1 John 2:1-2, "Dirty Children Made Clean"

There is a guy we know named Jim. Because our world is a broken place, we have people like Jim. Jim is a lawyer that works in the court system as a child advocate. Some children experience great injustices, the death of their parents, or abuse, or neglect, and the court system decides what should be done for them. Jim assesses the living situation of children who have experienced injustice to advocate a just situation to the court on behalf of the child.

I bring this up because in our passage today, John will talk to us like children. Children who need an advocate. Maybe you don’t like to be spoken to like a child. But try to take this as it was intended, as a message from a loving older Christian leader to those under his spiritual care. Here’s the message. As God’s child, don’t expect to get everything right. But good news, Jesus makes us right. Ironically, though he’s speaking to little children, John’s uses three big words that we will need to understand if we are to get the whole message.

Sin

John addresses these believers with a term of endearment, “my little children”. He is their spiritual father as an apostle, and he has hopes for them. “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” We all have hopes for our kids, whether they are biological or spiritual. John hopes his spiritual children will grow in their love for God and love for others in ways that will overcome their sin.

The Bible talks about sin in two ways. One way is missing a target or breaking God’s laws. It may use the word transgression. The other way the Bible talks about sin is a stain on your soul, an impurity from guilt. You might sometimes see the word iniquity used in this sense. It’s the corruption that comes from hiding evil in dark places in your heart. Sin is the opposite of love for God and love for others. In other words sin is not just wrong actions, but also a corruption in your heart. Sin is a corrupted self-love that shows up in words, attitudes, and actions that violate God’s will.

If the blood of Jesus cleanses the believer of all sin (1:7), it would be nonsense for the believer in Jesus to run right back to the sins that defiled them. The believer in Jesus is in fellowship with God. Fellowship is sharing. One gift God shares with us is the joy of freedom from sin dwelling in us. John hopes his children will experience this freedom and joy.

But John also has a realistic view of the life of faith. Children get dirty. That’s what children do. I can remember as a kid thinking to myself, I put on a clean pair of socks this morning. How are they so filthy by lunchtime? John knows that no one lives perfectly in the cleansing all the time.

“But if anyone does sin...” Even children in fellowship with God the Father, we won’t get it all right. But God is a loving Father, and He has provided someone to help us.

Advocate

“We have and advocate...” John includes himself in the number of those who sin and need Jesus Christ. The apostles are not our advocates. It is Jesus Christ the righteous. An advocate is someone who comes alongside us to help us. An advocate is someone stronger who will defend us from accusers and help us to stand through a trial.

Jesus Christ, as our advocate is active on our behalf, bringing our concerns and requests to God the Father. Not that the Father somehow needs to be convinced to love us. But the point is that Jesus is righteous, so His requests on our behalf are more pure than the requests we make for ourselves.

John didn’t invent this idea. He got it from Jesus Himself. When John had followed Jesus as a disciple in Jesus’ ministry on earth, Jesus had been their advocate, protector, defender, healer, friend, helper, who prayed for them to the Father. On the night Jesus was arrested and sent to the cross, Jesus promised that even though He was going away, He would give them another advocate to be with them forever. He calls that advocate the Spirit of truth to dwell with us and in us.

So here’s the picture: a Father in heaven and His children on earth. Two advocates. Jesus has gone to heaven to advocate for us with the Father, and His very first request is the Father send us the Spirit who will advocate for us here on earth. We need both advocates. Here’s why.

When we sin, we need reconciliation with God the Father. Jesus reconciles us. This is where the next big word comes in.

Propitiation

In verse 2, John says that Jesus is the “propitiation for our sins”. Propitiation is an atonement, usually through sacrifice. But atonement is another big word, so maybe that doesn’t help. Maybe the best way to understand this is a parable (imperfect, but simple).

There is a father who asks his child to clean their room.

The child begins well, but as many children do, gets distracted. While putting away their toys, finds the finger paints. They haven’t played with the finger paints for a while, so they decide to take a break and paint for a while. The break turns into the next two hours of painting, and they paint a park scene, and they get out other toys to play in the park, etc.

By the end of the afternoon, the child has not cleaned their room. Instead they have made it a bigger mess. The father walks in, and both of them immediately recognize what has happened. The child is truly sorry, but this doesn’t fix anything. The mess needs to be cleaned, and the disobedience deserves punishment.

