How Is Christ My Advocate If His Saving Work Is Finished?

00:00:00.000 | So if Jesus's work on earth was completely finished, what is he doing as my advocate in heaven right now?

00:00:06.560 | That's a question that comes into us from Lynn on 1st John 2 verses 1 & 2. She writes, "Dear Pastor John,

00:00:12.440 | What is Christ doing as our advocate? As a child of God, I am redeemed, completely lacking nothing.

00:00:18.320 | I am justified and forgiven of all my past sins, past, present, future. I am united with Christ. I belong to him.

00:00:25.560 | I'm sealed in him, declared righteous in him, and sealed with his Holy Spirit. If I'm already seated in the heavenly places in Christ,

00:00:33.080 | what exactly is Christ pleading with the Father for on my behalf? If his work on the cross was complete,

00:00:38.760 | with God making him the propitiation of my sins,

00:00:42.680 | why does Christ have to plead to God to continue to forgive me? Why is Christ now advocating for me before God?"

00:00:51.080 | Pastor John, what would you say to Lynn?

00:00:54.320 | Let me start with an unrelated text from Romans 11,

00:00:59.760 | simply to illustrate a point

00:01:02.560 | that

00:01:05.120 | governs how we think about the perplexities

00:01:09.440 | that arise

00:01:11.760 | from trying to follow

00:01:13.760 | the paths of God in the way he saves sinners.

00:01:18.760 | Oh, what a challenge!

00:01:22.640 | Listen, listen to this

00:01:24.640 | for a roundabout

00:01:27.640 | complexity of God's ways and how Paul responds to this roundabout,

00:01:35.200 | complex way of saving Jews and Gentiles. This is

00:01:40.680 | Romans 11 30 and following.

00:01:44.320 | "Just as you Gentiles

00:01:47.240 | were at one time

00:01:51.400 | disobedient to God,

00:01:53.200 | but now

00:01:54.840 | have received mercy

00:01:56.840 | because of the disobedience of Israel,

00:02:00.880 | so they too now have been disobedient

00:02:06.000 | in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy.

00:02:12.720 | For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all."

00:02:19.960 | Now, how does Paul respond to that

00:02:21.960 | convoluted way of going about salvation in the world?

00:02:29.640 | This is the next verse. "Oh,

00:02:33.040 | the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!"

00:02:38.520 | How unsearchable are his judgments? How

00:02:42.200 | inscrutable his ways? Now, pause there.

00:02:45.640 | He didn't mean his ways were inscrutable in the sense that we didn't have any insight into them.

00:02:50.640 | He just gave us in three chapters the most stunning insight into the way God saves Jews and Gentiles imaginable.

00:02:57.160 | He is actually saying, "God has granted me some insight and you through me some insight into these inscrutable ways."

00:03:04.320 | And we're saying, "Oh, the depth," not because we don't understand anything, but because we've seen enough to know how strange they are.

00:03:11.720 | "For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his

00:03:17.680 | counselor or who has given a gift to him that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to

00:03:23.800 | him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever."

00:03:29.560 | In other words,

00:03:34.400 | when we come to read the Bible and

00:03:38.000 | trace out the ways of God in salvation, we should never come as

00:03:43.600 | counselors of God.

00:03:46.320 | "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?" Never. We should never come as

00:03:51.480 | ones who in any way could contribute any wisdom whatsoever

00:03:57.960 | to the ways of God and the way he goes about saving lost sinners.

00:04:03.200 | Our business is to watch and listen and learn and insofar as we get some understanding,

00:04:09.800 | worship. "Oh the riches." That's the way we should respond. So now the question is posed,

00:04:16.800 | given how wonderfully complete the work of Christ on the cross is in covering our sin and completing our

00:04:24.960 | righteousness, and given how complete the work of the Holy Spirit is in sealing us for the day of redemption,

00:04:32.120 | how does Christ's ongoing

00:04:34.120 | advocacy or intercession

00:04:37.560 | relate to these things? Why is it even necessary, she asks.

00:04:42.040 | So let's put it just two texts in front of us and see if they shed light on the answer.

00:04:48.400 | 1 John 2.1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin,

00:04:54.200 | but if anyone does sin, now what's he gonna say next?

00:05:00.080 | We have a cross? We have a crucifixion? We have an atonement? He says, "If anyone does sin, we have an advocate

00:05:07.240 | with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous."

00:05:11.080 | So John doesn't simply say, "We have a Redeemer who died for us." He does say

00:05:16.920 | that. He does say that

00:05:19.680 | in the next verse. But here he says,

00:05:24.000 | "Take heart

00:05:26.520 | from the fact that this very day

00:05:29.680 | the day that you sin and confess it, Christ the Righteous One is your advocate in heaven." And

00:05:35.880 | is it not significant that he calls Jesus the Righteous One?

00:05:40.800 | Jesus Christ the Righteous.

00:05:43.480 | Seems to me that the righteousness of Christ is highlighted here, not because we need an

00:05:51.200 | upright lawyer in our defense,

00:05:55.360 | but because we ourselves are in Christ Jesus and are only accepted before the Father in the

00:06:03.200 | Righteous One, and therefore the

00:06:06.200 | advocacy of Jesus is the ongoing

00:06:09.480 | presentation of the reality

00:06:13.040 | established at the cross and through faith and by the Spirit. God the Father

00:06:18.480 | doesn't just look back

00:06:21.800 | to the cross.

