Good evening, everybody. Let's open our Bibles to 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2. Let's return to the book where we were last Sunday night. We're going to backtrack a few chapters. Some amazing truths in these texts that we'll read. Good for our reminder. It's good to hold these truths into our hearts and meditate on these things. As Noah said in his prayer, not just to fill our heads with knowledge, but so that we might be better servants for Christ and serve him better each day. First John chapter two, verse one, John with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does 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. And by this, verse 3, and by this we know that we have come to know Him. if we keep his commandments. Let us pray. Father we come before you once again and we are just grateful for this time you've given us to assemble together and worship you and sing songs to your holy name. Father now as we approach your word we ask that you might open our understanding. Father there are truths contained within these two three short verses that are so important to us, so critical for our faith. Lord, these are truths that point us to your Son, the Lord Jesus. Help us, Father, to see that and to take hold of these truths, Father, and to claim them as our own. Father, we love you. We are here, Father, because of Christ. And Lord, we thank you for his great sacrifice. And it's in his name I pray. Amen. The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 14, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Holiness. Holiness is not an option. If you're a believer, holiness is critical. It's essential. It's a very important part of you. If you are not striving for holiness, if you're not seeking to grow in the things of God, if you're not seeking to walk and be Christ-like in your life, you need to examine whether you know Christ as Savior at all. A genuine believer will have that desire. Every child of God desires that. They desire to please the Lord Jesus. Why? Well, because that's who they are. And they know that Christ has given Himself in their place. to save them from their sins, and so they seek to live for Him. So this is an important matter. This is not something we just glaze over in the scripture. This is not just another one of those commands that we can say, yeah, okay, and move on. No, this is something that we must apply to our lives daily. With that being said, it's not surprising then that our enemy, our adversary, has caused much confusion about how to attain holiness. And we see a lot of this today, particularly in modern evangelical Christianity. One of the lies that Satan has spread is that legalism, legalism leads to holiness. See this all over the place, don't we? The legalist tries to be holy by being a rule keeper. Do this, don't do that, and you will please God. The legalist does not deal with matters of the heart, the legalist deals with outward performance. He thinks that his relationship with God is just fine as long as he keeps the rules, as long as he looks the part, walks the walk. And the reality is this, his heart is likely far from God if he believes that is how he is gaining favor with God. Jesus hit the Pharisees hard with this on several occasions. One in particular is Mark chapter 7 and verse 6. He says, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites. He says, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. Tradition can be good, but we need to be very discerning with regard to tradition and see which is it. Is it biblical or is it man-centered? Is it man-made? Concerning the rules of the legalists, Paul commented, Colossians 2, verse 23, these are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom and self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. In other words, legalism cannot and will not produce a genuine biblical holiness. Won't do it. Another danger that we have, we need to be aware of, is an unbiblical understanding of grace. If we have a wrong understanding of grace, it can lead to an attitude that says, yeah, well, everyone sins, so it's fine. Everyone sins, it's fine, so I'll just do as I please, I'll live the life I want to live, and when I sin, oh well, grace, right? Brothers and sisters, that's a false understanding of grace. That is not grace at all. So the person then kind of swings from a legalist kind of perspective to gain favor with God through outward ritual and rule keeping to the other side, which is a licentiousness that just simply refers to a kind of lazy, wicked, debased lifestyle. Legalism and licentiousness, those things are not opposites. Actually, they're two sides of the same coin. Both are a fleshly approach to our problem. And what's our problem? Sin. Sin. Both are actually opposed to the true grace of God, which is the key to holiness, as Paul says in Romans 6. