The Apostle John says that if we think we have no sin, we are self-deceived. The truth is not in us (1:8). We make God a liar (1:10). A person could conclude that it’s futile to attempt to live the Christian life. Why pursue holiness? No matter how hard we try, we cannot live sinlessly. However much energy we expend, we will never reach perfection. So why keep striving against sin? Why not just give in to the inevitable? Why not just give up and let come what may, especially since all we have to do is confess our sin and God will forgive it (1:9)?1

This is the implication of what the Apostle John says in 1:8-10, isn’t it? Hardly, but his words could be twisted to mean this. I have heard similar things said a number of times. Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind as well.

To counteract this, John writes,

My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin (1 Jn 2:1a)

He moves now from answering his opponents in verses 6-10, to addressing his people. “My little children,” he says, an expression which communicates tender affection. His purpose in writing is not in any way intended to encourage sin. “I am writing,” he says, “that you may not sin.” Nothing that has been written should be twisted to justify sin. We are to flee sin (1 Cor 6:19; 1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 2:22). We are to abhor evil (Rom 12:9). Sin is to be taken seriously. Nothing in the New Testament is meant to encourage us to take a light view of sin. Yes, all our sins may be forgiven in Christ. Yes, we will never be completely free of the stain of sin in this life. Still it remains a terrible thing to sin against a holy God. However, he goes on to say,

And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; (1 Jn 2:1b)

We are not to “sin.” The present tense is used, indicating continuous, habitual action. Sin is not to be characteristic of us. But if anyone “sins,” the plural indicating specific, individual acts, God has made provision.

What is that provision? John uses priestly categories to help us understand what Christ has done. He is both our “Advocate” (2:1) and our “propitiation,” or “atoning sacrifice” (NIV) for our sins (2:2). As our priestly advocate, He intercedes on our behalf. Also as our priest, He continually applies the benefit of His death on our behalf.

Our Advocate

When we do sin, the news is very good indeed. We have one who comes to our defense. The title “Advocate” (parakletos) comes from the law court. He is our defender, our spokesman, our intercessor.2 He “speaks on behalf of the accused.”3 It is also a title that John gives to the Holy Spirit in his gospel (Jn 14:16,26; 15:26; 16:7).

The NIV translates,

“we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense.”

My wife Emily’s father died when she was 16. I remember her periodically mourning the fact that she no longer had an “advocate.” Her father was a fiercely loyal man, almost to a fault. No matter what, he would defend his girls. He would fight for them. He would make sure that they were protected. He would promote their well being and seek their advantage. She no longer had an advocate who was on her side.

We have such an Advocate “with the Father,” in heaven, where it most counts. Who is He? John uses three names. He calls Him “Jesus,” His human name. “Christ” is His divine name. The “righteous” underscores His unique suitability. He is without sin. He and no one else is qualified to stand in the presence of God on our behalf. It also carries the thought that He is fair. He is “just,” as it could be translated.

Put this all together and it gives strong encouragement to the Christian. So we have sinned. Is this the end of us? Must we die and go to hell? Is God now our implacable enemy? He would be, but wait – we have an Advocate. He pleads on our behalf. Can He present our case? Yes! He is the God-Man. All the attributes of divinity labor on our behalf – His justice, His mercy, His goodness, His love, His omniscience, and His inexhaustible energy. But also, we have a Man on our side in heaven. There is a Man at the right hand of God. He is one who has suffered, and felt pain, and been tempted as we have. He knows what we are going through, and He is on our side. We read in Hebrews,

Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. (Heb 2:17,18)

Our Advocate was “made like His brethren in all things.” He knows what it is to be tempted and to suffer. Consequently, He is particularly suited to come to the aid of the tempted.

And again,

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4:15,16)

Our Advocate, who is also our “high priest,” can “sympathize with our weakness.” He knows what it is to be tempted and fight temptation. Once again, the point is that Jesus Christ is particularly capable of dispensing mercy and grace and help to those who are in need. We need not hesitate to turn to Him, but may “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.” Recall Luther’s second stanza in “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right man on our side, The man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus it is He, Lord Sabaoth His name,
From age to age the same, And He must win the battle.

We are being urged to draw near to such an Advocate. Have we sinned? This is the “right Man” to have on our side. With human insight and sympathy He understands. He is inclined to help. With divine righteousness and power He is able to help.4 What keeps us from Christ? He is the most perfectly suited Savior and Friend. Don’t we need His help? He can save us! He can keep us! We have an Advocate.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. (Rom 8:33,34)

His sacrifice

and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (1 Jn 2:2)

It would be a mistake to imagine a situation where the loving Son is trying to convince the unwilling Father to forgive. The Godhead is single-minded in the purposes of redemption. “God (the Father) so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). Yet in forgiving sin, justice must be met. The basis of forgiveness is not divine forgetfulness, but satisfaction. What is the basis of His help? Does He plead our innocence? our goodness? or our virtue? No, he pleads His own blood. John describes Christ’s sacrifice as a “propitiation,” a long and important word.

