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John is clear that we have an advocate who looks after us when we sin and who is the propitiation for our sin. He then explains how we are to live as God’s loving family with our sin forgiven.

Dan: 

Hi everyone and welcome to Training for Life Redeemed. I’m Dan, I’m here with my father, David Jackson. We are going through the book one John, or the letter of one John, we are getting into chapter two today. We ended chapter one talking about sin dad . Yep . Chapter two is going to start off with a whole bunch of sin stuff as well. He’s going to talk about children. I like the fact that he calls them his children that he’s writing so that they don’t sin , but then if you do sin , we have an advocate who’s going to look after that for us. Yep . so can you explain for those people at home who don’t know what the word advocate means? Y es. Explain that a bit, and how that’s flowing into what’s about to come in terms of making sure that we’re l ike t alks about commandments, but it’s really about loving each other essentially, in terms of what flows out of it.

David: 

Yeah. So here I come standing before God as the judge of all the earth with all my mess. and he declares me innocent, righteous, I’m a saint because Jesus died in my place and paid for it all. that’s where we finished at the end of chapter 10. He’s, he’s done the deal. Chapter one. Chapter one, <la ugh>. Y ep . C hapter one. So Jesus has died. He’s paid for it all. Therefore, I am safe to come and confess my sin. And I am su re that when I do and I put my faith in Jesus, all of it will go ont o hi s account to be taken off my account and I’m done. Yea h. N ow, what happens when I turn aro und, w alk out of th e court and go out and sin again. In some people’s thinking, that means we have to go and kill Jesus again. I’m only forgiven for the sins I committed up to when I confessed and committed to Jesus. And then when I go back and sin some more, I’m unsaved. And now I’ve going to go back and get re saved. And that, that’s not what the text is saying. So what happens when I sin, I’m a saint new creation, and I then I go out and I do something stupid and I contradict who I am by sinning. What happens when I bring that to the Lord and say, I did the wrong thing? I have an advocate with God, the Father in his courtroom standing there, and that is Jesus. He’s actually sitting on the throne next to God the Father. So when I commit a sin and I come to my heavenly Father and I say, I’ve made a mess of it again. I’ve done the wrong thing. I’m ashamed of it. Forgive me. Jesus is sitting there and he’s the one who already paid for it. So the advocate actually doesn’t have to say anything. He is the evidence that my sin is paid for you look across, Yeah. You were executed for all of that. Done. So Jesus is the one who stands there as my representative. the word advocate m eans to stand beside. So he’s my ally and he stands there in my place in heaven and in God’s court. And therefore God looks across. It’s paid for done. Now, that’s, that’s pretty wonderful. But in the next verse, h e talks about propitiation, < laugh>, propitiation, w hich is a great word nobody’s ever heard of, < laugh>. lots of English Bibles have expiation. Nobody’s ever heard of that either. most English versions say a toning sacrifice, and that misses the point. So this word propitiation is about turning away God’s anger. And the reason why we don’t have a lot of that in the English Bibles is because people don’t like thinking of God as getting angry. but if you’ve, i f you’ve ever opened the Bible < laugh>, the wrath of God i s revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Who are you kidding? You can’t reinvent God so that he never gets angry. Okay, I’ve g ot to face an angry God. and Jesus did that in my place. So he is the one who tu rned, who takes the anger of God, the wrath of God, and he turns it away from me. And that’s what propitiation means. So there’s so much happening at the cross. He takes the judgment, He takes the anger of God. He takes, an d t hat’s the other thing that comes up in this chapter. where does he speak about being clean? He cleanses us from all sin. Now, if you go back in the , t he go spel accounts, Jesus, a b unch of people come to Jesus and they want to b e healed. But another bunch of people come to Jesus and they want to be cleansed. So they don’t ask to be forgiven. They don’t ask to be healed. They ask to be cleansed. And they’re the lepers. The lepers asked to be cleansed because the biggest problem a leper has isn’t necessarily the disease, it’s the fact that they are in quarantine and they cannot go near anybody. So they’ve going to cover their face. You think coming after covid , you know , cover your mustache and yell unclean. Unclean. Yeah . I mean, you know, if they had little blue masks back then they’d do the job. <laugh> , unclean, unclean. But you’re not allowed out. You’re not allowed in community. You’re not allowed with people because you’re unclean. And these people come to Jesus and they say, I want to be cleansed. Once I’m clean, it means I can touch people. I can be back home. I can sit down at the dinner table. You know t hat all those cleansing things t hat you find in the Old Testament are quarantined, and that teaches us the idea of holiness purity. I am without sin. I am not going to infect anybody with sinfulness because I have been cleansed. Now, when I go and jump i n t he mud again, I am cleansed by the blood of Christ. that this is a, an amazing picture of sustaining who I am by continually coming back to Je sus.

Dan: 

Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And John’s going to do that as he goes through in this chapter just before we get towards the end of what we are looking at today in verse 14. But as he go through and he starts talking about the idea of, you know , loving your brother and fathers loving, you know , the different people, fathers, children, et cetera , and it’s all about loving each other. But he also gets , like he talks about, if you don’t love, if you hate your brother, then you know , you’re not walking in the light type stuff. But he get to verse 12. He’s just like, I’m writing this to you children, you little children, because your sins have been forgiven.

David: 

Yeah. It’s a done deal.

Dan: 

It’s like, it’s like you are sinful, but you’ve done this and you’re no longer sinful <laugh> . Yeah .

David: 

Yeah . You can’t use the excuse which Christians do all the time. You know , we’re all sinners, we’re all going to get it wrong. Rubbish. You’re a new creation. You’ve got no excuse for getting it wrong. We’re going to be tougher on ourselves here. As tough as the word of God is, you are new creation, forgiven. You have the gift of your holy enough that God himself can dwell in you. You are the holy of holies walking around in the community when Jesus walked around in the community. Jesus’s holiness was more infectious than their disease. He touches somebody that’s done clean , they’re healed. I f ind, you know, h ave got the flu or something, and I go b reathe on somebody. They get sick. this is what it means to be cleansed, is that I’m no longer going to do the damage. Jesus has done that for us. And what that does then is it means that I can come out of my isolation, walking in the dark, making life up as I go along. You know , with 5,000 other million people who are making up 5,000 other million ways of living life and banging into each other, here we are in the dark, you know, groping around, hurting each other. The light comes, we come to Christ, our sin is gone. We can then reconnect. And so he calls us to love one another, and he addresses us like we are God’s family. and that this concept of being God’s forever family really drives John. he’s the beloved disciple. Yo u k n ow, he talks to them as my , as l ittle children, wh ich an old guy can get away with <laugh>. But that’s a wonderful picture in a world where everybody’s, you know, marriages last five years, if you’re lucky. this , th is is an amazing, re co nciliation and p utt ing life back together again.

Dan: 

Well, that brings us the end of this episode. If you’ve enjoyed it, that we would love for you to come and grab these study notes that go along with this episode and make sure you come and hit the subscribe button, all that kind of jazz that you wanna do so that you can continue to enjoy this series. We’re going to continue next week going through one John one, John chapter two. Right . we’re up to verse 15, so we’ll continue from there in next week’s episode. Thank you so much for coming and joining us.