{"id":5656,"date":"2026-08-18T08:27:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5656"},"modified":"2026-08-18T08:27:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T12:27:26","slug":"jesus-our-advocate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/18\/jesus-our-advocate\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Our Advocate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God.<\/em>


\u201cIf anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous\u201d <\/em>(I John 2:1).

Q: What do you call 40 lawyers skydiving at the same time?
A: Skeet.

Q: What\u2019s the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer?
A: A bad lawyer might let a case drag on for several years. A good lawyer knows how to make it last even longer.

\u201cLawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick-skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge\u201d (David Mellor).

A mother and her child walked through a cemetery. They passed by a headstone inscribed with this message: \u201cHere lies a good lawyer and an honest man.\u201d The child read the headstone and looked confused. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d the mother asked. \u201cMommy,\u201d the child asked, \u201cwhy did they bury two people there?\u201d

\u201cThe first thing we do is, let\u2019s kill all the lawyers\u201d (Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare\u2019s Henry VI: Part II<\/em>).

Lawyers, it seems, have inspired jokes and witticisms in every generation. It should be pointed out that pastors, priests, and rabbis aren\u2019t far behind.

In her August 4 article, \u201cThe 25 Objects that Explain America,\u201d journalist Emily Keegin describes how incessant advertising for injury lawyers has become a defining part of our culture.

\u201cEvery city, town or suburb,\u201d she writes, \u201chas its own deity who looms above the roadways like a god on Mount Olympus, promising to fix your trauma through the dark art of legal retribution. If you\u2019re lucky enough to live near multiple personal injury lawyers, they will fight for your love with font size, puns and catchy TV jingles.\u201d

Now, before we dismiss the legal profession with the latest quip, we should remember this: The Bible presents Jesus<\/u><\/em> as a defense attorney.

It gets even better than that. Jesus is perpetually on call as your<\/u><\/em> defense attorney in the most important case of your life.

We\u2019re talking, of course, about You v. Yahweh \u2013 aka You v. the Infinite-Personal Holy God.

What will it be like to give an account of our lives to God as the righteous Judge? Different generations have dared to embrace different levels of confidence concerning that moment. Our own generation, which prefers to picture God as a smiling, heavenly therapist who is \u201chere for us,\u201d is wildly confident that things are going to go swimmingly.

How about you?

Let\u2019s go ahead and state the obvious: You\u2019re guilty as sin (pun intended). It\u2019s not that your spiritual track record is somehow more blemished than your neighbors\u2019. Rather, the pages of Scripture, from start to finish, declare that all of humanity has come up desperately short of the Creator\u2019s intentions for our thoughts, motives, and actions.

A memorable verse in this regard is Romans 3:23: \u201cFor all have fallen short of the glory of God.\u201d

Put simply, you and I stand in need of the best possible legal representation. In the person of Jesus, that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019ve got.

I John 2:1 says, \u201cIf anyone does sin [an exceedingly polite way of saying, \u2018When in fact you do sin, quite likely before you reach the end of this reflection\u2019], we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.\u201d The word translated \u201cadvocate\u201d is the Greek word parakletos, <\/u><\/em>which literally means, \u201cthe one who is called alongside.\u201d Jesus the Paraclete stands alongside us as our legal defender.

We learn more in Romans 8:34, where Paul asserts that \u201cChrist Jesus\u2026is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us.\u201d

At the trial of our life in the courtroom of heaven, Christ not only rises on our behalf, pleading our case, but prays for us.

According to classic Christian theology, the need of every human defendant is a clean moral slate. None of us can dream of presenting such a thing. But Jesus of Nazareth can \u2013 which is exactly what he did by dying sacrificially for our sins on the cross.

That\u2019s why every follower of Jesus is destined to experience a miracle \u2013 the reality of being declared \u201cnot guilty\u201d in the presence of a holy God.

We must not be confused on this point. God the Judge is not saying, \u201cSin doesn\u2019t really matter,\u201d or \u201cLet\u2019s just pretend you never had a moral debt to pay.\u201d Instead, God is saying that our very real debts have been paid in full \u2013 the essence of Jesus\u2019 dying message: \u201cIt is finished.\u201d

Have you fallen short of the glory of God this summer?

You\u2019d better have a great lawyer.

If you know Jesus, you\u2019ve got one.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God. \u201cIf anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous\u201d (I John 2:1). Q: What do you call… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1169,1159,1017],"class_list":["post-5656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lawyers","tag-metaphors","tag-paraclete"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5658,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5656\/revisions\/5658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}