Josh’s Thoughts

And He Shall Be Called…"The Advocate" June 15, 2007

In my last post on the Names of Christ I wrote about the name “Amen,” which is found in Rev. 3:14. If you read that post then you may recall that I said that faithfulness is not something that Jesus does, faithfulness is what He Is. There’s a tremendous difference between doing something and being something!

“Amen” is certainly one of my favorite Names of Christ. One reason that it is one of my favorites is because it opens up a window to understanding Christ and who He Is. After all, if Christ wasn’t faithful then why would any of His other Names matter? Why would it matter if He called Himself “Redeemer” or “Savior” if He couldn’t be counted on to tell the truth? Yet when we understand that Jesus is not just faithful, but He is faith–when we understand that He is not just truthful but that He is Truth–then our understanding of the Nature of Christ takes on a whole new dimension.

Now, some readers might be thinking, “Yeah, Josh, I understand the difference between doing something and being something, but I still don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of it; Why do the Names of Christ matter so much anyway?”

Well, dear Reader, I’m glad you asked 🙂

The reason it matters is because, quite simply, Jesus claimed to be God (John 8:56-59; cf. Ex. 3:14). He didn’t claim to be a spiritual guru, He didn’t claim to be helping people find the light inside of themselves or anything of that nature. No, Jesus claimed to be God Himself. The Big Cheese. The Top Dog. The Boss. Papa. The Head Honcho Himself. More than that, one New Testament writer said that Jesus is “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature” (Heb. 1:3), and another writer said that God “lives in light that no one can come near….No human has ever seen God or ever can see Him” (1 Tim. 6:16). If we put these two Scriptures together then they add up to one simple fact: No one can see God, but we can understand Him by looking at Jesus. In other words, Jesus our only way to know God and to come to understand Him. We will only know God by knowing Jesus.

So if we truly want to know what God is like then we need to look at Christ and what He was like.

And what’s the best way to do that? I am convinced that the best way to understand what Christ was like is to study the Names that He used for Himself.

Now up until this point I have been rehashing things that I’ve already written. I am doing this for two reasons. First, it’s been a few weeks since my last post, and it’s good to have a refresher. Second, reviewing this information makes for an excellent introduction into the Name that I am about to write about: “The Advocate.”

I ended my last post with a couple of suggested Scripture passages for further reading. One of those passages was 1 John 2:1-6, and I’d like to look at that now:

1Jn 2:1-6 HCSB
(1)  My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father–Jesus Christ the righteous One.
(2)  He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.
(3)  This is how we are sure that we have come to know Him: by keeping His commands.
(4)  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” without keeping His commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
(5)  But whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God is perfected. This is how we know we are in Him:
(6)  the one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked.

Now there’s two words in this passage that immediately jump out. The reason that they jump out is because they are words we don’t use much anymore. The first is advocate, and it means “one called alongside” [1]. The basic meaning of the word is defense attorney [2], but there’s a little more to it then that. We’ll come back to it in a moment. The second word that jumps out is propitiation. That’s a word that many people have probably never ever heard before–we just don’t use it today! I’m not going to deal with the word propitiation in this post, I only mention it so that the passage will make more sense. Basically the word propitiation means covering [3]. Let’s look at the passage again with the words advocate and propitiation replaced by their definitions, and then it might make a bit more sense:

1Jn 2:1-6 HCSB
(1)  My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a defense attorney with the Father–Jesus Christ the righteous One.
(2)  He Himself is the covering for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.
(3)  This is how we are sure that we have come to know Him: by keeping His commands.
(4)  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” without keeping His commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
(5)  But whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God is perfected. This is how we know we are in Him:
(6)  the one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked.

The meaning of this passage is quite clear; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand it! John is saying that we should not commit sins, but if we do commit a sin then we have a defense attorney ready and waiting to defend us. Who is that defense attorney? Well, His Name is Jesus. He’s The Advocate.

That concept alone is beautiful! But what if I told you there was even more meaning in this passage?

Let’s use an example to explain this.

Suppose you committed a crime. Not a big crime, just a small one. Let’s say that you ran a red light and got pulled over by a police officer and given a ticket. The police officer has your traffic violation on camera; He knows what you did and you know it to. There’s no getting out of it. You ran the red light, and now you’re going to pay the price in the form of a speeding ticket. So what do you do? Well, if you’re smart you just pay the ticket. No point in trying to get out of it. But let’s say that you’re not smart. Let’s say that you go before the judge and try to get out of the ticket.

