Maligned though they may be, there is no substitute for a good attorney when one is needed in a court of law. While only 18% of Americans view the job with an attitude of respect, most people would prefer to represented by a quality attorney when standing before a judge or jury while on trial. “Quality”, in terms of legal representation, is “one who will win.”
In an interesting text from the New Testament, the apostle John presents Jesus in precisely the role of a defense attorney. The Judge is God the Father, the Defendant is the repentant sinner before Him, and the Defense Attorney, παράκλητος, is Jesus- the “Just One”. Consider 1 John 2:1,
“Τεκνία μου, ταῦτα γράφω ὑμῖν ἵνα μὴ ἁμάρτητε. καὶ ἐάν τις ἁμάρτῃ, παράκλητον ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον·” (Nestle-Aland 28th ed.)
“My children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the Just.” (translation mine)
The Meaning of παράκλητος
Of all of the New Testament authors, only John uses the term παράκλητος. Four times in the “Farewell Discourse” of Jesus, this word is applied to the Holy Spirit, and variously translated “comforter”, “advocate”, or “helper.” The various translations of this word demonstrate that there is no suitable English equivalent that covers the same range of possible meanings. The usage of παράκλητος in 1 John 2:1 compounds this issue further, as distnctly legal terminology is assigned there.
Most English translations of 1 John 2:1 opt for the translation “advocate” (AMP, ESV, KJV, NIV, NASB, NLT, NRSV). An “advocate” is “one who pleads the cause of another”, specifically: “one who pleads the cause of another before a tribunal or judicial court” (Merriam-Webster).
The term “advocate”, as it is applied to Jesus in this verse, is certainly preferable to the terms “helper” or “comforter.” This is true because it is exactly the role that John envisions in the heavenly judicial court. Lochlan Shelfer makes the case that παράκλητος is a distinctly legal Greek term used to identify an advocate of the accused in a court of Law. In his article, The Legal Precision of the term ‘παράκλητος’, Shelfer writes,
“This legal term presupposes a judicial context in which a judge’s decision was influenced by the defense of a patron, one who interceded on behalf of a defendant, and whose influence existed by virtue of his elevated position.”
(Shelfer, Lochlan. 2009. “The Legal Precision of the Term ‘Παράκλητος.’” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 32 (2): 131–50.)
In that same article, Shelfer connects the term παράκλητος to the Latin advocatus:
Jesus, our Good Attorney
The reality that confronts God’s people is that we are sinful beings. An essential step in our reconciliation to God is our understanding and ownership of this reality. We are sinners, and the subject against whom we have sinned is God himself. There will be a day when we will “go the way of all the earth” (1 Kings 2:2), and we will have our day in the heavenly court.
Apart from salvation in Christ, we would stand before God as our own “advocate” with nothing to offer by way of excuse or defense of our sin. Contrast this with John’s words above: we who trust in Christ, looking unto Him for the forgiveness of our sins, will not plead our own cause before the Father. We have Jesus the Just, a perfect and holy advocate, who makes our case before the Father on our behalf.
John goes on to say of our advocate,
“He Himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins…” (1 John 2:2a, my translation). Jesus’ case for our admittance into the presence of God is based solely on His work of redemption, whereby he has taken upon himself the punishment against our sin and therefore is able to present us “holy and blameless” before the court of God (Eph. 1:4).
“Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone;”
(Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 11, Article 1.A)
Preston Kelso 