Tuesday, August 30, 2022

 

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Psalms 148; 149

2 Chronicles 35:10-27

1 John 2:1-11

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also the sins of the whole world.

If we find Paul's letters confusing, John's can be even worse. Once we learn how they thought, though, things start to make a bit more sense. Remembering that Paul was a Jew amongst Jews, a Pharisee, of the line of Benjamin, despite all this he was born and raised in Syria: a thoroughly Greek-influenced land. That's why Paul's logic works the way it does: he presents a statement, works through arguments and counter-arguments before presenting his conclusion. (This is also how we in the West today approach logic and reason.)

John, on the other hand, was a fisherman who worked on the Sea of Galilee: the Jewish homeland. His logic works slightly differently. John will present his statement, and then go outwards to a point, then return to his main point. Then he will go out somewhere else, returning again afterwards, and so on, until all his arguments are spent. Therefore when, in this passage, John seems to present a rather dark view of sin, he is actually being quite encouraging.

If we sin, we have an advocate, and look at this advocate! He is the light of the world. If we hate, or, walk in darkness, all we have to do is run back to our advocate, and back we are in the light again. Example after example, we are shown how we stumble into darkness, but are always given the way back into the light. The way back is through the words spoken by the God-man who loved John: an old commandment, because it has always existed, but also new, because it is still working and will always continue to work: the commandment to love one another. The mechanism of apology and forgiveness is not a sign of weakness. It is wielding the greatest power in the world, the power of God: the power of love.