, well, what my clients did really wasn't
sin. They really didn't mean it, so
we've got to let them off. No, they meant it. They're guilty. Our advocate doesn't try to circumvent
the law. He doesn't try to circumvent
justice by trying to find a technicality in the law to get us off on a
technicality, even though we're guilty. Our advocate has never
lost a case, even though every client he takes is guilty. They
freely admit they're guilty. They confess their sins. He won't
take a case unless you're guilty, but he's never lost one. How
can that be? Because our advocate is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And when he pleads the cause
before the judge, he pleads his blood. Oh, yes, they're guilty. Oh, wretched. But they've been
washed in the blood. Let them go. Yes, they have no
righteousness of their own, but He pleads His righteousness.
Our advocate is Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He clothes
us in His perfect righteousness that's imputed to our account.
He doesn't just take a guilty sinner, get him before the judge
and wrap his righteousness around him and try to hide their guilt,
try to hide their sin. He imputes His righteousness
to us so that we are not guilty in Him, in His righteousness.
And the righteous judge says, they go free because they're
righteous. Our advocate pleads justice. He pleads, yes, they're guilty.
But in this case, justice has already been satisfied. He can
plead that the death sentence has already been carried out
when he died. in our place. That's our advocate. Jesus Christ the righteous. He
can never lose a case. And that's good news for a sinner. Oh, that's good news. I could
have spent the entire time on this first verse. What good news
this is. But, you know, this blessed truth
will never make one of his clients want to go sin more. It'll never
make us feel like we have a free pass to sin. Well, it doesn't
matter what I do. My advocate can get me off. So
I just go sin all the more. No, we're not going to continue
in and live in what we hate. Shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid. God forbid. This doesn't encourage the believer
to sin. It comforts us when we do. The
goal still is that we sin not. But the comfort is, when we do
sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Here's the other
thing I learned about this word advocate. It's used, I remember,
five times in the New Testament. This is the only time it's translated
advocate. The other four times, it's translated
comforter. Our advocate comforts us when
we do sin. We have an advocate with the
Father. Jesus Christ the Righteous. Verse 2, He is the propitiation
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of
the whole world. Jesus Christ the Righteous, our
Advocate, is the propitiation for our sins. And you know this
word propitiation means covering. It means to atone for. The reason
our Advocate has never lost a case is because He Himself has atoned,
covered all of our sin. That's why we go free. The Lord
Jesus Christ paid for all of the sin of every one of his elect. He didn't leave one unpaid for.
And his sacrifice allows God to be the righteous judge and
still let us go free. Now, John and the other apostles
had a hard time learning this fact, that Christ did not just
come to save the Jews. but the whole world. People,
both Jew and Gentile. Our Lord has a people out of
every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation on this planet. He
has a people from every generation. And you know when this says the
whole world, you know this does not mean that Christ died for
the sins of everybody that ever lived in this whole world. If
Christ, the Advocate, shed His blood to be the propitiation
for the sins of everybody, every son of Adam, then God the righteous
judge would never condemn anyone. But Christ did not die for the
people of the whole world. It's people out of every nation
in the world. And we know that's true by interpreting
Scripture with Scripture. You can't make that statement
just like any other statement in Scripture stand on its own.
Look over in John 17. We'll interpret Scripture with
Scripture here. John 17, verse two, who is it
that Christ died for? Well, he says in verse two, as
thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give
eternal life to who? As many as thou hast given him. To the elect, those that the
Father elected and gave to Christ. Look at verse six. I manifest
thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou gavest
them me, and they have kept thy word, those whom the Father gave
him." Now verse 9, I pray for them. I pray not for the world. He's not praying for the whole
world. He's not interceding for the whole world, but for them
which thou hast given me, for they are thine. That's who He
died for, those that the Father gave Him out of every nation
on earth. Now, back in our text, verse
3, And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. Now, one of the things I really
like about this epistle, 1 John, is how frequently John talks
about things that we know. We know. We know. He repeats
that over and over again. You'll see that in the next few
weeks. Things we know. There are a lot of things I don't
know. But there are things that we know. Without a doubt now,
we know these things. And here's how the child of God
knows that we know Christ. If we keep His commandments.
That's not something that you have to wonder about. Well, do
I know Him? Do I not? No. Here's how we know that we
know Him. If we keep His commandments.
Now we already know we don't keep His commandments perfectly.
We can't do that. We still sin. Here's what He
means. Do we love His commandments?
Do we love Him? Do we love His commandments?
Do we have a sincere desire to keep His commandments? Do we
think about His commandments? As we go through our everyday
life, do we have them in mind? Do we have a desire to have His
commandments be the rule of life? If we're following Christ, following
His example, following His commandments, is that the general tenor of
our life? Well, what are His commandments?
Well, He's commanded us to repent and believe on the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Well, have we done that? People
who know Him do that. Have we followed Him in believer's
baptism? That's a commandment of His to
identify with Him in believer's baptism. He's commanded us to
love one another. He's commanded us to forgive
one another. To be humble, to be kind, to be generous. And
if we do those things, keeping His commandments, those people
know Christ. Now, no believer can ever find
any comfort in our actions. Yes, we do love His commandments
and follow them, but even when we do follow His commandments,
when we do what Scripture calls a good work, in our heart, you
know what we know? You know why we can't find any
comfort in that? Because we know even that motive is not pure.
We do that in our heart. We hope somebody knows that.
Somebody praise me for that. Sin is mixed in everything we
do. So we can't find any comfort
in our actions. But there is a new nature in
the believer that does keep His commandments, that cannot sin.
And there is a struggle with the old man and the new man.