You wait for your court date to come around and you enter the court room. You stand before the judge, and…what do you say? Do you claim that you didn’t commit the crime? The police officer knows that you did it. He has it on video! Do you try to come up with some lame excuse? What do you do?

Obviously, this isn’t a good situation to be in!

But let’s take this illustration a step further. Let’s say that you didn’t just run a red light. Let’s say that you did something worse. Far worse. Let’s say that you found out that your spouse cheated on you, and in a fit of rage you shot them. Now let’s say that a nosy neighbor saw the fight through the window and got it all on video tape. What do you say when you go before the judge? What do you do?

What if you’re the spouse who cheated? You’re a wife or a husband with a spouse and children who depend on you. You have a family to take care of and children who look up to you. In a fit of lust, with no excuse, you fall into sexual sin with a co-worker. You’ve just committed a crime against your spouse. It’s not anything that will send you to jail, but in the eyes of your family it’s far worse than murder. You’ve betrayed them. What do you do?

If you were in any of these three situations then you’re wrong. There’s no excuse. There’s no getting out of it. There’s no reasons. You’re just wrong. Period.

So what do you do?

Interestingly enough, this is the position that we find ourselves in spiritually whenever we commit any sin, no matter how small. James wrote that if a person slipped up in just one tiny point of God’s law then that person was guilty before God (James 2:10). So whenever we commit a sin–whether it be a “big one” like adultery or a “small one” like a lie–we find ourselves standing spiritually before our Judge: God.

What do we say? What do we do?

We have no excuse. We can’t say that we didn’t commit the sin. He knows that we did. We can’t say that we’re innocent. He knows that we’re not.

So now we turn to 1 John 2:1 and read that if we commit sin we have a defense attorney: Jesus. But earlier in this post I said that the word advocate has a little different meaning than just defense attorney. The reason I said that is because the role that Jesus plays is a little different than that of a human defense attorney. What’s the difference? It’s real simple, but it’s real crucial:

A human defense attorney tries to proclaim our innocence, but Jesus proclaims our guilt.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

Jesus does not get us off the hook for our sin by just claiming that we were innocent or by trying to make excuses for us. No, Jesus knows that we are guilty. So what does He do? In verse 2 we find the answer: He covers our sin.

That’s it. It’s gone. Covered. Done away with. The memory remains for us, but not for God. Why? Because Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, has come to stand beside us and to use His blood to cover our sin.

So we find that Jesus’ role is so much more than that of a defense attorney. Sin demanded a price, and that price was death (Rom. 6:23), but Jesus paid the price. Now when we commit sin He simply points to the blood and the sin is erased in the mind of God, never to be remembered again.

We carry the memory of our sin, but God doesn’t. We feel guilt, but God has no idea why we are feeling guilty. We feel shame, but God has no idea why. For “As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12).

References:

1. John Jr MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, electronic ed. (Nashville: Word Pub., 1997, c1997). 1 Jn 2:1.
2. Ibid.
3. “Propitiation.” King James Dictionary

And He Shall Be Called…"The Amen" May 28, 2007

Wow, it’s hard to believe that this is my first post in the entire month of May! Let me tell you guys a little bit about what this month has been like:

• May 3-5th – worked 13-hour days
• 6th – Spent all day doing errands, went to church
• 7th – 11th – Spent all week commuting to Greenville for training
• 12th – Friend’s birthday lunch, did errands, went dancing
• 13th – Mother’s Day! Can’t remember what I did, since Mum was out of town
• 14th – 16th – Worked 13-hour days
• 17th – Dr’s appointment, helped friends move, younger brother’s graduation, went dancing
• 18th – Spent all day buying camping gear and getting ready for my awesome camping trip
• 19th – 20th – Awesome camping trip, rolled out at 5:30 AM on the 20th so we could get back in time for church; Younger brother’s graduation party at 5, family in town so visited with them afterwards
• 21st – 23rd – Family in town, spent quite a bit of time with them, plus two small study groups, errands, etc.
• 24th – 26th – Worked 13-hour days
• 27th – Went hiking, went to cookout at church, hung out with friends
• 28th – Back at work! But it’s a holiday so it’s slow, so now I’m writing this post!

