Why an Advocate?
There are two important questions to be addressed here:
Why Do We Need an Advocate?
Is Jesus that Advocate?
Why Do We Need an Advocate?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Man’s Condition
Man believed lies about God and sinned (Romans 3:23). This lead to eternal death (Romans 6:23), and since man cannot save himself (John 6:44), he needs help.
Why We Can’t Save Ourselves
- Like electrons spinning around their proton, God created men to spin around Himself. Men sinned and spun out of orbit into isolation and death. Consequently, they need some form of outside intervention to bring them back into orbit from their lost, dark, lonely, and dying place.
- If I have a black smudge on my forehead, I will not even know that it’s there unless I have a mirror to help me to see it. So the law of God helps us to see the smudges in our lives. However, can I clean off the smudge with the mirror? No. I need a washcloth to cleanse myself of the stain—a Red One.
- If man’s sin resulted from rejecting God’s initiated will for him, how can he save himself from sin by rejecting God’s initiated means of salvation for him through Jesus?
How God Saves Us
We have believed lies about God, lies that fill us with fear that won’t allow us to come in contact with His truth and love without it consuming us. If God can’t approach us for fear of destroying us, how can He save us? To solve this problem, we needed someone to show us the truth about sin and death and God’s gentle character. We needed someone to give us a new human template that was capable of aligning with God to become the creature that He had in mind when He first set out to make us. This is what God brings to us in His Son, Jesus (1 John 2:1). He is the Voyager that plunged into outer darkness to bring us back into orbit. He is the Washcloth that cleanses our stain. He is the Slow Burn of Grace that acclimates us to the consuming fire until we can tolerate it.
He is our High Priest that has gone before us into the heavens (Hebrews 4:14).
Is Jesus That Advocate?
To determine whether Jesus is our advocate, we first need to establish that He is God. I won’t say too much on this subject, only a few things that have markedly impressed me of the credibility of Jesus’ claim to be God.
Three Convincing Testimonies to the Deity of Jesus
1 Any reader of the gospels can see that Jesus consistently claimed to be God. The logic of Lord, Liar, or Lunatic came to me from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. His point was that there are only three options when considering the deity of Jesus. Either he is good, bad, or mad. The rub comes, of course, in the fact that close scrutiny of the life of Christ leaves us with only one place to go. Even His critics admit that He was a good man and great teacher. We would have to concur. Like Lee Strobel says, “He was brilliant, had amazing insights into human nature, and enjoyed deep and abiding relationships…In addition, Jesus backed up his claim to being God through miraculous feats of healing, astounding demonstrations of power over nature, unrivaled teaching, divine understanding of people, and with his own resurrection, which was the final authentication of his identity.” If He isn’t a liar or a lunatic, then He has to be Lord.
2 Archaeology has never disproved a biblical reference. It affirms the reliability of the New Testament 100%. Archaeology has established that the gospel author, Luke, was painstakingly accurate in the minor details of his book. If this is the case, on what logical basis can we say that he was naïve and inaccurate in his reporting of far more important matters, like the resurrection of Jesus? Many prestigious archaeologists acknowledge this. The prominent archaeologist, Clifford Wilson, wrote: “Those who know the facts now recognize that the New Testament must be accepted as a remarkably accurate source book.”
3 I’ve saved what is for me the most dynamic proof of the Lordship of Jesus till last. The overwhelming evidence provided by prophecy has always blown me away, especially the astounding Messianic prophecy in Daniel 8 and 9. Lee Strobel describes the upshot well in his book, The Case for Christ:
“Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah, or the Anointed One, who would redeem God’s people. In effect, dozens of these Old Testament prophecies created a fingerprint that only the true Messiah could fit. This gave Israel a way to rule out imposters and validate the credentials of the authentic Messiah. Against astronomical odds—one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion—Jesus, and only Jesus throughout history, matched this prophetic fingerprint. This confirms Jesus’ identity to an incredible degree of accuracy.”
The Witness of Saint Paul and Saint John
Saint Paul is clear that Jesus is our High Priest: “We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man… But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:1,2,6).
We can’t miss the fact that Jesus has entered into heaven and from there ministers to His living sanctuaries on earth as an advocate and High Priest. Paul is also clear that there is but one mediator: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
And in Revelation Saint John sees Jesus ministering as our High Priest (Revelation 1:12-13, Revelation 8:3-4, Revelation 11:19). There Jesus stands symbolically among all the furniture of the sanctuary, sharing with men the truth unveiled through His sacrifice and revealing to them the heart of the Father through the Spirit.
