“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: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” —1 John 2:1-31My 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: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. (1 John 2:1‑3).
WHERE there is divine life in the soul it will manifest itself in the life. The believer is not a sinless person. He is one whose sins have all been expiated by Christ on the cross, and if now, as a Christian, he falls into sin, his fellowship is disrupted until as a necessary result of Christ’s advocacy he confesses and forsakes his evil ways. As he walks with God, the new nature will lead to obedience to the expressed will of the Lord and to love of the brethren. These are the marks of the new life. Mere lip profession counts for nothing There must be the evidence of love in activity, which marks one out as in relation to Him who is, in His very being, love. It is His life that is reproduced in those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Weary of wandering from my God,
And now made willing to return,
I hear, and bow me to the rod:
Yet not in hopeless grief I mourn:
I have an Advocate above,
A Friend before the throne of love.
O Jesus, full of truth and grace, —
More full of grace than I of sin;
Yet once again I seek Thy face,
Open Thine arms, and take me in!
And freely my backsliding heal,
And love Thy faithless servant still.”
—Charles Wesley.