00:06:24.200 | He looks straight ahead

00:06:26.200 | into the face of the living,

00:06:29.200 | righteous Jesus Christ who is our

00:06:32.760 | righteousness and is our

00:06:35.920 | life and is our purchase and our

00:06:39.280 | payment. In other words, we might think, like if we were writing the story, we might think

00:06:45.080 | that the work of Christ on the cross would be more magnified

00:06:50.440 | if all attention were backward on that event. God doesn't see it that way.

00:06:55.840 | We need to rest and rejoice. God doesn't see it that way. That event, that past event,

00:07:03.560 | led to a

00:07:05.840 | resurrection from the dead. It led to a coronation of the Son of God at the Father's right hand. It led to an

00:07:12.720 | ongoing

00:07:14.360 | embodiment in the God-Man, the mediator, of all that he had achieved and all that he is as our

00:07:22.400 | ground of

00:07:24.800 | eternal salvation.

00:07:26.800 | So one more passage, Romans 8 32.

00:07:30.360 | "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all,

00:07:35.800 | how will he not with him graciously give us all things?" Now,

00:07:40.520 | don't miss

00:07:43.360 | God's not sparing his son is

00:07:46.400 | the ground on the basis of which

00:07:50.640 | everything good that happens from now on to us sinners

00:07:56.280 | takes place from now to eternity. Everything good that happens to us is

00:08:01.560 | based on that not sparing his own son.

00:08:05.200 | There's no

00:08:07.520 | minimizing of the Father's

00:08:09.440 | offering of the Son as a sacrifice. He's not minimizing it. That's the basis of everything

00:08:15.760 | good that comes to us. He's

00:08:18.360 | magnifying the death in the past

00:08:21.280 | by drawing attention

00:08:23.960 | to what is achieved for the future as

00:08:27.520 | Christ keeps on working. And so he continues. That verse goes on like this,

00:08:33.000 | "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect in the future?" Forever.

00:08:37.520 | It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ is the one who died. Now pause. There he stresses it again.

00:08:44.720 | Christ is the one who died. The death is the foundation of everything. And then he adds,

00:08:49.200 | "More than that."

00:08:51.560 | So we should be thrilled that there's more than that. More than that who was raised,

00:08:56.360 | who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us, who shall

00:09:02.360 | separate us then from the love of Christ. So the point

00:09:06.280 | seems to be

00:09:08.280 | that the death of Christ is not the end, but the beginning and the

00:09:13.080 | foundation of everything good that God does for the elect. All of those excellencies that Lynn

00:09:20.360 | pointed out in her question, that God achieved,

00:09:24.080 | purchased forgiveness,

00:09:26.480 | perfected righteousness,

00:09:28.320 | devil conquered, these are

00:09:30.600 | foundation

00:09:33.160 | for all that flows

00:09:35.520 | from the death of Jesus in the future of our everlasting salvation. And then Paul

00:09:42.760 | celebrates

00:09:44.400 | the effects of this

00:09:46.400 | gloriously powerful death, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who's interceding for us.

00:09:53.120 | Nobody can separate us. In other words,

00:09:55.840 | resurrection because of the death that was decisive,

00:09:59.560 | exaltation to the right hand of the Father because the death was decisive,

00:10:05.160 | concession for us forever because the death was decisive,

00:10:09.440 | never-ending love because the death proved it to be beyond doubt.

00:10:14.200 | So the connection between the death and the ongoing saving work of Christ is that the death makes it all

00:10:23.440 | possible. The death secures all that, purchases it, guarantees it, finds expression in it,

00:10:31.800 | which may be the most important way to say it, finds expression in it. It's the death that our

00:10:38.960 | advocate presents and

00:10:41.440 | pleads. So let me try to say it in one sentence.

00:10:45.480 | Maybe the shortest way to say it is that the advocacy or the intercession of

00:10:53.000 | Jesus for us

00:10:56.160 | before God the Father is that God himself—

00:11:00.720 | it's crucial because there's no division between the God and the Son here, like the Son's trying to twist the arm of the Father—

00:11:06.160 | God himself

00:11:08.600 | put Jesus there in the center of all things forever as the

00:11:13.640 | crucified and risen Redeemer so that his person and his words

00:11:19.240 | might make

00:11:22.320 | gloriously plain forever that every minute of our joy in eternity is owing to the

00:11:30.600 | one

00:11:31.880 | mediator with God and man, the man, the crucified and risen man,

00:11:37.960 | Christ Jesus.

00:11:40.400 | Amen. You expound the riches of Romans 8:32 like nobody else. Thank you, Pastor John. That was a really great question as well, Len.

00:11:47.760 | Thank you for sending it in to us and sending all of the questions that we get each month.

00:11:51.400 | We really appreciate it. Keep them coming in to us.

00:11:53.920 | For more details about the podcast or to catch up on old episodes or to subscribe to the audio feed to get new episodes as

00:11:59.600 | we release them, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:05.440 | Well, on Friday we return. We're going to talk about promises in the Bible, the theme of promises from Genesis to Revelation in a survey form.

00:12:13.840 | It will help us unpack the Bible's message to us. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:12:21.120 | We'll see you on Friday.

00:12:23.120 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Is Christ My Advocate If His Saving Work Is Finished?

Chapters