1 John 2:1-3

1 John 2:1-3. My little children: instead of giving the antithesis to the third ‘if any man say,' St. John, the father of the churches of that time, directly addresses those whose character formed that antithesis; and changes the calm statement into affectionate exhortation.

These things I write unto you that is, the whole letter, resuming the ‘write we' of 1 John 2:4, but with the usual change. Before, it was the apostolic ‘we,' and in the presence of the whole Church, with all its heresies around it; now St. John himself begins a more personal address.

That ye sin not: before, it was the fulness of joy; now it is the utter separation from sin, the negative condition of that. The last tense that had been used was the perfect, referring to the whole life of sin as needing atonement; the aorist is now used: ‘that ye sin not at all,' not as a habit, nor in any single act. The antithesis might have run on, ‘If we are forgiven and cleansed, we have for ever ceased from sin.' But it does not; for the saint must ever be a sinner as touching the past, and if not dealt with as such it is only through merciful non-imputation; moreover, he may sin again.

And if any man sin. The ‘if' does not suppose it necessary, but it clearly implies that ‘one' meaning ‘one of us,' though here only used in the Epistle may commit sin. Yet this will be, in the high teaching of the apostle, a peculiar case, and demands a new application of the atonement to meet it.

We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. ‘We have,' as the common possession of believers not of the Church; but of every one, for his defence against sin and recovery from it as certainly ours now as our sin can be. Advocate or Paraclete is the same word as the Comforter of the Gospel. That ‘other' Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is in the midst of the Church and in the hearts of believers as a Helper and Teacher, ‘making intercession within us;' this Advocate is towards the Father, with allusion to the previous words, ‘to forgive us our sins.' He is in a juridical sense the pleader or intercessor of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who must be ‘holy, separate from sinners,' ‘the Righteous.' The apostle does not say ‘the Holy One,' because the very term Advocate makes the heavenly temple as it were a judicial court, and in that court satisfaction and righteousness reign. As ‘cleansing from unrighteousness' combines the two ideas, so do Advocate and Propitiation. The third leading idea of the Gospel, our sonship, is involved in ‘with the Father.'

And he is the propitiation for our sins. Mark the ‘and' which here once more introduces a new thought intended to obviate perversion. Though Christ is not said to be a ‘righteous Advocate,' yet His advocacy must represent a righteous cause. He pleads His own atonement; that is Himself, for He ‘is' in His Divine-human Person the propitiation: the advocacy is distinct from the atonement, is based upon it, and appeals to it.

The word propitiation occurs only here and in chap. 4 throughout the New Testament: it is really the counterpart of the ‘blood of Jesus His Son' in chap. 1 John 1:6, the administration of the atonement coming between them in chap. 1 John 1:9. Christ is in the New Testament ‘set forth as a propitiation in His blood' (Romans 3:25): a sacrificial offering that, as on the day of atonement to which it refers, averted the wrath of God from the people. He also as High Priest made atonement or ‘propitiation for the sins of the people' (Hebrews 2:17). which is here, as in the Septuagint, ‘propitiated in the matter of sins' the God of holiness. Uniting these, He is in the present passage Himself the abstract ‘propitiation' in His own glorified Person. His prayer for us, issuing from the very treasure-house of atoning virtue, must be acceptable; and, uttered to the Father who ‘sent Him' as the propitiation (chap. 1 John 4:14), is one that He ‘heareth always' (John 11:42).

It is then added: and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. And why? First, because the apostle would utter his generous testimony, on this his first mention of the world, to the absolute universality of the design of the mission of the ‘Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world:' his last mention of it, the second time he says ‘the whole world,' will be of a severer character (chap. 1 John 5:19). Secondly, he thus intimates that the proper propitiation, as such, was the reconciliation of the Divine holiness and love in respect to all sins at once and in their unity, while the advocacy based upon it refers to special sins: on the one hand, no other atonement is necessary; on the other, that must avail if penitence secures the advocacy of Him who offered it once for all. Lastly, as we doubt not, the apostle thus ends a discussion, the fundamental object of which was to set forth universally and in general the way in which the Gospel offers to all mankind fellowship with the light of God's holiness.