So if Jesus's work on earth was completely finished, what is he doing as my advocate in heaven right now? That's a question that comes into us from Lynn on 1st John 2 verses 1 & 2. She writes, "Dear Pastor John, What is Christ doing as our advocate? As a child of God, I am redeemed, completely lacking nothing.

I am justified and forgiven of all my past sins, past, present, future. I am united with Christ. I belong to him. 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, what exactly is Christ pleading with the Father for on my behalf?

If his work on the cross was complete, with God making him the propitiation of my sins, why does Christ have to plead to God to continue to forgive me? Why is Christ now advocating for me before God?" Pastor John, what would you say to Lynn? Let me start with an unrelated text from Romans 11, simply to illustrate a point that governs how we think about the perplexities that arise from trying to follow the paths of God in the way he saves sinners.

Oh, what a challenge! Listen, listen to this for a roundabout complexity of God's ways and how Paul responds to this roundabout, complex way of saving Jews and Gentiles. This is Romans 11 30 and following. "Just as you Gentiles were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of the disobedience of Israel, so they too now have been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy.

For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all." Now, how does Paul respond to that convoluted way of going about salvation in the world? This is the next verse. "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!" How unsearchable are his judgments?

How inscrutable his ways? Now, pause there. He didn't mean his ways were inscrutable in the sense that we didn't have any insight into them. He just gave us in three chapters the most stunning insight into the way God saves Jews and Gentiles imaginable. He is actually saying, "God has granted me some insight and you through me some insight into these inscrutable ways." 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.

"For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever." In other words, when we come to read the Bible and trace out the ways of God in salvation, we should never come as counselors of God.

"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?" Never. We should never come as ones who in any way could contribute any wisdom whatsoever to the ways of God and the way he goes about saving lost sinners. Our business is to watch and listen and learn and insofar as we get some understanding, worship.

"Oh the riches." That's the way we should respond. So now the question is posed, given how wonderfully complete the work of Christ on the cross is in covering our sin and completing our righteousness, and given how complete the work of the Holy Spirit is in sealing us for the day of redemption, how does Christ's ongoing advocacy or intercession relate to these things?

Why is it even necessary, she asks. So let's put it just two texts in front of us and see if they shed light on the answer. 1 John 2.1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, now what's he gonna say next?

We have a cross? We have a crucifixion? We have an atonement? He says, "If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous." So John doesn't simply say, "We have a Redeemer who died for us." He does say that. He does say that in the next verse.

But here he says, "Take heart from the fact that this very day the day that you sin and confess it, Christ the Righteous One is your advocate in heaven." And is it not significant that he calls Jesus the Righteous One? Jesus Christ the Righteous. Seems to me that the righteousness of Christ is highlighted here, not because we need an upright lawyer in our defense, but because we ourselves are in Christ Jesus and are only accepted before the Father in the Righteous One, and therefore the advocacy of Jesus is the ongoing presentation of the reality established at the cross and through faith and by the Spirit.

God the Father doesn't just look back to the cross. He looks straight ahead into the face of the living, righteous Jesus Christ who is our righteousness and is our life and is our purchase and our payment. In other words, we might think, like if we were writing the story, we might think that the work of Christ on the cross would be more magnified if all attention were backward on that event.

God doesn't see it that way. We need to rest and rejoice. God doesn't see it that way. That event, that past event, led to a resurrection from the dead. It led to a coronation of the Son of God at the Father's right hand. It led to an ongoing embodiment in the God-Man, the mediator, of all that he had achieved and all that he is as our ground of eternal salvation.

So one more passage, Romans 8 32. "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not with him graciously give us all things?" Now, don't miss God's not sparing his son is the ground on the basis of which everything good that happens from now on to us sinners takes place from now to eternity.

Everything good that happens to us is based on that not sparing his own son. There's no minimizing of the Father's offering of the Son as a sacrifice. He's not minimizing it. That's the basis of everything good that comes to us. He's magnifying the death in the past by drawing attention to what is achieved for the future as Christ keeps on working.

And so he continues. That verse goes on like this, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect in the future?" Forever. It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ is the one who died. Now pause. There he stresses it again. Christ is the one who died. The death is the foundation of everything.

And then he adds, "More than that." So we should be thrilled that there's more than that. More than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us, who shall separate us then from the love of Christ. So the point seems to be that the death of Christ is not the end, but the beginning and the foundation of everything good that God does for the elect.

All of those excellencies that Lynn pointed out in her question, that God achieved, purchased forgiveness, perfected righteousness, devil conquered, these are foundation for all that flows from the death of Jesus in the future of our everlasting salvation. And then Paul celebrates the effects of this gloriously powerful death, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who's interceding for us.

Nobody can separate us. In other words, resurrection because of the death that was decisive, exaltation to the right hand of the Father because the death was decisive, concession for us forever because the death was decisive, never-ending love because the death proved it to be beyond doubt. So the connection between the death and the ongoing saving work of Christ is that the death makes it all possible.

The death secures all that, purchases it, guarantees it, finds expression in it, which may be the most important way to say it, finds expression in it. It's the death that our advocate presents and pleads. So let me try to say it in one sentence. Maybe the shortest way to say it is that the advocacy or the intercession of Jesus for us before God the Father is that God himself— 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— God himself put Jesus there in the center of all things forever as the crucified and risen Redeemer so that his person and his words might make gloriously plain forever that every minute of our joy in eternity is owing to the one mediator with God and man, the man, the crucified and risen man, Christ Jesus.

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. Thank you for sending it in to us and sending all of the questions that we get each month. We really appreciate it. Keep them coming in to us.

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 we release them, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. 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.

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. We'll see you on Friday.