<p>2:1 <em>My little children, these things write I to you, so you may not sin. And if anyone sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous</em>- As explained on 1:8-10, John was teaching that if we are focused on the light of the Lord Jesus and have the Comforter abiding within us, then &quot;all our sin&quot; is dealt with in the Lord Jesus. But this is not to say that we will not sin; indeed, it is the presence of the &quot;truth&quot;, the &quot;spirit of truth&quot;, the Comforter within us which convicts us of sin. And now he alludes to the same thing, saying that we have a <em>parakletos</em> with the Father, the Lord Jesus, &quot;the righteous&quot;, and we are counted as in Him, His righteousness imputed to us. The Comforter refers to the Spirit of Christ within us which means that we have the Lord's presence with us to more than compensate for His physical absence. The same Lord who is within us convicting us of sin is the same Lord who is now in Heaven to obtain our total forgiveness. This way of thinking and being means that we will find the power not to sin. &quot;These things&quot; John has just written at the end of chapter 1 are the way not to sin; to not as it were worry about avoiding sin, but rather to positively focus upon the presence of the Lord within us, allowing Him to convict us of our sin and deal with it in His own way.</p><p>The Comforter passages assure us that we need no mediator because the Father Himself loves us, and the spirit of His Son is within us so that we can directly relate to Him as the Son did and does with the Father. The later NT passages concerning prayer and mediation therefore speak largely in the context of prayer for forgiveness and salvation (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25; 1 Jn. 2:1). This is what the Lord's mediation / advocacy for us achieves, rather than acting as a constant go-between for us with the Father in the context of our regular prayers for other things.</p>