Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Do we feel pierced?

One of our human problems is translating spiritual matters into feeling. So many times in scriptures Jesus compares spiritual matters with human experiences. “This is my body, take eat.” “He who drinks the water I give will never thirst again.” “My sheep know my voice.”

All these things we know in the flesh, experienced before we came to Christ. There is little that anyone can say to convince us we are not feeling our way through this life of faith. Feelings are what caused us to seek Him in the first place.

• Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
• Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

A contrite heart is a broken heart, tell me that isn’t emotional. We are created emotional beings. Love is after all an emotion. How we express that love is as vast as the many ways love is defined. Passion, friend, family, even the mistaken sense of appetites. “I love coffee ice cream.”

Then God comes along and we discover agape love. God’s love is perfect love. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

And that is where we differ from God. We can be fickled in how we express love. We can even deny the love that captures us.

2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

The KJV uses the words if we stop believing. We can stop believing in love. Some kinds of love can hurt, but not Agape.

1 John 2 English Standard Version

Christ Our Advocate

1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Another word for advocate is lawyer. Imagine we stand before the Father to answer Him.

Every good lawyer will tell his client to allow him to talk for the client. But we are likely to start justifying ourselves as we do in life. Now our advocate speaks up, “I know what he said but this is what he meant.” Jesus knows what it feels like to be human. 

Since He dwells in our hearts by faith, He knows us better than we know ourselves. So my advice is this, let your lawyer do the talking.

In our court system we have a right to hear the charges against us and face our accuser. Well that court will not be an American court. The charges are too many and the reading of the charges will be waived. We will not be allowed to face our accuser, liars are not allowed to give testamony. His punishment has prevented him from appearing in that court. So what does our advocate have to say to the Father about our offenses?

“My client has been convicted, sentenced to death and executed once, double jeopardy applies. You sent me to die in his place and the defendant is mine to do with as I please. You gave him to me.”

To which the Father says; “Fine but what have you done with him since that day?”

“Now that is a different matter. The defendant may well be worthy of a few stripes, but not death.”

2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Key in this verse is “done in the body”, Christ’s body, after we have been changed. This new creation still has to live up to what we have done “in His name” by obedience of faith.

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.