A Real Good Lawyer

One of the first things prudent people do when they get in trouble with the law is to hire a real good lawyer.  Now, we sinners are in very big trouble with God's eternal law.  We desperately need a spotless and holy Lawyer to plead our case before the holy Judge of all the earth. We are all so bankrupt spiritually; we have nothing to pay the legal fees for this perfect Lawyer, so Jesus freely defends us in His mercy and grace.  We have all sinned against God's Ten Commandments. Our souls are weighed down by a great burden of sin; we sense our guilt; we are fearful of death, and dread the judgment to come. We long for the burden of our guilt to be taken away.

Our human morality, religion, and self-goodness can never rid us of our sin burden. The righteous requirements of God's law and the threat of God's judgment and wrath trouble us day after day. Remember - God is the great and terrible judge of all our sin. We are all guilty sinners before a holy God. God may seem distant to you today, it is your sin against God that causes that distant feeling. God's holiness is a terror and dread to lost sinners. We all need a merciful Lawyer to stand in the gap between God, and us sinners, between heaven and earth. We need a Heavenly Attorney to bridge the gap between God's holiness and our sinfulness. We need Someone to protect us from God's curse and wrath against our sin, we need Someone to endure the eternal death penalty of God's law in our place. You better get saved.

We need an Advocate (a Heavenly and Holy Defense Lawyer) to represent us and speak on our behalf to God in the eternal courtroom. An Advocate that will intercede for us, that will plead with God not to destroy us because of our sin, we need an Advocate that will lay down His life for us. The Lord Jesus Christ is just that Advocate - He is our go-between. Jesus is the only One who can approach God's judgment bar for us. Why? Because Jesus is God as well as man. Jesus has both a divine nature and a human nature. His sinless blood sacrifice is the only thing acceptable to God. We must be saved by blood – by God's own blood - that blood that flowed from the veins of Christ Jesus.

We are all natural born sinners, but God's law demands perfect obedience.  For there is no man that sinneth not, no one is able to keep God's law perfectly. We haven't just failed here and there. We are totally unable to keep a single one of God's commands in perfect integrity. God is holy and just, so His demands are always righteous. Most people have trouble naming the Ten Commandments, let alone keeping them. We are all sinners by nature, and thus we are unable to obey God in anything. We are not able to keep even one of the Ten Commandments perfectly and continually. Frankly, we like to serve and follow after other gods, use bad language, resist authority, forget God, lust after sexual pleasure, steal other people's stuff, say things to tear people down, crave and desire after unlawful things, and dwell upon evil things with our thoughts.  The first risings of sin from our heart begins in our thoughts, and imaginations, we fulfill the desires of the flesh and mind - the Bible calls this lust.

We blatantly violate the Ten Commandments every day; we are grumpy, nasty, greedy, selfish, and overindulgent.  No man is able to keep the Ten Commandments perfectly; we break them daily in thought, word, and deed. All our attempts to obey the law fail miserably. The law condemns our evil thoughts and desires; the sins of our past years continually haunt us in our memory and conscience. If we try to do our best to save ourselves, we are doomed to frustration and failure. If we stumble at just one point of the law, we are guilty of breaking all of it. (See James 2:10). You are not the good person you would like to think you are. You are covered with the filth of sin.  The law can never save us; it can only reveal and magnify our sin.  The law can do nothing to relieve the bondage of sin, it only accentuates and intensifies sin and confirms our bondage. If we were able to keep the law, we could be saved by it, but since we cannot keep it all, we are only condemned by it.

We are always inclined to minimize our sin, we compare ourselves to others who are more sinful outwardly than we are. We excuse our sin, claiming that there are some extenuating circumstances. Or we simply get used to our sin, like the way a pig farmer gets used to the smell of pig dung and pig slop.  We become jaded and hardened by sin. We are covered with the excrement of our sinful depravity. Like a little baby, we have soiled ourselves, but we cannot cleanse ourselves. We are filthy with our own pride, lust, and greed, our self-indulgence, self-admiration, and self-pity. These all make us filthy in God's holy eyes, and a stench to God's holy nostrils. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. God's blood and grace must intervene and take away our sins. We must acknowledge our need for a true righteousness and look completely to Another to provide it. You're a sinner and you need Someone to stand before God for you - Someone who is holy from head to toe.

