6. The proper intendment of this office of Christ is for sins after a
the world.' For them! For whom? For those that 'have believed that thou didst send me,' ver. 8. He 'lives for ever to make intercession for those that come to God by him;' so that the coming to God by him is previous to the intercession he makes for them.
6. The proper intendment of this office of Christ is for sins after a state of faith. He was a priest in his propitiation to bring God and man together; he is a priest in his intercession, to keep God and man together. His propitiation is the foundation of his intercession, but his intercession is an act distinct from the other. That was done by his death; this is managed in his life. His death was for our reconciliation, but his life is for the perpetuating that reconciliation:
Rom. 5:10, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate.' If any man sin that hath entered into a state of communion with God, let him know that this office was erected in heaven to keep him right in the favour of the Judge of all the world. We should quickly mar all, and be as miserable the next minute after regeneration and justification as before, if provision were not in this way made for us. In the first acts, faith eyes the propitiation of Christ, and pitches upon his death.
Christ, as dying, is the great support of a soul new come out of the gulf of misery and terrors of conscience. In after acts, it eyes the life of Christ, as well as the death, taking in both his propitiation and intercession together.
7. No man can possibly be justified by his own works. We have an advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous. He directs them not to any pleas from their former walking in the light. If our justification be not continued by virtue of our own works after conversion (for though they are works proceeding from renewed principles, and are the fruits of the operation of the Holy Ghost, spring from a root of faith and love, and are directed in the aim of them to the glory of God, yet one flaw spoils the efficacy of all in the matter of justification); I say, if our justification be not continued by works after conversion, which have so rich a tincture on them, much less is it procured by works before conversion, wherein there is not a mite of grace. Our justification, in the first sentence of it, and also in the