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SERMON VI.

THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST.

1 JOHN ii. 1.-" My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not; and if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

THIS is temple-language, derived from the act of the High Priest on the great day of atonement. On that day the entire economy was summed up within the veil. He who had not been present at that intercessory scene had not seen the heart of the Jewish dispensation. We too have an Advocate with the Father; and in His advocacy, within the heavenly veil, the Christian economy, as a system of mediation, reaches its loftiest point.

But why is this advocacy here referred to? A man is supposed to have sinned; a fact which loses none of its. tremendous significance by its frequency; a fact which, familiar as it may be to us, can never become ordinary or indifferent to the government of God;--every sin having all the freshness and enormity of a first sin to it-a sin containing a possible universe of evil. But here is a sin of peculiar turpitude. "There is, indeed, a sin unto death" (says the apostle), including, I suppose, the rejection of atonement, intercession, Christianity itself. And the sin before us is supposed to be only one step short of that; yet even for this there is mercy. Here is guilt so great that it is made hypothetical, yet confronted by an actual provision of mercy -the last conceivable aggravation of guilt met by the highest conceivable reach and arrangement of forgiveness;-a man who has exhausted all the ordinary resources of grace, but

whose last effort at sin brings to light, and puts in stress, an expedient of mercy which leaves even his fears nothing to desire.

This, then, is our subject-Guilt of the deepest aggravation, met by Mediation of transcendent efficacy.

I.

First, here is supposed to be guilt of the deepest aggravation. To imagine that the apostle merely means that sin admits of forgiveness, is to ignore all that goes before, and much that comes after. He has despatched the subject of ordinary sin and its forgiveness. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." He has conducted his readers through the grand temple of Christian truth, where God is seen to be light, and where Christ is seen reflecting that light, as the light of life, on the great brotherhood of Christian souls-and they are seen in the calm ecstacy of fellowship, pressing in, getting nearer, opening their souls that God might flow through them, that their joy might be full. But why does he take them into this temple, and lift this veil, and lead them into this radiance, and point them to this Divine communion, and thrill them with this delight? That they "sin not "-"These things write I unto you that ye sin not." This is to be the great practical result of the whole the extinction of sin in the heart. Christianity, indeed, has higher and ulterior ends. But its first great aim is the extinction of sin. Till this is done, nothing is done. When this is done, the way is open for all that God can bestow, or man receive. Beyond, all is blessedness and eternal life. But for man the sinner the extinction of sin is its primary tendency and terminus. In forgiving the penitent at first, it says to him, "Go, and sin no more.” It takes him to the cross that he may hear a voice, never to be forgotten, say, “that ye sin not." It offers him the highest aid-God's own Holy Spirit--that he sin not. Its angels

rejoice over one sinner that repenteth, because in his first. tear over sin they see the earnest of the coming day when he will sin no more. The sum of all its commands and promises the moral and meaning of the entire system of Christianity—is, that ye sin not. And the apostle even adds, "he that is born of God doth not sin-cannot sin-because he is born of God." As a Christian, he cannot sin. In proportion as Christianity has taken effect on him, he cannot sinhe acquires a moral incapacity for sin-loathes, resents, and resists it.

Now it is, I apprehend, of such a one, conscious of sin, that the apostle speaks in the text. It is not of a David. before he has agonized in penitence, and has tasted the sweets of forgiveness-but suppose him to have repeated his sin after he had written the 51st psalm. It is not of the prodigal before he had said, "I will arise and go to my father;" but suppose that after his father had run to him, and yearned over him, and adorned him, he had again wandered off, and wasted his substance in riotous living. It is not of Thomas before he had seen the print of the nails-but suppose that he had returned to his scepticism afterwards. It is not of Peter before the heart-probing question, "Lovest thou me?"-but suppose that he had afterwards "denied the Lord that bought him." If any man should sin under such circumstances-it matters not under what tempting influences, nor what the special form of his sin--the case is supposed to be possible-and the question is, does the Gospel provide for it? The man is supposed to have agonized at the strait gate-to have made some progress in the narrow way—to have wept at the cross-to have broken bread at the table of the Lord-to have felt happy and at home at the throne of grace-to have had many a successful struggle with sin-to have had light from the face of God fall upon his own his own to have felt the most tender and melting influences which Christianity supplies;—and yet he is conscious of subsequent sins leaving behind a deep stain of guilt;

-and the question is, what provision does the Gospel make for such a man?

The time was, perhaps, when, in the first flush of Christian confidence, he deemed such guilt as he is now conscious of impossible; and, therefore, would have rejected such a question as I am now asking as unnecessary, or, as the text puts it, as merely hypothetical. And yet I have no doubt that in all our congregations there are those for whom this is the question; those who are carrying about in their bosom the festering sore of a wounded conscience--the burden of unpardoned sin a gloomy sense of insecurity which enervates their best efforts at recovery-who wonder how it will be with them when they come to die-who see clouds rising and settling over the valley of the shadow of death-and feel, at times, as if they had exhausted all the ordinary means of

mercy.

I do not intend by this that they who are the most conscious of guilt, and the most prone to despair of mercy, are commonly the most guilty. On the contrary, the more guilty a man is, the less conscious of guilt he may be. He may have felt more concern at his first conscious transgression than at all the subsequent sins of his life added together. A pure spirit falling into one sin would probably be conscious of greater agony than any one present has ever felt at all his sins combined. But suppose a man to be both chargeable with the aggravated form of guilt we have described, and to be proportionally conscious of that aggravation, does the Gospel contain an adequate remedy?

II.

Now, secondly, the text meets this surpassing guilt by mediation of transcendent efficacy. "If any man so sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Other aspects of our Lord's mediation, besides that of His advocacy, might have been pointed to for this purpose, His atoning death, His resurrection, and His exaltation. But

we have Divine authority for saying, that His intercession sums up and transcends them all. Not that either of these facts is to be viewed as standing apart from the others. The last presupposes the first, and the first looks forward to the last. But regarding them as a series-parts of one wholewe have, I repeat, Divine authority for affirming that the intercession of Christ is the sum and application of the whole. For "Who "-asks the apostle Paul-" who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh intercession for us?" "It is Christ that died." The atoning death of Christ, then, lies at the foundation of the whole. Hence the language immediately following our text, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Atonement—– propitiation-is the broad, deep, world-wide basis of that pyramid which climbs the skies, and of which intercession is the topstone. And the death of Christ alone-whether it be regarded as a sacrifice for us, or as an exhibition of the love of God, ought to be sufficient to satisfy the fears of the guiltiest, as it is sufficient to satisfy the demands of the violated law.

The great want of the penitent is, the means of restoration to God; and, taking him into the presence of the cross, the Gospel tells him, "it is Christ that died." As if it had said,

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Here is an answer to every objection; for here is a being who unites in himself all the conditions of a perfect sacrifice, and He dies for you." You say He should be sinless; for He only can pay the debt who owes none. And such was Christ; He did no sin." "He was the Lamb without blemish and without spot;" one on whom the law had no previous claim, and to whom it could point as the embodiment and exemplar of all its demands. You say, it should be One who has the right of self-disposal. Only He can become responsible to God for us, who himself knows no responsibility or superior. And such was Christ.

"Being

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