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under what? Grace. Yeah. So you say what does that mean? What does that lifestyle look like? What does that look like in the life of a believer? Think of your own life if you're a Christian. Do you look at your life and do you see that sin has no dominion over you? Or do you see the opposite? John's going to help us kind of flesh this out in the text. If you read 1 John you'll see that he's addressing false teachers. He's addressing heretics that had come into the church and drawn people away. Looking back at chapter 1, these false teachers say in verse 6, we have fellowship with God, but John says that they are walking in darkness, they're lying, and they're not practicing the truth. John, he does not mince words, does he? He simply points out the truth and says, don't follow these people, they're liars. John says those who experience true fellowship with God walk in the light, verse 7 of chapter 1, as he himself, being Christ, is in the light. Verses 8 through 10, the false teachers were saying they had no sin and that they had not sinned. Can you imagine someone making such a claim? These false teachers were saying that. John says that they were deceiving themselves and they were making God out to be a liar. So John identifies these false teachers, he identifies their false theology, but John does not want his readers to conclude that Christians are characterized by sin. So what does he do in our text? Before he says, if anyone sins, he clarifies his purpose. Notice what he says again in verse one, my little children, he says that a lot. He says that a lot. We'll get to that here in just a second. But he says, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not Sin. I am writing what? What does he say? These things. What are these things that John mentions here? These things refer to the message. If you let your eyes look back over to chapter one in verse five, these things refer to the fact that God is holy. These things refer to the importance of walking in the light and not in the darkness. It also refers to what he writes in our text that we just read in chapter two verses one through three. But John says, my little children, my little children, John reflects both his pastoral heart here for them. These are his these are his children in the faith. He loves them. He he longs for them. He desires their spiritual well-being. This is an this is an older apostle John. He's experienced a lot of things. He's not a novice. He is. He is. He has advanced in his Christian faith and his Christian walk. And so he cares for these people as a father might care for his little ones or even even as a grandfather might care for his grandchildren. John's lived a long time and so he speaks with experience about how to live a holy life. So you and I do well to pay attention. So what does he say. Let me sum it up in one sentence for you and then we'll flesh it out as we move along. The key to holiness is to understand God's grace as seen in Christ. The key to holiness is not rule-keeping. The key to holiness is not living a life that you want to live, living your own truth or whatever they call it today. The key to holiness is to understand God's grace as seen in Christ. Now, legalists always jump on this, and they give you that warning, right? Well, this kind of a theology, this kind of belief will lead to a lazy Christian life. It'll lead to a lazy lifestyle. It'll lead to, in fact, licentiousness. So when Paul taught about God's grace, he anticipated that in Romans 6. Remember, he asked the question, what shall we say to these things? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And what was his answer? God forbid. Right. God forbid, or may it never be. This means that if we teach God's grace, with the biblical clarity that we should teach it, the thought of continuing in sin that grace may abound will come into your mind. If you understand grace as you should, that thought will enter your mind. Yet if we teach it as the scripture does not, if we hedge grace so carefully that the thought would never even occur to you, then we haven't done a very good job explaining the grace of God. We need to teach grace in light of a biblical understanding of what? Of who we are. Who we are in Christ and who we are apart from Christ. This is our positional reality. We need to think this through. Our positional reality in Adam is what? Guilty. Sinners. In Adam, we all what? Die. Yeah. So that's the reality of it. But in Christ, Our positional reality is what? Forgiven. Right. Pardoned. So John's thought line here, and it's in line with Paul's and it's in line with everybody else, with all of scripture, is that you need to realize that God has graciously forgiven you and He has forgiven you completely. And where is He now? Well, John told us. He's at the right hand of the Father. pleading your case, even when you sin. That's humbling, is it not? It's humbling. Your standing before God does not depend on your performance, but rather on Jesus' blood and righteousness, as the hymn writer said. Properly understanding this truth will not lead you to sin more, but rather to sin less. The key to holiness then is to understand God's grace as it was lavished upon you when Christ died for your sins. So let's try to grasp what this means and then we'll see how it leads to a holy lifestyle. So first, we must understand grace as seen in Christ's sacrifice for our sins. There are three terms here I want you to not miss. If you're taking notes and want to write these down, they're right here in the text. We're just going to walk through it. Three terms to describe Christ's sacrifice for our sins. Number one, he is our advocate with the Father. He's our advocate with the Father. Secondly, he is Jesus Christ the righteous. And thirdly, he is the propitiation for our sins. Then John adds a verse, number two, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. So let's walk through these. The first is this, he is our advocate. It's good to keep this in mind. Each day, brothers and sisters, don't let this become commonplace in your heart and in your thinking. Let this be afresh in your mind each day. Christ is our advocate and He is seated, Mike, at the