This century has seen an extensive debate over the meaning of hilasmos and its word group, translated “propitiation” (NASV, ESV) or “atoning sacrifice” (NIV). In ancient, non-biblical Greek the word always refers to the placating of an angry god by the offering of a gift. Think of a husband sending flowers to his upset and angry wife as a “peace offering,” hoping to turn away her anger. This is the idea in relation to the gods. The concept of blood sacrifice that puts away wrath and secures favor is to be found in nearly all the religions of the world. The classic example of this is Homer’s Iliad. The Greek expedition in pursuit of Helen encountered contrary winds. Agamemnon, the General in charge, sent home for his daughter. Upon arrival she was offered as a blood sacrifice to appease the gods. This produced the desired effect, and the winds once more favored the Greeks, who sailed on to Troy. More recently the Hindus were in the news because of an annual festival in which they slaughtered over 200,000 animals in order to curry the favor of their gods. “People have deep faith in the goddess and they believe that sacrificing animals will bring them good luck and prosperity for their families,” said Mangal Chaudhary Tharu, a priest at the Gadhimai temple, according to news reports.5 C. H. Dodd and others sought to limit the meaning of hilasmos to “expiation,” meaning “to cover,” the word used by the translators of the RSV. What is wrong with this translation? The problem is that expiation means only half of what propitiation means. Packer explains in Knowing God:

Expiation is an action that has sin as its object; it denotes the covering, putting away, or rubbing out of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God. Propitiation, however, in the Bible denotes all that expiation means, and the pacifying of the wrath of God thereby.6

The ongoing discussion has exposed the motive for the proposed change. Dodd and other modern scholars were not and are not comfortable with the idea of a God of wrath. Divine anger seemed to them to be a primitive, base, an unworthy disposition of God, and certainly inconsistent with the revelation of His love in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it has been more than the scholars who have balked at the doctrine of God’s wrath. Our whole age is banking on the hope that the God who is there is a God of love, period. The topics of judgment and punishment are, if not outright denied, studiously avoided. “To err is human, to forgive divine,” right? To merely “cover” sin is a kinder, gentler sort of atonement.

Yet the problem with this position is that the wrath of God against sin is undeniably biblical. The work of Leon Morris (The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross) and others (e.g. Roger Nicole) seems to have proven the linguistic case for propitiation. The decisive issue is context, and the context for the use of hiliasmos in the Bible. Morris counts 580 references to wrath in the Old Testament alone. Wrath underlies the purpose behind sin offerings and guilt offerings in the Old Testament, as well as the day of atonement (Lev 4:1–6:7; Lev 16; cf. Num 16:41ff). In the New Testament there is no let-up. Jesus taught more about hell than any of the prophets, in fact, almost all we know about hell we learned from His lips. For the Apostle Paul, wrath is the beginning of the gospel (Rom 1:18), and its propitiation the foundation of justification (Rom 3:21-26). Wrath is the righteous response of God against sin, His “strong and settled opposition to all that is evil . . .,” says Morris, “arising out of God’s very nature.”7 It is “His settled, controlled, holy antagonism to all evil,” says Stott.8 God’s wrath is that attribute of God which guarantees the final destruction of all evil and the triumph of good. Through the outpouring of His wrath God ensures that justice will be done for all. God’s wrath is a fearsome thing. It is a thing from which we need to be delivered, and from which we must flee (1 Thess 1:10; Mt 3:7).

Propitiation is the means by which both the just wrath of God is satisfied and love is expressed. We do not placate God with a gift. God provides His own offering. Jesus offered Himself as a propitiating sacrifice, one which satisfies the just wrath of God for all who believe. The wrath, the punishment, the just anger that we deserved, were quenched in Christ’s death on the cross.

Remember the ground over which we have traveled. We began with “God is light” (1:5). Those who know this God walk in the light (1:6,7). The necessity of doing so leads inevitably to the awareness of one’s sin and its confession (1:8-10). The search for mercy leads one to the Advocate, who presents His own work to the Father as the basis for our forgiveness (2:1,2). We are forgiven not because we confess our sins, or even because we believe in Jesus. There would be no efficacy either to belief or confession if there were no sacrifice behind them. As Marshall explains, “In order that forgiveness may be granted, there is an action in respect of the sins which has the effect of rendering God favorable to the sinner.”9 We are forgiven only because Jesus died on the cross and, by doing so, satisfied divine justice “for our sins.” He died as our substitute, in our place, on our behalf. When He died, the wheels of retribution turned, justice was served, and wrath was quenched. The sacrifice of Christ, Marshall continues, “has the double effect of expiating the sin and thereby propitiating God.”10

Packer calls propitiation “the heart of the Gospel.”11 At the center of Christianity is a cross. On the cross God provided in Christ a substitutionary, propitiating atoning sacrifice for our sins. At the cross we see the human condition most clearly, and the divine response. We were under the wrath of God. We could do nothing to escape that wrath. But Jesus Christ came and quenched it on our behalf. This is the gospel. This is where our faith must rest. Jesus Christ died to save me from the wrath of God! Christ is the propitiation “for” or “concerning” our sins (peri).12 God is propitiated and becomes propitious towards me. This is our gospel and this is what we must believe.