We often try to cover up our sin, dressing ourselves up to be good enough for God. What we ought to do instead is to confess our sin and look to Jesus alone for Salvation. Men try to quieten their consciences by religious deeds and moral resolutions, and try to stand well in the sight of their neighbors. They sometimes will even invent a religion to help cover up their sin. But their conscience is still convicted, their guilt and shame still springs up again within them, nothing can still the restless uneasiness of their heart. The guilty soul in vain attempts to conceal its sin.  We need a true Righteousness not of our own. We need a covering that blots out all our sins, and forever clothes us with spotless purity, which will hide us from the searching holy eyes of God, and that will completely justify us before God.

If you want to live with a holy God in His heaven, all you'll have to do is live a perfect life without sin - you need a perfect Righteousness, and Christ Jesus is the only source of true Righteousness. That is all there is to it. The law demands 'perfect' righteousness, but the problem is that we have none because we're sinners. We don't always do what is right; therefore we are guilty in the sight of God. We stretch the truth, cut other people down with our words, think highly and boast about ourselves, break our promises to others, use our money to serve ourselves rather than to help others in need, we reject Christ and forget God days without number.  This is why we need Jesus Christ to defend us. What we need is the best lawyer in the universe!  The perfect holiness of God's law condemns us, and leads us to seek the Gospel of Christ for free mercy.  The Law condemns us, and then we start desperately looking for a legal remedy; and we discover that God has provided a free one for us in Jesus Christ's perfect life and death. Jesus can do for us what God's law cannot do; He can save us completely without any of our works being involved at all.

We need Someone to keep God's law perfectly for us. Jesus offers God perfect obedience to the law for us. We are all idolaters, rebels, liars, and cheats, and thus we can never be saved by our own human obedience. But everything Jesus ever did counts for every sinner who trusts only in Him.  And everything you've done that is sinful and bad will be counted and charged to Jesus if you come and receive Him. By simple faith in Christ we offer perfect obedience to God and His holy law. It is absolutely necessary for us to trust in Jesus, because the Day of Judgment is coming for all of us.  And since we're in big trouble with the heavenly law, we will need a Heavenly Lawyer. If we don't have the Advocate, we will have to face the justice of God's wrath all on our own, and we know what will happen to us then. We must sincerely confess that we are separated from God by our sins.  We must acknowledge that we are sinful creatures, in need of our Holy Creator.  We must trust that Jesus made a sinless blood sacrifice for our sins on the Cross.

Here's the real good news: God in His tender mercy realized our helpless state, and He provided us a Heavenly Defense Lawyer (the Advocate - See I John 2:1-2). Jesus lived as one person with two natures; He had both a divine nature and a human nature in one man. God became flesh.  The Almighty dwelt among men in flesh and blood, skin and bone, sinew and tendon.  The God-man was sinless, He was crucified, His body was torn by the hard nails and sharp spear of our hatred and rebellion. He suffered and died to pay the full price for our sin.

Christ Jesus suffered the law's penalty against our sin in our place. Jesus bore all our sins in His body on the Cross, He never committed a sin Himself, He was holy from head to toe, but He took the sins committed by us into His own body, and paid the eternal price, and made satisfaction for them to God with His own innocent life-blood.  We must cry out for Christ to save us.  We must stop trusting ourselves, and trust simply and implicitly in the Crucified Redeemer, Christ Jesus Himself.  We must receive Him as the only sacrifice for our sins.  Then after we have trusted Christ, we are safe in Christ, and the law and wrath of God will hold no more terror over us.  Jesus has suffered the penalty that we deserved for our sins, and the law frightens us no longer, for God can never punish the same sins twice.