At this moment, the child’s sibling walks in on the scene. This sibling asks the father forgive the disobedient child, then proceeds to throw away the finger paints and clean the room. The father is moved with love for his children and the sacrifice of the sibling, and accepts the work of the sibling as an act of reconciliation. He forgives the guilty child and fellowship is restored. This sibling has made propitiation. Propitiation appeases the wrath of the father for the sins of the child by establishing justice through perfect obedience and loving sacrifice, and reconciles the child who was sorry for their sin to the loving father.

Our sins against God and others are much more serious than a messy room. And sin is deadlier than finger paints. We have hatred, jealousy, selfish ambition, immorality, and every unclean thing in our hearts. The sacrifice of atonement is therefore more serious. Jesus receives all of these sins upon Himself in His crucifixion, and the death of His body puts them to death.

But Jesus was raised from the dead, and even in His glorified body remain the scars from the nails and spear. There is Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of grace with His Father, a constant testimony to the work of atonement He has finished on our behalf, so that should we sin, the Father needs no reminder. Jesus is a constant advocate. He is (present tense) the propitiation for our sins.

And don’t think God the Father needs to be won over, and forgives reluctantly. Glenn Barker, in his commentary on this epistle says, “God is not over against man as the opponent since God is the one who sends the Son in order that as Father he may grant forgiveness to the confessor. It is sin that is the offense. It must be atoned for so that the just punishment due the sinner can be averted. The blot of the sin must also be removed so that the believer will not rest under the burden of guilt and defilement. Both actions are necessary for the restoration of the child to the Father.”

At this point, we can circle back to last week. Why is confession so important? The answer tells us why we have two advocates. Jesus Christ is our advocate in Heaven with the Father. He has given us the Holy Spirit to be with us our advocate.

2. We need another Advocate, the Holy Spirit because when we confess our sin, our guilt is exposed, and we need someone to minister to us.

God does not just remove the guilt of sin. He also removes the shame. Jesus took both the guilt and the shame of sin on Himself on the cross. Treated like the lowliest criminal, stripped naked, insulted, beaten, tortured, and crucified. Jesus bore our shame. But sometimes we still feel shame.

Confessing my sin to a trusted brother pulls that sin into the light, and when the Holy Spirit in you declares that because of the cross I am forgiven in Jesus’ name, I are freed from the shame and my heart is healed. I am known and I am loved. At that moment, the Holy Spirit is testifying to my spirit on behalf of God the Father’s that I am His child. Every time you ask forgiveness in Jesus’ name, you demonstrate that you have the Spirit of Christ, and you can receive these words for yourself, “you are My child, and in you I am well pleased.”

The power of sin is death, the death that comes from keeping our sin hidden in the darkness so that it corrupts, festers, and rots our soul. We keep our sin in the dark because of our shame. When we bring our sin into the light of God, repent, and believe the work of Jesus on the cross was sufficient propitiation, we are freed not just from guilt, but from shame. That is total freedom.

And we have an older brother who not only cleans our room and advocates with the Father who loves us. He walks with us to teach us a new way to live. To have our fun and a clean room too, so to speak.

Look at the final line of the passage. 1 John 2:2 “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” This is your message to everyone you come in contact with this week. Who do you know that needs freedom from guilt and shame? Who do you know that needs to know the love of God the Father who accepts them just as they are, mistakes and all, and has provided for their forgiveness and reconciliation through His Son, Jesus Christ? This message is for them too.

Questions for Discussion

Is there anything you learned as you applied last week’s passage through the week?

What are some ways recognizing that we are children is helpful in understanding our relationship with God?

What do we learn about ourselves in this passage?

How would you define sin in your own words, and how does that compare with the biblical definition?

What do we learn about God in this passage?

What kind of a Father do we have in God, according to what we have learned so far in 1 John?

What’s the point of John writing, “I write these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin...”? Is that self-defeating language? Why or why not?

How does the realization that Jesus is our advocate with the Father impact the way you think about, and therefore your relationship with, Jesus and the Father?

How would you describe propitiation in your own words? What is helpful for you about realizing that Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for your sins in the present tense?