Christ Our Advocate and Priest - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2026

We have a great High Priest.

We have an Advocate with the Father.
Hebrews 4:14; 1 John 2:1

Christ Our Advocate and Priest
The difference between advocacy and priesthood is twofold. The Priest is with God; the Advocate is with the Father. The Advocate has to do with sin; the Priest with our infirmities (Heb. 4:15)—never with sins. It is true that He has made propitiation for our sins (Heb. 2:17), and no doubt it was the Priest who did so—not as a function of His office, but rather because the character is inseparably connected with His Person. The propitiation which He made (as indeed in the case of the advocacy) is the foundation on which He commences to exercise the office of Priest. Hence Hebrews opens with, "When He had by Himself purged our sins, [He] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (1:3). It was, therefore, not until He had taken this place that He entered upon the functions of His office as Priest: if He were on earth, He would not be a priest (8:4).

So with the Advocate. The proper exercise of this office commenced with His sitting at the right hand of God; and the foundation of its exercise is twofold: His work and His Person. He is the propitiation for our sins; this is the ground, the efficacious basis, on which He is enabled to be our Advocate with the Father. And what a basis it is! It reminds us that He has forever cleared away our sins, that the blood which He shed has been accepted by God as a full and complete atonement for all our guilt. He is Jesus Christ the Righteous (1 Jn. 1:1), the One who has met every claim of God, according to the standards of His own immutable holiness. He is free to go out in righteousness, according to His own heart of love, and forgive when we confess our sins. Surely it will cheer our souls to remember this when overcome by the tempter.

Edward Dennett