Please enjoy a selected devotional reading from renown English Baptist preacher John Bunyan, brought to you by The Duke Consulting Group.
Please enjoy a selected devotional reading from renown English Baptist preacher John Bunyan, brought to you by The Duke Consulting Group” located at drrogerdduke.com
"Christ our Advocate: Full Vindication against the Justice of God"
It is necessary for the more full and ample vindication of the justice of God against all the cavils of the infernal spirits. Christ died on earth to declare the justice of God to men in his justifying the ungodly. God stands upon the vindication of his justice, as well as upon the act thereof. Hence the Holy Ghost, by the prophets and apostles, so largely disputes for the vindication thereof, while it asserts the reality of the pardon of sin, the justification of the unworthy, and their glorification with God (Rom 3:24; Isa, Jer, Mal; Rom 3, 4, 8; Gal 3,4). I say, while it disputes the justness of this high act of God against the cavils of implacable sinners. Now the prophets and apostles, in those disputes by which they seek to vindicate the justice of God in the salvation of sinners, are not only ministers of God to us, but advocates for him; since, as Elihu has it, they “speak on God’s behalf,” or, as the margin has it, “I will show thee that there are yet words for God,” words to be spoken and pleaded against his enemies for the justification of his actions (Job 36:2). Now, as it is necessary that there should be advocates for God on earth to plead for his justice and holiness, while he saves sinners, against the cavils of an ungodly people, so it is necessary that there should be an Advocate also in heaven, that may there vindicate the same justice and holiness of God from all those charges that the fallen angels are apt to charge it with, while it consents that we, though ungodly, should be saved.
That the fallen angels are bold enough to charge God to his face with unjustness of language, is evident in the 1st and 2nd of Job; and that they should not be as bold to charge him with unjustness of actions, nothing can be showed to the contrary. Further, that God seeks to clear himself of this unjust charge of Satan is as manifest; for all the troubles of his servant Job were chiefly for that purpose. And why he should have one also in heaven to plead for the justness of his doing in the forgiveness and salvation of sinners appears also as necessary, even because there is one, even an Advocate with the Father, or on the Father’s side, seeking to vindicate his justice, while he pleads with him for us, against the devil and his objections. God is wonderfully pleased with his design in saving of sinners; it pleases him at the heart. And since he also is infinitely just, there is need that an Advocate should be appointed to show how, in a way of justice as well as mercy, a sinner may be saved.
The good angels did not at first see so far into the mysteries of the gospel of the grace of God, but that they needed further light therein for the vindication of their Lord as servants. Wherefore they yet did pry and look narrowly into it further, and also bowed their heads and hearts to learn yet more, by the church, of “the manifold wisdom of God” (I Peter 1:12; Eph 3:9,10). And if the standing angels were not yet, to the utmost, perfect in the knowledge of this mystery, and yet surely they must know more thereof than those that fell could do, no wonder if those devils, whose enmity could not but animate their ignorance, made, and do make, their cavils against justice, insinuating that it is not impartial and exact, because it, as it is just, justifies the ungodly.
That Satan will quarrel with God I have showed you, and that he will also dispute against his works with the holy angels, is more than intimated by the apostle Jude, verse 9, and why not quarrel with, and accuse the justice of God as unrighteous, for consenting to the salvation of sinners, since his best qualifications are most profound and prodigious attempts to dethrone the Lord God of his power and glory.
Nay, all this is evident, since “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” And again, I say, it is evident that one part of his work as an Advocate, is to vindicate the justice of God while he pleads for our salvation, because he pleads a propitiation; for a propitiation respects God as well as us; the appeasing his wrath, and the reconciling of his justice to us, as well as the redeeming us from death and hell; yea, it therefore doth the one, because it doth the other. Now, if Christ, as an Advocate, pleads a propitiation with God, for whose conviction doth he plead it? Not for God’s; for he has ordained it, allows it, and gloriously acquiesces therein, because he knows the whole virtue thereof. It is therefore for the conviction of the fallen angels, and for the confounding of all those cavils that can be invented and objected against our salvation by those most subtle and envious ones.
Source: John Bunyan, The Work of Jesus Christ as Advocate: Clearly Explained, and Largely Improved, for the Benefit of All Believers. This was excerpted from The Complete Works of John Bunyan, available from the E4 Group Electronic Software Library CD, internet https://www.freebiblesoftware.com/ This treatise is Bunyan’s exposition of 1 John 2:1. According to https://truthinheart.com/EarlyOberlinCD/CD/Bunyan/OpenInBrowser.html, this treatise was published in 1689, one year after John Bunyan’s death. The interested reader is also encouraged to see the on line library located at; https://www.mountzion.org/johnbunyan/text/bun-trinity.htm, for more of Bunyan’s works.
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