Jesus Christ - the best attorney in town?

Although I don’t watch a lot of TV, I do like detective dramas. When someone is caught ‘red handed’ and the evidence is so overwhelmingly stacked against them, the police will sometimes say that the offender will need ‘the best lawyer money can buy’.  As we stand before God, we all have to confess that we are completely guilty and have no hope of getting off the charges. We have nothing to plead in mitigation. God saw everything and knows everything. And the stakes could not be higher, for the offence is of the gravest kind and the sentence is death. If ever anyone needed a crack lawyer it is us, but what human advocate could possibly get us off God’s charge against us?

But a human representative is exactly what we have, for 1 John 2:1  tells us that we have an Advocate who represents us before God - Jesus Christ himself. When we need it most, Jesus Christ is the best representative we could possibly get. But he is not a clever lawyer who will trip up God’s case against us and get us off on a technicality. Jesus knows our guilt better than we do. But he is absolutely guaranteed to succeed in his defence. How could that be? 100%  of his clients are guilty, yet 100% get off scot-free?

Well, it’s because Jesus Christ is a highly unusual kind of legal representative who pays his clients’ penalties himself. Imagine, if such a thing were possible, a barrister who got his clients off by paying the fines himself and serving their custodial sentences. But this illustration isn’t quite sufficient, because unlike such a barrister, Jesus has already paid our penalties in advance – once for all, one sacrifice for all the sin of mankind.

That is why, if we do fall into sin's trap, we can be absolutely confident of the effectiveness of our Advocate. When he stands before God to speak in our defence he presents his pierced hands as evidence that our crime has been paid for. That is a defence that no-one can argue with.

‘My dear children, I write these things to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. 1 John 2:1’