Christ intercedes on your behalf before the Father for all the sins that work guilt deep down in your soul.
Attorneys, lawyers, advocates, prosecutors and ambulance chasers, they rank somewhere there among tax collectors as most loved to be hated. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Dick the Butcher says. (Shakespeare King Henry VI) Yes, so ingrained into our culture is the hatred of lawyers that even Shakespeare got in on the fun. They make lots of money defending criminals and getting them off on technicalities. They prosecute criminals ruthlessly. They have a disinterested cold air about them, and smell of money. They benefit from every poor choice you make in this sue-happy world. They are the reason McDonalds has to tell you their coffee is hot. And one might think, that where anti-Semitism comes into play, perhaps associating Jews with lawyers does not play to their favor. Saying you are not an anti-Semite because one of your lawyers is a Jew makes you sound about as bad as the guy who says he’s not a racist after telling a racist joke because he has a black friend.
Of course, your Jewish attorney is the most hated of all even though He does all his work pro-bono and gave up all the riches of heaven and earth to advocate for you. He gave up the smell of money to take on the stench of a peasant born in a barn. He saw the futility of getting you off on a technicality, or even getting you time off for good behavior. The world hates Him for it. The world wants to play with the law and get you to think you have a chance to defend yourself before the judge.
Buying Off the Judge
The prosecutor tempts you with imagined loopholes in the law. “Go ahead,” he says, “sure, you are not as bad as the last person I prosecuted. Make your case.” But the law doesn’t care about any of that. The law does not care if the crime you committed is less of an offense in your eyes than the other guy. Did he sexually assault teenage girls? He will answer for that. You will answer for your own cat calls, your own improprieties, affairs and porn. Did he murder? He will answer for that. You will answer for your own hatred, and the fantasies you play repeatedly in your head of brutal car wrecks when your kids stay with your ex for Christmas. Did your lawyer rack up an astronomical bill defending you and you lost? Consider that a light punishment if you are going be judged by your own measuring stick. You are in no place to judge by any stick.
Christ intercedes on your behalf before the Father for all the sins that work guilt deep down in your soul.
Your advocate searched your heart and knew you were a lost cause from the beginning. He is a guy who knows how to judge and has the standing to do it. He knew you had a hopeless case trying to defend yourself at the expense of others. So He makes your case at His own expense. He is a rather generous Jew. He inherited all of His wealth from His Father, the final Judge, the Judge to Whom even the supreme court and The Hague must finally bow. It was to Him that your attorney, the Jew, made His appeal, when even popular vote couldn’t get you off the hook for being a good ol’ boy.
Some in this world might think He took advantage of that relationship with His Father, but He was so invested in your case that it cost Him His life. He couldn’t buy the Judge off with anything less than His weight in divine blood, sweat, and love. When the accusers would not let up He let the accusers kill all the lawyers, but He was the only one, your only advocate, so they started with Him. Of course, the shedding of innocent blood has not managed to give your accuser very good standing before the Judge, especially considering it was the Judge’s Son. So yeah, He managed to buy off the Judge for you. He even managed to deliver the payment in person when He rose from the dead. He would not trust anyone else.
Yes, you have a Jewish attorney, an advocate whose name is Jesus. He intercedes on your behalf before the Father for all the sins that work guilt deep down in your soul. The guilt that eggs you on as you watch the news to make one more accusation in an attempt to assuage it, to calm it, to convince yourself you are better, better at least than some. The guilt that torments your soul at a funeral, when half way through your eulogy you realize even that was not enough to buy off death. What hope do you have for all your sin?
You have Jesus. Don’t worry, He not only got you off when your friend’s eulogy threw you under the bus. He got your friend off for throwing you under the bus, too. He even got Roy Moore’s attorney off the hook.
“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. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” – 1 John 2:1-2
