BIG IDEA:
THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST ALLOWS US TO TAKE SIN SERIOUSLY WITHOUT DESPAIRING
I. (:1a) OUR GOAL IS TO COMPLETELY AVOID ALL SIN
(TO TAKE SIN SERIOUSLY)
(this would involve perfectly acting upon John’s instructions at the end of Chapter 1 = to take sin seriously. But no believer can measure up to this standard.)
A. Tone of Endearment
“My little children”
B. Goal of Avoiding Sin
“I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.”
II. (:1b-2) OUR FAILURE CASTS US UPON THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST
A. Christ our Advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ the Righteous
1. Reality of Sin
“And if anyone sins”
God has made gracious provision for the reality of our frequent failures.
2. Recourse to Plead our Cause
“we have an Advocate with the Father”
Stott: (quoting Smith) “Our Advocate does not plead that we are innocent or adduce extenuating circumstances. He acknowledges our guilt and presents His vicarious work as the ground of our acquittal.”
3. Right God-Man for the Job
“Jesus Christ the righteous”
Not one who has to resort to questionable devices to try to confuse the issue or dream up some technicality to steal an acquittal.
B. Christ our Propitiation
1. For our sins
“And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins”
Stott: “There can, therefore, be no question of men appeasing an angry deity by their gifts. The Christian propitiation is quite different, not only in the character of the divine anger but in the means by which it is propitiated. It is an appeasement of the wrath of God by the love of God through the gift of God. The initiative is not taken by man, not even by Christ, but by God Himself in sheer unmerited love. His wrath is not averted by any external gift, but by His own self-giving to die the death of sinners. This is the means He has Himself contrived by which to turn His own wrath away (cf. Pss. lxxviii. 38, lxxxv. 2, 3, ciii. 8-10; Mi. vii. 18, 19).”
2. For the sins of the whole world
“and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
Boice: “If John, as a Jew, is actually thinking of the propitiatory sacrifice as it was practiced in Israel, particularly on the Day of Atonement — and, how could he not? — then it may well be of himself and other Jews as opposed to Gentiles that he uses the word ‘us’ or ‘we’ in this phrase. The contrast would therefore be, not between Christians and the as-yet-unsaved world, but between those Jews for whom Christ died and those Gentiles for whom Christ died, both of whom now make up or eventually will make up the church. This use of the first person plural pronoun is not impossible in that John has used it in several different senses already.
According to this view, what John wishes to say is that Jesus fulfilled the pattern set by the Old Testament sacrifices but that He did so in such a way that now Gentiles as well as Jews are saved.”