Summary
Advocate
An advocate is one who stands up for another, speaks on their behalf, and pleads their cause. In the ancient world, the term named the attorney who argued before the judge. Scripture takes that ordinary picture and lifts it to the highest theological use: Jesus Christ is our Advocate before the Father, and his people, in turn, are called to be advocates for one another.
The friendship of Jonathan and David shows what advocacy looks like among God's people. When King Saul, consumed by jealousy after David's victory over Goliath, plotted to kill him, Jonathan delighted in his friend and refused to abandon him. He warned David, hid him, and then went and stood beside his father in the field to plead David's case 1 Samuel 19:1-7. Jonathan's friendship was not sentiment only; it was action taken on behalf of someone in danger. Saul listened, and David was spared. That is advocacy—standing up for, speaking out on behalf of, strengthening and supporting another. Scripture is full of such friends: Paul writing to Philemon on behalf of the runaway Onesimus, asking that any debt be charged to his own account; the friends who begged Jesus to lay his hand on a deaf man; the four who tore through a roof to lower a paralyzed man down to Jesus.
Yet our deepest need for an advocate is not social or circumstantial but eternal. Every human being faces the same greatest problem: how shall we stand before a holy God on the day of judgment? Sinners cannot dwell in the presence of a holy God, and what we deserve is hell. Into that impossible situation Scripture speaks a word of pure gospel: "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world" 1 John 2:1-2.
The case Jesus argues is his own atoning work. Atonement is literally at-one-ment—through the cross, sinners are brought back into one relationship with God as Jesus bears their sin. Paul puts it this way: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith" Romans 3:23-25. Justified means declared just, as if we had never sinned. Redeemed means bought back. This is the verdict our Advocate secures for us—not by appealing to anything in us, but by presenting his own wounds.
Because we have been redeemed by such an Advocate, we are freed to be advocates for our neighbors. The Hebrew word rea means both friend and neighbor—the same word does double duty—and in the New Testament the heart of friendship is love. Friendship love takes the shape of advocacy: putting the best construction on what others say, speaking well of them, and acting on their behalf. Isaiah commands, "Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow" Isaiah 1:17. Proverbs urges, "Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute" Proverbs 31:8-9. Jesus' own command—"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" Mark 12:31—is friendship love in the form of advocacy.
Practically, advocacy is what happens when a congregation funds a tuition-free preschool so the gospel reaches homes that have never heard it; when diapers are gathered for crisis pregnancy centers; when meals are made for the hungry; when missions are supported around the globe. Each is friendship love taking concrete form—one person standing in the gap for another, just as Jonathan stood in the gap for David, and just as Christ stands in the gap for us. The question this leaves with every believer is simple: who is the David to whom you can be a Jonathan today? See Advocate 9-8-24.
Video citations
- "Advocate" 9-8-24 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me, to first Samuel the 19th chapter for our study today. If you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that in the Old Testament,…