It is of the very utmost importance for the Christian reader to be thoroughly clear as to this great cardinal truth of the advocacy or priesthood of Christ. We sometimes erroneously think that when we fail in our work, something has to be done on our part to set matters straight between our souls and God. We forget that ere we are even conscious of the failure--before our conscience becomes really cognizant of the fact, our blessed Advocate has been to the Father about it; and it is to His intercession we are indebted for the grace of repentance, confession, and restoration. "If any man sin, we have"--what? The blood to return to? No; mark carefully what the Holy Ghost declares.--"We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Why does He say, "the righteous"? why not the gracious, the merciful, the sympathizing? Is He not all this? Most surely; but not any one of these attributes would be in place here, inasmuch as the blessed apostle is putting before us the consolatory truth that in all our errors, our sins, and our failures, we have "a righteous" representative ever before the righteous God, the holy Father, so that our affairs can never fall through. "He _ever_ liveth to make intercession for us;" and because He ever liveth, "He is able to save _to the uttermost_"--right through to the very end--"them that come unto God by Him."
What solid comfort is here for the people of God! and how needful for our souls to be established in the knowledge and sense of it! Some there are who have an imperfect sense of the true _standing_ of a Christian, because they do not see what Christ has done for them in the past; others, on the contrary, have such an entirely one-sided view of the _state_ of the Christian that they do not see our need of what Christ is doing for us now. Both must be corrected. The former are ignorant of the extent and value of the atonement; the latter are ignorant of the place and application of the advocacy. Such is the perfection of our _standing_, that the apostle can say, "As He is, so are we in this world." If this were all, we should certainly have no need of priesthood or advocacy; but then, such is our _state_, that the apostle has to say, "If any man sin." This proves our continual need of the Advocate. And, blessed be God, we have Him continually; we have him _ever living for us_. He lives and serves on high. He is our subsisting righteousness before our God. He lives to keep us always right in heaven, and to set us right when we go wrong upon earth. He is the divine and indissoluble link between Our souls and God.