"Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him— Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life."
An omniscient judge who knows our guilt is at the bar. Everything about our state repulses Him, or rather repulses us from Him. We defiled the perfect bodies and spirits He created for us. We spurned His love. We hurt others. We hurt ourselves. We damaged our eternal potential. We hurt Him. Our choices have earned our sentence. There's no doubt about the crimes or the perpetrators. There is no argument for mistaken identity, for temporary insanity, for insufficient evidence, for procedural irregularities. We did what we did, we knew what we were doing, and that Perfect Being of love who "cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,"(Alma 45:16) is saddened with an unimaginable dejection that we simply don't belong among the pure of His House--our own conscience would destroy us from the inside to attempt life with that level of holiness. The justice by which all Creation hangs in obedience to His unvarying will erects an impenetrable wall in our mind and heart: we deserve no glory, we cannot enter there.
But there is one case left to plea. It's the unlikeliest. It makes no appeal to the balance of our deeds, to our own natures, or to anything connected to the subject of judgment at all. Instead the appeal is to the Advocate Himself. He alone merits the acquittal, and yet He alone served the sentence. And to quell justice's unflinching demands, He answers: don't look at him, look at Me. The eyes of justice shift to the grace of the great Atoning One, and soften to mercy. This soteriological substitution can only suffice because our Savior satisfied justice's exigencies--it's not that justice slacked, it's that the debt has been paid in full. The judge must admit that, on the strength of the Advocate alone, no more can be required of His client.
No more can be required by the law. But the higher law of love must now spring forth an everlasting obedience, an eternal progression, a never ending march toward completion, toward sanctity, toward a measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. We must come unto Him. Even the everlasting life He promises is an infinite submission of will to His goodness and light, to the use of that life for His purposes, to oneness with Him as He is one with His Father. Not in the mystical way the trinitarians mistakenly believe, but in the immortally corporeal way in which He prayed, "Father not my will, but thine be done." We have to allow Him to teach us, to mold our very being--our will--into a match for His. The Advocate serves the Judge, and serves us as well. Only by satisfying Him, can we satisfy them both. And this will require the journey of eternity. But what a sweet sentence, full of grace, adding line upon line, precept upon precept, increase and honor flowing through us to the Father with no compulsory means forever and ever.
I need precisely that Advocacy. My journey starts afresh with every step, with every renewal of my covenant with Him.
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