There's a struggle going on inside. And sometimes that struggle is
so severe, we just think, oh my goodness, look at the way
I've acted. The person that's doing what I've done can't know
the Lord. That's why we can't find any
comfort in our own actions. There's no hope of salvation
found in us in anything that we do. Salvation is entirely
in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His doing and His dying. But,
if you know the Lord, if He's turned the light on, you know
it. You were in darkness, and now
you're in light. You know when the light's been
turned on. That's just so, you know, if God's put a new nature
in you because there's a struggle that's in you that didn't used
to be there. You know that. Where did the desire to keep
his commandments come from? Where did the desire to go to
him in prayer come from? Where did the desire to read
his word and be in the worship service and fellowship with God's
people come from? You know, if Lord has turned
the light on you or not, that is the evidence of the work of
grace in the heart. Now verse four. He that sayeth
I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar and the
truth is not in him. Now John's pretty much saying
the same thing he said back in verse six of chapter one. If
we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness,
we lie and do not the truth. If a person says I know Christ. I have a saving interest in Him.
But they don't show any evidence, any outward evidence of loving
Christ. They don't show any outward evidence
of loving His Word. They don't show any outward evidence
of loving His commandments, keeping His commandments. Then that person
is lying. And that may sound harsh to people,
but that's not me saying it. That's what God says. He's lying
to Himself and He's lying to others. That's just a fact. Now,
a child of God, however you want to term that person, a child
of God, they're a saved person, they're a regenerated person,
is a new man. Look over in 2 Corinthians, chapter
five. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold,
all things are become new. He's a new creature and he's
going to walk in a new way. He's going to think in a new
way because he's a new creature. Look up in verse 15. And that
he died for all Christ died for all of his elect, all of the
father gave him that they which live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but unto him which died for them. and rose
again. A believer is a bond slave of
Christ. And a bond slave, by definition,
desires to serve Him, desires to serve our Master. They desire
to follow Him. They desire to know more about
Him. They desire to be closer to Him. A bond slave loves his
Master, loves his Master's commandments, and won't leave Him. Now, someone
who does not love his commandments who does not follow Him, that
person may have some truth in the head. It doesn't surprise
me at all if a person has truth in their head. The gospel is
easy to understand. It really is. Substitution just
makes sense, doesn't it? People might not believe it,
but you can understand that. It just makes sense. Understand
those things. John was talking about teaching
in Bible school in Williamsburg. He said, you know, it was easier
to teach them because they know what you're talking about. They've
been exposed to these things. They know them. Up here, I'm
telling you, they know them. But the person John's talking
about has got truth in the head, but no grace in the heart. It
takes grace in the heart to be a bond slave of Christ. And that's a shame, isn't it? That just makes me weep. God
deliver us from that, from being that kind of person that has
truth in the head. I mean, got everything right
in order, just perfect doctrine, but no grace in the heart. And we read verses like this,
and you know, it's time to make comments on verses like this.
I always want to be so careful not to talk about them. Them,
them, them, them, them. I was talking to a good friend
of mine a couple of weeks ago. And he's talking about some different
preachers. He's always talking about them.
They're doing this wrong. They're doing this wrong. They
got this wrong. They're messed up because they
got this wrong. And those things probably are true. But he said, I'd be a them if it wasn't for
the grace of God. Tell me what I've got in Christ.
Now, this is a warning to us that we have to cover. But let's not spend so much time
talking about them. God deliver me from being this
man that's got truth in the head, but no grace in the heart. No
grace in my life and my actions of my life. Let me show some
evidence in my life to the people that live around me, people that
live with me, that I know Him. That He's made a difference.
Don't you want that for yourself? I do. Well, verse 5, he says,
But, now here's the other hand, whoso keepeth his word, in him
verily is the love of God perfected. Hereby know we, here's John again,
hereby know we that we are in him. Whoever keeps God's Word,
whoever loves His Word, remembers it, thinks on it, whoever treasures
the Word, whoever follows the teachings that's in God's Word,
Whoever believes all of God's Word, even the parts I don't
understand, I just believe it because God said it. That person
loves God and that love will continue to grow to maturity.
We don't love God perfectly, but it will grow to maturity.
I don't love Him as much as I want to. You don't either. I don't
love Him as much as I ought to, but I love Him. in truth and
sincerity. I can say that to you in all
honesty. I love Him. It's because He first
loved me that I love Him. And here's how we know that we
are in Him. Do we love Him? Look in John
14. John 14. That's the evidence
of every believer. Do you love Him? John 14, verse 23. Jesus answered and said unto
him, If a man love me, he will keep my words. And my Father
will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him.
He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings. And the word
which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. If
you love him, you'll keep his word. Can't help it. And you know whether or not you
love God in your heart. You know. I don't wonder whether
or not I love Janet. She's my wife. I love her. I
know that. I don't wonder whether or not
I love my Lord. I know, and you do too. It's
not like I want to, but I do love Him. I know that God has
shed abroad His love in my heart. God does not have a secret love
affair with His people. You know Him. Now, verse 6. He that saith he abideth in Him,
ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. If a person
says, I am one with the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm in Him and
He's in me. Then that person will follow
the example of our Lord. They will love as Christ loved. They'll forgive others as Christ
forgave. They'll be patient with people. It's like Christ was
patient with us. They'll be humble, as Christ
was humble. They will have a sincere desire to imitate Him. Look over in 1 Peter 1, and we'll
quit. They'll have a sincere desire
to imitate Him. It'll be a cheap imitation, but
they'll do it nevertheless. 1 Peter 1, verse 13. Wherefore, gird up the loins
of your minds, Be sober and hope to the end for the grace that
is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ
as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former
lusts in your ignorance. But as he which hath called you
is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because
it's written, be ye holy for I am holy. And that's what we'll
do with a sincere desire to imitate him. All right. Well, hope I
have blessed you.