Finally, we must look at this final phrase.

and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (1 Jn 2:2)

What does he mean in saying that Christ is the propitiation for “not only our sins” but also the sins of the “whole world”? This is a difficult phrase, and one which we must be very careful not to judge too quickly. There are a number of interpretations. Let’s deal with several of them.

1. John could mean that not only are the sins of Christians propitiated, but also the sins of everyone else who has ever lived. Thus John is teaching universalism, the view that everyone, whether they believe or not, shall be saved by the death of Christ. What this view has going for it is that it is the plain and simple reading of the text. That is clearly what John is saying, distinguishing Christians (“our sins”) from that of the “world,” a word which John usually uses to denote the fallen, godless sphere outside of Christ (cf. 2:15ff; 5:19; etc.). However, not only does he distinguish them, he also joins them, placing them in the same relation to the propitiation of Christ. Thus, the sins of both the believers and the “world” are propitiated by the sacrifice of Christ.

The problem with this view is that it is so obviously contrary to the rest of the Bible. There shall be sheep and goats in the judgment, and eternity does not fail to distinguish between the just and the unjust (e.g. Mt 25). We may, therefore, be sure that this view is wrong, and we must look for alternatives. As we do, we should notice from the outset that the only way to escape the universalism of the passage is by adjusting either our definition of “propitiation” or of “world.” One of these words must mean less than one normally would have thought. We’ll look first at propitiation, then world.

2. John means that the sins of everyone are potentially propitiated, though only actually propitiated when one comes to faith in Christ. The strength of this view is that it does escape the universalism of the preceding view, while taking seriously the universal language that John uses. Thus He actually propitiates “our” sins, and potentially propitiates the sins of the “world,” if they would believe. The weakness is that it is contrary to the sense of the text. As we’ve seen already, John places the Christian and the world in the same relation to the propitiation of Christ. He also uses the present tense – “He Himself is the propitiation,” i.e. God’s wrath is quenched with respect to our sins and the world’s sins. It is arbitrary to divide that which John is joining. Christ propitiates both our sins and the world’s sins. This is clearly what John is saying. Evading this sense by introducing a potential propitiation weakens the concept of propitiation. In this view the cross only becomes significant when someone believes, and thereby actualizes it. This is to give away too much. The New Testament speaks of the atonement as an accomplished fact. “He is the propitiation.” He doesn’t become propitiation when we believe. “Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe . . .” (Rev 5:9). A transaction took place at the cross, not a potential transaction. Christ “did purchase.” A corollary to this view is to say that Christ did propitiate the sins of everyone, and that only the rejection of Christ sends a person to hell. The question, then, is, isn’t the rejection of Christ a sin? If it is, then why isn’t it covered by the death of Christ? If that sin alone is excluded from the efficacy of Christ’s death, why doesn’t John make that clear?

3. John means that Christ propitiates the sins of all Christians everywhere. Thus “our sins” refers to the sins of some particular group which John has in mind, and “world” refers to Christians all throughout the world. He may mean,

i. Not only Jewish Christian sins, but Gentile Christian sins as well;

ii. Not only the sins of a few churches, but the sins of all Christians everywhere as well;

iii. Not only the sins of Christians then living, but believers past and future as well. “When John says that Christ died for the sins of the ‘whole world,’” says the ancient church father Hilary of Arles (c. 401-499), “what he means is that he died for the whole church.”13

Each of these arguments would be meant to combat the narrow sectarianism of the heretics. Christ has propitiated all the sins of all believers across racial, cultural, ethnic, and generational lines, as well as across time. “Therefore under the word ‘all,’” says Calvin, John “does not include the reprobate, but refers to all who would believe and those scattered through various regions of the earth.”14

B. B. Warfield, the great Princeton theologian, argues as well that John has in mind the world in its wholeness as converted and saved. Not that everyone who ever lived will be saved, but that Christ is “the Savior of the world” (1 Jn 4:14), a worldwide Savior.15 Why would He be called such if He does not save such? John is looking ahead to the completion of Christ’s work and sees the salvation of the world, He sees “the knowledge of the glory of God” covering the earth “as the waters cover the seas” (Hab 2:14; Isa 11:9).

Let us now return to our original point. What are we going to do with our sins? Are we going to hope that they’re not important? Are we going to bear them ourselves? God has appointed an Advocate for us. There is only “one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). “No one comes to the Father but by Me,” Jesus said (Jn 14:6). Those who come to God must come through the Mediator, or Advocate.

Jesus Christ is the lamb of God, whose sacrifice satisfied the justice of God. This sacrifice “takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). He is a great Savior. He is our Advocate and Defender. He is the all sufficient sacrifice for sin. Come to God in His name. Claim His benefits for yourself. Call upon Him by faith. You will find in Him all that you need for time and eternity.