Ok, so now let me tell you guys why I shared all of that; there really is a method to my madness!

The point is, there’s a lot going on in my life, just like there’s a lot going on in everyone’s life. Now I absolutely love having a busy life; God has blessed me with so many wonderful friends and with so much to do…but sometimes it can be hard to remain faithful to all of the various commitments that I have. Sometimes it’s hard to find time for all of the things that I need to do. Sometimes it’s really easy to overbook myself and schedule one thing too many, and then I find myself having to back out on something that I’ve promised a friend that I would do.

I don’t know about you, but I feel horrible when that happens. I feel horrible when I’ve promised someone that I’ll do something and then I find that I’m unable to follow through with it. I try my best to accomplish everything that I’ve committed to, but sometimes it’s really hard.

I think we’ve all experienced those times when we’re unable to keep a commitment to a friend, and I also think that we’ve all experienced times when we’ve been let down by a friend, a parent, or a loved one. One of the worst feelings in the world is to have someone who should care for us–like a parent, a husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend–let us down. I think we’ve all experienced that pain.

Here’s the good news, though: Jesus never does that!

Now I know that might sound a little bit corny, but allow me to explain.

In my last post I said that I was studying the Names of Christ this summer, and I also said that the first Name that I am studying is “The Amen.” Jesus called Himself “the Amen” in Rev. 3:14, which says:

Rev 3:14 CEV
(14) This is what you must write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: I am the one called Amen! I am the faithful and true witness and the source of God’s creation. Listen to what I say.

Most of us only think of the word “Amen” when we finish saying a prayer. You know, “God bless this food, don’t let it kill me, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.” We think of the word “amen” as something that we say at the end of a prayer, but most people don’t really know what the word means.

The King James dictionary says that the word “amen” means “faithful, true, certain” [1]. One Greek dictionary defines it as “firm, steady, trustworthy” [2]. Now read Rev. 3:14 again with the definition of the word “amen” substituted:

Rev 3:14 CEV
(14) This is what you must write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: I am the one called faithful, true, certain, firm, steady, and trustworthy! I am the faithful and true witness and the source of God’s creation. Listen to what I say.

I don’t know about you, but when I read the Scripture with the definition substituted I find that the verse takes on a whole new meaning.

You see, it is so hard to find people today who are trustworthy. It is so hard to be trustworthy ourselves! We have all let down those who we care about, and we have all been let down by those we care about. But Jesus took the words “faithful, true, certain; firm, steady, trustworthy,” and He applied them to Himself as a proper Name.

You see, faithfulness is not just something that Jesus does, faithfulness is what He Is!

I find this concept so overwhelming! In a world where unfaithfulness abounds–in a world where supposedly reputable news stations run stories examining whether or not Americans are a bit strange when they feel guilty for cheating on their spouses [3]; where people are consumed with what others can do for them, instead of what they can do for others; in a world where parents abandon children and children abandon parents–it’s hard to imagine someone who is the epitome of faithfulness. It’s hard to imagine someone who is not only faithful, but someone who incarnates faithfulness.

Yet that is exactly what Jesus claims to do.

Faithfulness is not just what He does, faithfulness is what He Is.

Even more beautiful is the fact that God’s faithfulness to us does not depend on our faithfulness to Him. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that Christians can just go out and do whatever we want. I do believe that the proof of Christianity is found in our lifestyle (cf. Mat. 7:15-23; Gal. 5:17-26), but I also believe that all of us make mistakes. Every one of us slips up and falls. The only perfect person to ever walk the face of this planet was Jesus. Every one before Him and since Him has blown it. The awesome thing, though, is that Jesus promises to remain faithful to us even when we are not faithful to Him! Check this Scripture out:

2Ti 2:11-13 CEV
(11) Here is a true message: “If we died with Christ, we will live with him.
(12) If we don’t give up, we will rule with him. If we deny that we know him, he will deny that he knows us.
(13) If we are not faithful, he will still be faithful. Christ cannot deny who he is.”

Again, I’m not saying that we can just all go do whatever we want and still be saved. What I am saying is that if a person slips up and falls then Christ is still there for them. It doesn’t matter how many times a person falls, and it doesn’t matter how many times they fail. All that matters is that they never give up. 

For there is truly nothing that can separate us from the arms of our Father.

