I John 2:1 states, “My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
The text begins with “My little children….” As a child, we sooner or later become aware of the idea of sin and how it may apply to our own lives. Some call this the age of accountability. At eight years old, I would climb up our neighbor’s avocado tree, along with my friend, Chuck. We had a great time throwing avocados at each other. I never realized they were for eating or that I was destroying the neighbor’s property, until we got caught.
I wonder if Adam and Eve ever threw fruit at each other. It was in the fruit trees they learned about sin. I don’t know if they knew what a child was until they had one. Genesis 4:1 says, “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Cain was not born a full-sized man, but he was born a human, not an animal.
Our text also says, “And if any man sin….” When John addressed his readers as “little children,” he may have seen them as new or young in the faith. Dealing with sin is a lifelong battle. Temptations will come. With them God provides a way of escape (I Corinthians 10:13).
Do we reach a point where we cannot or will not sin? I John 3:9 says, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” If anyone could have reached this point it would have been Adam, who was born of God, and called the “son of God” in Luke 3:38. He was not begotten, but created. The last Adam was the only begotten Son of God, who never did sin.
The instruction of our text is that we sin not. However, John allows that we might sin. The redeeming message in the text is that we have “an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
An illustration that may help, though not from Scripture, happened when I was a relatively new fork truck driver at a cold-storage unit. The freezers were entered into through large insulated doors with plastic strips hanging in front of the doors to keep heat from flooding in when the doors were open. A rope hung down for the fork truck driver to pull, which activated the doors. As soon as the doors opened the driver quickly entered in. It was a cardinal sin to hit one of the doors— resulting in automatic dismissal. The day I hit the door, everybody nearby stopped working to watch me get fired. The plant manager came and talked to my foreman first, then to me. He approached me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I know you are a good fork truck driver, Larry. We’ll get the door fixed.” That was all. He left. Why wasn’t I fired? The foreman, risking his own job, had been my advocate. “Larry was always careful at the doors. I had just told him he was too slow and to hurry up.”Â
Jesus risked and gave His life to be our advocate, IF WE SIN!
