‘My little children, these things write I to you that you may not sin. 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 whole world.'
Here the ageing John addresses his readers with great tenderness, they are as it were, his little children (teknia - in this he is following Jesus - see John 13:33), those for whom he feels great responsibility. And he assures them that he does not write to them like this so that they may feel that they can freely sin, or feel that they cannot help but lose the battle against their known sins. He does it so that they may not sin. His longing is that they may be so aware of the God Who is pure light that they shy away from sin. That they seek earnestly to be sinless. His desire is that they will be a pure people walking in the light.
For while it is not possible to be totally sinless, it is possible for the Holy Spirit to empower men so that they have victory over all known sin, all sin of which they are aware. If they walk by the Spirit they will not fulfil the desire of the flesh (Galatians 5:16).
But he is aware that sin will, for many, break in again and again. And when it does, he assures them that they need not despair. For when they do sin they have One Who is their advocate with the Father, One who will plead their cause, One who will on their behalf claim that He has offered up Himself to be the propitiation for their sin. This is Jesus Christ, the righteous One. And His pleas will be heard because He is the Righteous One (Hebrews 7:26). He needs not to plead His own cause, for He is righteous. And He therefore comes on behalf of others and the basis of His plea is always righteous and thus well-pleasing to the Father.
And His plea is on the basis of His propitiating work (Romans 3:24-25). He knew that God as the Light had an aversion to sin, and He has removed through His own offering of Himself that which God held in aversion. That which stirred up God's deserved wrath against man has been removed for those who are His through the blood of |His cross. He has thus made it possible for God to look with continual mercy on the forgiven sinner. For this was God's plan in sending Jesus, and this is what He has accomplished.
‘And not for ours only, but also for the whole world.' And there is no limit to this offer, for what Jesus has done is sufficient for the whole world if only they will receive it. If they would but come to Him the whole world might be saved. This salvation is open to all who will come.
This concept of ‘the world' as a whole appears elsewhere in, for example, John 3:16. It does not strictly mean ‘every person in the whole world'. The thought is not individual but overall. The world is seen as a whole. But any one person from the whole world may respond and find that this propitiation is effective for him. It becomes individualised as men respond.
‘We have an advocate with the Father.' The word for advocate is ‘parakleton', the one called alongside to help. It is the same word used by Jesus of the Holy Spirit in John 14:16; John 14:26; John 16:7. There it referred to One Who would be with them for ever, Who would be alongside to assist them at all times, Who would reveal to them truth, and bring home to them all that Jesus had taught them and illuminate their hearts about it (John 14:26; John 16:13). He would indeed bring home to them Jesus Himself (John 15:26). He would be God acting with them and in them. But here the thought is of an Advocate also acting for them, on their behalf, interceding for them (Hebrews 7:25), pleading the sinner's cause with the Father whenever it becomes necessary, as when Jesus prayed that Peter's faith would not fail (Luke 22:31-32). But it especially here refers to ensuring the continual application to them of the benefits of His Atoning Work, ensuring that they are cleansed when they come to God with their sins, ensuring that they are ever seen as righteous and clean in God's sight.
‘Jesus Christ the righteous.' Note the contrast between the many sinners and the One Who alone is righteous. Earlier He has been Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father (1 John 1:3; 1 John 1:7), divine in being and essence. Now He is the Righteous One, the One fitted to plead and sufficient to make satisfaction for man's sins, the unique Righteous Man and the righteous God.
‘He is the propitiation for our sins.' The word used for propitiation is the same word as that used in the Septuagint for the Mercy Seat which was placed on the Ark of the covenant of Yahweh in the Holiest of All in the sanctuary. It is the place where God meets man in mercy by virtue of the shedding of blood, the blood of a substitutionary and representative offering and sacrifice. And for us there is but one offering and sacrifice, made once for all (Hebrews 10:10). Christ Himself offered Himself up for us (Hebrews 10:12). And it is through Him that we find mercy at the throne of God, and it is He Whose offering of Himself acts as a propitiation for our sins, averting the antipathy of God towards sin.
In the ancient world the significance would undoubtedly be the ‘turning away of wrath'. But in Scripture the wrath of God, while prominent, refers to His aversion from sin and his determination to have done with it, rather than to personal anger which somehow needs to be mollified. It is not personal wrath but holy wrath, the necessary clash of moral light with sinful darkness. Thus the point of propitiation here is the removal of all that makes a man unacceptable to God.