Scriptures for additional reading:

• Ps. 103:8-14 (HCSB)
• 1 John 2:1-6 (HCSB); 1 John 2:1-6 (AMP)

References:

1. King James Dictionary
2. “G281”, The Complete Word Study Dictionary
3. “French Men Don’t Get Caught”. MSN, “Lifestyle: Men”. <http://men.msn.com/articlebl.aspx?cp-documentid=4096355>. Accessed 5-28-2007.

What’s In A Name? April 30, 2007

A few days ago in this post I wrote about how I plan to spend some time studying the Names of Christ this summer, in an effort to get to know Him better. Before I start getting into the Names of Christ, I thought it would be good to explain a little bit more about why I decided to study His Names.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the reason that I am doing this is to get to know the Christ behind all the theology. But some might be wondering why I choose to do this by studying His Names and titles. After all, a Name is just an identifier, right?

Well, that’s the way that it is today, but that’s not the way that it was in biblical times. Today we use names for identification and nothing more. For instance, my name is Joshua Spiers, and people call me Josh or Joshua. If I am in a place where there are several Joshua’s, then people might call me Spiers, or Joshua Spiers. If things got really confusing then people could identify me by my full name: Joshua Michael Spiers.

Today parents pick names for their children that have meaning to the parents, but those names ultimately serve only as a way of identifying the person. Many people probably could not even tell you the meaning of their names.

But in Bible times it was very different. A name wasn’t meant to just to identify you, it was meant to tell other people something about you. In other words, your name said something about the type of person that you were. This wasn’t always the case, of course, but it was very common.

For instance, Jacob’s name literally means “heel grabber” [1]. He was named this because he was holding onto his twin brother’s heel when he was born (Gen. 25:26). In another Bible passage a man’s name is Nabal, which means “fool” [2]. Once again, people’s names didn’t always represent who they were, but the practice was very common. The point is that names meant something in Biblical times; a name was more than a way of identifying a person, it was a way of finding out something about them. This practice was so important that Nelson’s Illustrated Manner’s and Customs of the Bible (an excellent book about biblical cultures) says, “Jewish people believed that they must first know a person’s name before they could know the person themselves” [3].  

So let me ask this question: If a person’s name was so important in ancient times, then how much more important was the name of a god? If ancient cultures believed that a person’s name said something about who they were, then wouldn’t they believe the same thing about the names of their gods? Interestingly enough, archaeology confirms that this is exactly the case. One study Bible says that “In ancient times a ‘name’ represented the actual nature or essence or power of the person or god that it designated” [4]. Catch that? People believed that knowing the name of a god told you something about that god’s power.

So it’s obvious from all of this that a name carried extreme importance in biblical times–especially when it was the name of a god. This explains the exchange between Moses and God in front of the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-22). When God told Moses to go to Egypt and demand the emancipation of the Israelites, one of the questions that Moses asked God was: “I will tell the people of Israel that the God their ancestors worshiped has sent me to them….But what should I say, if they ask me your name?” (13 CEV). In other words, Moses wanted to know the Name of God. Judaism was not a formal religion yet, so Moses only knew Jehovah as someone Who his ancestors worshiped. Moses wanted to know Jehovah personally, so He asked for His Name! God’s response was very important. He replied, “I am the eternal God….So tell them that the LORD, whose name is ‘I Am,’ has sent you….This is my name forever, and it is the name that people must use from now on” (14 CEV).

It is obvious that this exchange was of supreme importance. God revealed Himself in a very personal way to Moses, and He did so by giving Moses His Name. The Name was never meant to simply identify God (although it served that function as well), but the Name that God gave Moses was designed to identify who God was, and to say something about Him.

Now that I’ve explained all of this it might make more sense why I have decided to get to know Christ better this summer by taking the time to study His Names. The most important Name is, of course, “Jesus,” which basically means “Salvation of Yahweh [Jehovah]” [5]. However there are hundreds of other Names that describe Jesus as well.

The first name that I am studying is from Rev. 3:14. In this passage Jesus calls Himself “the Amen.” The next post that I make about the Names of Christ will be looking at this Name and talking a little bit about what it means.

(Rev 3:14 CEV) This is what you must write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: I am the one called Amen! I am the faithful and true witness and the source of God’s creation. Listen to what I say.

References:

1. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.
2. Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999). 1 Ki 18:22-23.
3. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.
4. The Open Bible : New King James Version, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998, c1997). Ge 1:1.
5. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.