You need Christ to stand before God for you in His perfect Holiness. Don't just study and read about Jesus Christ, from your heart trust your soul with Him, take Him for your own personal salvation. Seal the deal with Christ Jesus as soon as possible.  Look only to Him, trust in His precious blood and righteousness alone. By the blood of Jesus we are justified freely, redeemed, reconciled, forgiven, and released. Anyone who has a guilty conscience - and every sinner does – can come and be clean by trusting only in the Blood of God. The Cross is where atonement was made, and where our sins are forgiven forever. The Cross must be the center of your salvation. It is only by the blood that Jesus shed on Calvary's Cross that we are able to have a personal and eternal relationship with God. The blood of Jesus gives us eternal life freely, and speaks mercy and peace to our soul, and He turns away God's wrath from us. (See Romans 3:25; 5:9; Eph 1:7; 2:13; Col 1:19-20; Isaiah 12:1; John 3:36; Rev 1:5)

Now understand - the only way to get to Heaven is by the Blood of God. If you are to be saved from your sins, you are going to have to deal with Jesus Christ Himself one on one. His own blood must be applied 'directly' to your sins. It is only by trusting in God's blood that any sinner ever gets saved from hell-fire.  The Blood has to come between God's perfect holiness and our unholy sin, that is, the blood of the Crucified One which is the only thing acceptable to God.  Jesus offered up Himself as our personal sin sacrifice. His sacrifice was a sacrifice in blood - His own blood - poured out for ungodly sinners. The Blood of God is where sinners can find mercy. God be merciful to me, the sinner. Plead with God for mercy through Jesus Christ, as if you were the only and worst sinner in the whole world. Ask God to have mercy on your soul through Jesus' most-precious blood. There is mercy for sinners now, if you will simply trust in the blood of Jesus to cover and cleanse you from all your sins. Trust Christ entirely and eternally with the safety of your soul.

Mercy's door is always open to the sinner who knocks with sincerity. Go now and knock at Christ's door, and His mercy shall be yours freely. The only demand from God for you to believe in Christ is that you admit yourself a lost and ruined sinner.  If you know for a fact you're a real sinner, you can know the real Savior of sinners.  Christ came to seek and save sinners.  Jesus came to save even you.  Good moral people that trust in their own works go to hell. Those proud souls that are busy sewing their fig leaves together, and working out day by day the garment of their own self-righteousness, will soon find their good works to be utterly insufficient in the Day of Judgment.  Cast your self-righteousness away, cast all your good works overboard, believe only in Christ, trust wholly in Jesus. You may ask, "What is it to believe?" To believe is to cast yourself simply and wholly on the Blood of Christ for salvation.

You must first be condemned by the Law of God, and then sincerely seek the Heavenly Lawyer to defend you, and then humble ask HIM to freely acquit you by His redeeming grace before the eternal Judge of Heaven. Only the grace of Christ and the Blood of God can extinguish the fire of sin in your heart, soul, and mind.  Adam sinned in the garden, and now after 6,000 years his sin nature is still passed upon us all. God cannot condone our sin, and the blood of animals can never take away our sin.  So God in love condescended into this dark world as a man, the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus, He lived, bled, and died in the sinner's place.

Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, regarded your helpless estate, He went up to Calvary's Cross all alone for you and shed God's blood to extinguish your guilt and put away your sins forever. Now understand - this is Calvary Love:  On Calvary's Cross, the worst possible thing happened to best possible Person, so that the best possible thing could happen to the worst possible person. Jesus never did anything in His life to deserve anything bad.  But now, since Jesus suffered, the best thing can happen to the worst person. The worst tragedy of all (the Son of God dying in our sins) brings us lost sinners the best thing of all (free salvation from our sins, the righteousness of God, and eternal life).

Jesus didn't die for His sins; He died especially for your sins. Jesus was obedient unto death and bore all your sins and then He died in your sins, so you could trust in Him completely, and not in yourself at all. Your sins spilt God's Blood on Calvary that day, and helped nail Jesus Christ to the Cross. Jesus died in your sins, so you could die in His righteousness.  Turn your eyes away from your silly religion and your vain good works, and look only to living Christ.

Come to Christ now, and make the great exchange with Him, exchange all your sins for all His righteousness, your vileness for His sinless perfection; your sinful nature for His divine nature. He will save you by His free grace. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Whosoever believeth in Him shall never be condemned. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord Jesus shall be saved. Trust in God's Blood now, and you will be clean, free, and redeemed forever. God be merciful to me, the sinner, for Jesus' sake.  You need a "Real Good" Lawyer for your upcoming court case with God.  (Seek the sinner's only Advocate - Call upon Jesus' precious name in sincerity now).