I have had the joy over the past few months of teaching through the four Comfortable Words, found in our Book of Common Prayer and designed to be delivered by the priest after the confession of sin.
We conclude the series with this post, but before we do, let’s take time for a quick review. The first Comfortable Word, Matthew 11:28, gives us God’s invitation to true rest. The second, John 3:16, presents God’s divine disposition to us as lost sheep in need of a good shepherd. The third, 1 Timothy 1:15, offers us an objective diagnosis for our sin problem.
The fourth Comfortable Word wraps everything up by bringing us God’s remedy for that problem: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1b-2, ESV).
Perfect Sacrifice
As we think about sin, many of us have an image of Jesus watching us like a hawk, ever ready to swoop down and punish us every time we sin. But the Comfortable Words present to us a patient Savior who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving sin. We learn from these Comfortable Words, which are summaries of major passages in scripture, that Jesus is the good shepherd, alluring back his lost sheep by the power of his self-sacrificing love.
This fourth Comfortable Word tells us that we have a remedy for our sin problem. “Propitiation” means that Jesus Christ was the perfect sacrifice that has removed God’s wrath from us by directing it to himself. The cross is the pouring out of God’s judgment for our sins onto Christ, so we receive divine blessing instead. Because of his sacrifice, the “no” and curse of our breaking of the law goes to Jesus, so all of Jesus’ righteousness – the blessing of obeying the law, the merit, the “yes” – is attributed to us.
Jesus is now your advocate. He is the one who stands by your side. He is the one who answers for you when you are accused of being a sinner. And this is the fourth gift of the Comfortable Words: for believers, Jesus is not our judge, but our defense attorney.
The theological term for this is “justification.” People often say it’s “just as if I’d never sinned,” just as if I had always done God’s will and lived in perfect righteousness. “Justification” is a legal term that means being declared righteous, used specifically for what a judge does in a courtroom, acquitting defendants of charges by declaring them not guilty. But the Bible goes even further than this, declaring not only that you are not guilty, but also that your sins are forgiven and you are declared righteous.
Our sins are forgiven because of Jesus’ death; he took the consequences we deserved. We are declared righteous because Jesus obeyed the law perfectly, and his righteousness has been imputed or accounted to us as if we did the same thing. Romans 8:1 tells us that for those who are in Christ, there is now no condemnation. This means that final judgment has happened for those who trust in Christ. Your sin has already been judged on Christ, and there is now no more judgment left for you.
The legal declaration doesn’t make this abstract or impersonal, quite the opposite. This is deeply personal and life-giving. The God of the Bible wants justice because his law was broken. Wrath is God’s response to sin, and Jesus substitutes himself on our behalf to divert the wrath of God from us to himself. Jesus willingly becomes the recipient of God’s judgment in our place. He lays down his life.
Romans 3:21-25 and Hebrews 2:17 repeat this: We shall be saved from God’s wrath because Jesus is the propitiation for the sins of the people. “Propitiation” is also used elsewhere in Scripture. We see it in 1 John 4:10: “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
God happily diverts his wrath to Jesus because of his love for you. And how do you know that God loves you? Because Jesus was the sacrifice for your sins. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Unconditional Love
This love of God is not sentimental or weak. This love of God is efficacious. It redeems, embraces and it renews. It is a courageous love, restoring love, transforming love.
We can compare God’s love for us to a parent’s instinct for their child. If you’ve flown, you’ve heard the pre-takeoff routine because they say it all the time: “If an oxygen mask drops out of the ceiling and you’re traveling with a child, make sure you put the mask on yourself first and then take care of your child.”
The airlines know a parent’s instinct is to sacrifice themselves to protect their child. But airlines need the parents to take care of themselves first, against their instinct, so they can truly protect their child.
Our Comfortable Word is telling us that God sent his Son to redeem you. If you have faith in Christ, you are a child of God. And you need to know that God’s instinct for his children is just like that of other parents. In Christ, God is so for you as your defender that he’s protecting you from his own judgment. God is not looking for excuses to turn his back on you, because nothing separates you from the love of God.
Jesus is our advocate. And Jesus advocates before the Father so that you are forgiven of your sins and declared righteous. As an advocate, Jesus stands between you and the Father’s judgment. This is important because God judges justly; we really are guilty of sins against God and others, but Jesus took it all.
That’s what the cross is about: the outpouring of God’s judgment for you on Jesus. He took our place so the guilty could go free. That’s why 1 John 2 is so powerful: in the face of fear, anxiety or condemnation, the presence of the advocate brings Jesus to mind. And the first advocate is the Holy Spirit. The presence of the advocate, the Holy Spirit, brings Jesus to mind. And it is Jesus the advocate who is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus and his cross and resurrection are proofs of God’s love for you.
The unconditional love expressed in these four Comfortable Words reminds me of a Bible translator working with a people group in Cameroon. He knew vowels in their language ended in a, i and u. But in looking at the word for love, he only found dva and dvi, but not dvu.
The local men told him dvu did not exist between humans because it referred to a love that would persist no matter what. “Can God dvu?” he asked.
Tears ran down their faces. “That would mean that God has committed to love us, even though we have sinned more than any other people,” they said.
One simple vowel beautifully captured radical grace. And that’s the meaning of all four of the Comfortable Words. Let us commend ourselves to Jesus our advocate, to his unconditional love and radical grace.
Note: A small part of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).