right hand of the Father now as we speak. The word advocate is from the Greek word translated paraclete. It's used of Jesus Christ only in our text. Nowhere else in scripture but here. Jesus uses the word often though, he uses it to refer to the Holy Spirit. John 14, 16, and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper. Same Greek word. The helper will be, he says with you forever. This refers to one who was called alongside to help, especially in a court of law. It's used in a legal kind of a sense, if you have been accused of a crime, what do you need? Well, you need an attorney, you need somebody to come alongside you to plead your case before the bench. The Holy Spirit comes to believers in Christ's stead to testify of Him and lead us into all truth. The Holy Spirit assures us, as Paul says in Romans 8, that we are the children of God. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit. But here John says Jesus is our advocate where? In heaven. How do we know that? Because it says He is with the Father. With the Father. With, same word used in John 1.1, the word was with God. It means that Jesus is always before the Father. Whenever we need Him, by the way, which is always, I need Thee, O I need Thee, every hour I need Thee. That's true. My wife put that in our house. I don't know if she put that because she's married to me or if she truly needs the Lord. Probably both, as a matter of fact. Probably both. You weren't supposed to say that. You weren't supposed to affirm that. But we need Him. We need Him each day, moment to moment. And we can rest in our faith because He is there. He is there. When we sin and the accuser of the brethren, Revelation 12, charges us as guilty before God, Jesus stands before the Father in our defense. Yes, we are guilty, but in Christ we are pardoned. Why? Because He paid the penalty for that sin by His substitutionary death. You see that positional truth there. In Adam we are guilty, but in Christ, as Paul would say again and again, in Christ, in Him, we are pardoned. So what does God see when He looks upon me? Certainly does not see my sin. He sees that I am in Christ. I am in His Son. And although we should confess our sins, as John says in verse 9 of chapter 1, John does not say, if we confess our sins, we have an advocate. Rather, he says, if anyone sins, if anyone sins, we have an advocate. Our forgiveness and our standing with God do not depend upon anything we do, but rather on the finished work of Christ. If we are His children through the new birth, He is there before the Father on our behalf, even before we confess our sins. He is there. He is there. Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25 says, Therefore He is able also to save forever, or save to the uttermost, as the old authorized version puts it. Therefore He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. He lives, he exists eternally to intercede on behalf of his people. John Calvin and his commentator or commentary says, the intercession of Christ is a continual application of his death for our salvation. What a statement. The intercession of Christ is a continual application of his death for our salvation. Because Jesus Christ is in heaven presenting His shed blood, every person that draws near to God through Christ can know that the accuser has no grounds to convict us. We're guilty as charged, sure, but the penalty is paid. So He pleads our case. But who does He plead our case before? What does John say? The advocate with who? The Father. The Father. Oh my. Who is that? I mean think of that for a moment. Who is the Father? This is the holy and righteous judge of all creation. Right? I mean the one with whom we must all be reconciled to. And so what did he do? He sent his son, his own son, to die in the place of sinners. The father did not know this. The father did not compromise his righteousness. He did not compromise his justice in any way because his sinless son fully met the demands of his holy law. Perfectly. Perfectly. So as Paul says in Romans 3, God is both just and the justifier. of the one who has faith in Jesus. In other words, God's grace does not mean that He tolerantly sets aside His righteous demands or His holiness. Rather, His righteous demands and His holiness was fully satisfied by the death of His own Son. So if we have trusted in Him, our sins are paid, and they're paid in full. What a statement, right? What a truth. Those simple words, Jesus Christ, our advocate. He is our advocate with the Father. Pillow your heads tonight on that truth. Rest in that. He intercedes on our behalf. Secondly, Jesus Christ is the righteous one. He's the righteous one. Each name points to just a critical part of our forgiveness. In the first place, we need a human savior, don't we? We need a human savior. Jesus, only man could atone for the sins of humanity, right? Had to be man. Jesus was completely human, was he not? Yes. Fully. Fully. Not just in the appearance, but some false teachers will say he simply looked to be human, but he really wasn't. That's not true. He was fully human. But we also needed a divine savior. So we needed a human. We needed a divine savior. Jesus is the Christ. He is God's anointed one sent to bear our sins as Isaiah 53 says. As God in human flesh Jesus's death had infinite merit to atone for the sins of all that the father has given to him. But also He is Jesus Christ the righteous. 1 Peter 1, a lamb unblemished and spotless. If he had sinned, he would have had to die for his own sins, but he had no sin. He had none. Fully kept God's law and dependence on the Father. His righteousness is freely imputed to the one who trusts in him. