July 20

Paul’s cry is our own—“Oh, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24) We frustrate ourselves endlessly with our failed attempts to please ourselves—and throw our hands up in total despair at our inability to please God.

To sin is so easy. To overcome our proclivity to sin is so futile. What can we do? How can we hope to attain the smile of Heaven when we are helpless in the face of the lures of the flesh? The Apostle John—the only one to live into old age and to die a natural death—supplied the remedy for our dilemma.

In I John 2:1,2, he says, “If anyone should sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, and He is Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, but not for our sins alone, but for the sins of the whole world.” Pleasing God is not about us. It’s about Jesus. Of Jesus, the Father has said, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased. Hear Him.” (Matthew 17:5)

What none of us can to do because we are weak and subject to the snare of sin, we can appropriate by hearing Jesus and claiming what He has said He’ll do for us. He has lived the sinless life we cannot live, He has washed us clean of sin in His own shed blood, and He has promised that He will ever be our Advocate with the Father—He is the holy, sinless One who defends us before our Holy God.