Is it a question of our guilt? It is canceled by the blood of atonement. Is it a question of our daily shortcomings? We have an Advocate with the Father: a great High Priest with God. “If anyone sins.” He does not say, “If any man repent.” No doubt, there is, and must be, repentance and self-judgment. But how are they produced? Whence do they proceed? Here it is: “We have an advocate with the Father.” It is His all-prevailing intercession that procures for the sinning one the grace of repentance, self-judgment, and confession.

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, something has to be done on our part to set matters straight between our souls and God. We forget that, before 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 anyone sins, we have”—what? The blood to return to? No; mark carefully what the Holy Spirit 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 always lives to make intercession” for us; and because He always lives, “He is able to save to the uttermost,” right through to the very end.