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, he made him who knew no sin to be sin. on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This means that Jesus Christ alone is the only adequate Savior. He is all that we need to stand before a holy God, not in a righteousness of our own, as Paul would say, derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. We can add nothing to what Christ has done. We can add nothing to it. He has paid it all. So he is the righteous one. He's our advocate. Thirdly, he is the propitiation for our sins. This was several, gosh, I don't know. I lose track of time anymore. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what year it is half the time. That's okay. Several, several years ago, we'll just say when I first started preaching, Pastor Jeff sent me up in the mountains to that conference. Remember when you give me a hard time for not wearing a sport coat? Yeah. I won't let you forget about that. But this was a conference and they assigned you a topic. So I just started preaching. I was, you know, kind of just starting to understand some things and they assigned me the topic of propitiation. I thought, oh my. What am I going? I remember spending time at Pastor Jeff's house and be like, OK, you got to help me with this because propitiation, what is that? Had an idea, but I wasn't real sure. So what is it? This is a word that John uses, he uses again in chapter four. Paul uses a similar word in Romans three, we see it again in Hebrews chapter two. This was used in ancient pagan writings to refer to the appeasing of an angry god. Usually by the sacrifice, an offering of a sacrifice, right? If you have done something to make a pagan god mad, you had to do something to placate or appease that particular being and get back in his good graces. But some scholars argue because of the negative connotations of this word, it actually doesn't focus on God's wrath, rather it focuses on man's sins. So they transliterate the word to expiate. or expiation, which means to blot out, to blot out the guilt of our sins by making an atonement. Now, where do we go with that? Well, we should reject any idea of God being angry in a sense that we as humans are angry. We should reject that. Oftentimes I get angry and my anger is not justified. Right? God's anger is always justified. His wrath is against sin. His wrath is against evildoers, not just against sin, but against those who practice sin. Okay, so we can't ignore the biblical concept of the wrath of God. This is his settled hatred and opposition against sin and sinners. So the difference then between the pagan and the biblical concepts is that in scripture, it is never man that takes the initiative to placate or appease God. Rather, it is God who takes the initiative. It's totally different than what we see anywhere else. It is God who takes the initiative to satisfy His own wrath so that His love may be shown to the guilty sinner. It's astonishing, is it not? Rather than man piling up good works, right? Rather than a legalism? No. The Bible says God did what all our good works or efforts could never do. He sent His own Son as the righteous substitute to bear His wrath on the cross. That's what He did on the cross. Do you realize that? God poured out His wrath upon His own Son on the cross. Isaiah, the prophet, says it pleased God to crush Him. Shocking, isn't it? Shocking. John Stott, in his commentary, defines propitiation as an appeasement of the wrath of God by the love of God through the gift of God. That's a great definition. An appeasement of the wrath of God by the love of God through the gift of God. All that we can do is trust Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. It is all of grace. It is all of grace. Roman Catholicism teaches that if anyone says that after they have sinned, they may recover a right standing with God by faith alone, without the sacrament of penance, He is anathema or cursed. I'm just reading that out of the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. You can look that up yourself. That's the position that they take. Roman Catholicism, after you've sinned, you can't get back in a right standing with God without penance. John Calvin exposed that and he countered the false teaching of penance He wrote, what a vast difference there is between saying that Christ is the propitiation for our sins and that God must be propitiated by works. What a difference. He pointed to scripture. That's what those reformers did. They pointed back to the scripture, sola scriptura, they said. He pointed out that the Bible, rather than calling us to penance when we sin, So often as we lapse, we are recalled solely to the satisfaction of Christ. In other words, we have an advocate. We go directly through our advocate to the Father. Calvin went on to argue that the Catholic teaching denies anyone the peace of conscience of knowing that he has adequately satisfied God. Where is there peace in that? It's not there. That's right. It's not there. So John is teaching that we must understand God's grace as seen in Christ's sacrifice for our sins. If we want to grow in holiness we need to understand these truths first. But then he gives us another phrase in verse 2. He says, he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. You say, Tim, what'd you pick such a difficult text for? Well, it's there. We have to deal with it. We can't ignore it. We have to think about what is the best interpreter of scripture. Well, what is the best interpreter of scripture? Scripture. We interpret scripture with scripture. John is intending to counter the heretics. He's dealing with false teachers here. These false teachers were Gnostics. Gnostics believed they had a knowledge that nobody else had. They were enlightened and nobody else was. It was all them. Salvation, the promises of Scripture, everything belonged to them and them alone. They claimed the knowledge of salvation was secret and exclusive and only to them. They believed themselves to be the only ones enlightened, so John throws the door wide open and says, no. Christ propitiated the sins not just for you, not just for the Jew, but also for the Gentiles. For the Greek, he says, God's grace is far more extensive than you can even imagine. Christ's sacrifice is just not for the enlightened few. It is for both Jew and Gentile. So in other words, anyone, right? Anyone, anyone, anywhere, whoever, whoever may call upon the name of the Lord may be saved, right? Whoever trusts in Christ ever repents. will be saved. Revelation chapter 5 and verse 9 states that Jesus purchased for God with His blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Can you imagine the sound we will hear when we are surrounded by the people of every tongue, tribe and nation as we stand before the throne of God? What a sound. does not say that he purchased all people in every group, but some from every group. Jesus himself specifically excluded the world from his high priestly prayer. You want to read that when you go home? John chapter 17. But we must never lose sight of the fact that we as Christians are commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every single person everywhere. Knowing that as the gospel goes forth, the Spirit of God will use it to save those whom He has chosen to save." Always right. Can't be stopped. John's point here is to emphasize the magnitude of God's grace in Christ's sacrifice. This is an offer that extends to, as John says, the world. So how do we apply this to holy living? Said all that to get back to where I started, holy living. Well, understanding God's grace, understanding Christ as our propitiation, our advocate, understanding all these truths will lead us to living a holy life. I want you to know that holy living is possible. It is possible. We can't just say, well, I'm not, you know, I don't know enough or I'm not advanced enough in my faith or whatever. No, holy living is possible. It is commanded and it is possible. John says, so that you may not sin. Now, in this life, we will never attain sinless perfection, but we can live a life where we have a pattern of victory over sin. Consistent victory over sin. Look over to chapter 3. Look over the next page to chapter 3 in verse John. Notice what he says. Verse 7. John says little children. There it is again. Little children. Make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous just as he Christ is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the who? Of the devil. And then he adds in verse nine, skip down to verse nine, chapter three, no one who is born of God practices sin. Christians can and must live holy and righteous lives. We must, we must. So it is possible. And John says, if anyone sins, we have an advocate, the we, do you notice that? If anyone sins, he says, we. Heavenly doesn't say if anyone sins, y'all, as we say here in Bancroft. He says, if anyone sins, we, which includes himself, which includes John, the apostle, the aged apostle, the man who walked with Christ himself is putting himself in the statement and says, we, if anyone sins, including myself, we have an advocate. John was an old man at this time, but he knew that he was not beyond the possibility of sinning. While the trajectory of our lives should be growth and holiness, we will never in this life get to the point where we never sin. That I can promise you. If someone tells you that they don't sin, What he said. Spend some time spend some time with that person and in a matter of time you will see it will rear its ugly head. Understanding God's gracious sacrificial work through Christ will lead to a consistent life of holy living. Meditate on these truths and see if it doesn't change your life. That's John's point here. If you understand what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross, you won't take advantage of it. You won't take advantage of it by sinning, right? You won't have that desire. It'll bother you, it'll hurt you when you sin. So think about God's amazing grace. Meditate on His grace. Think about the one who did not deserve to absorb all the wrath of God. Think about that. Think about the one who is your advocate. Think about the one who propitiated the wrath of God in your place. Brothers and sisters, that will make you hate sin. And that's my prayer, is that we will get to that place as brothers and sisters in Christ, that we will hate, hate it. And instead, we will strive to please our Savior. Almost done. The Apostle Peter urges us to add godly character qualities to our faith in Christ, 2 Peter chapter 1. And he says this in verse 9. Peter writes, For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sin. Amen. There's a change. Remembering what Christ did for you on the cross. Brothers, that will motivate you. Sisters, that will motivate you to cut sin out of your life. Just cut it out. Cut it out and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen. All right, I'm done. You got anything? All right, let's all stand.