More on Intercession
From Signs of the Times—January
15, 1869.
In the rich and ample variety of spiritual things which are
embraced in and revealed by the gospel of the grace of God, the doctrine of
Intercession is very prominently set forth as most vitally important to be
understood, and implicitly relied upon by all the children of God; not only
because it sustains and bears them up under all the pressing weight of trials,
conflicts, temptations and tribulations to which they are exposed while here in
the house of their pilgrimage, but also for their protection from the false and
pernicious errors which abound in our sin-smitten world. The prevalent notion
among will-worshipers and Arminians is that after the resurrection of the
Savior, he ascended up into heaven, which place they regard as a locality
somewhere very remote from the church, and that he there at the right hand of
the Father labors continually to prevail upon the Father to lay aside his
vengeful thunderbolts of wrath, and allow grace and salvation to flow down to
penitent sinners. And that he is ready and willing to be employed to intercede
for any sinner, however vile, who may choose to employ him to do so, and when so
employed will use all the influence he has to prevail on the Father to forego
his burning wrath, lay aside his purpose, and allow sinners to be saved. This
theory with but little enlargement held by papists, is so extended to include
with Christ the holy Virgin and departed saints, with priests and others on
earth in the same intercession. The people are taught to believe that their
priests and patron saints can be induced to bring an influence to bear, directly
or indirectly, upon the immutable God, and prevail on him to do what he had
never designed to do for them. While the various Protestant orders are very
little, if any, less extravagant in making their deluded millions believe that
their prayers and the prayers of their expert revivalists, at their anxious
benches, or monthly concerts, can make efficient intercession for sinners, and
prevail on God himself to lay aside his purpose and adopt theirs. Hence they
boastfully proclaim that prayer in their hands is a lever by which they can move
the power that moves the world.
The positive declaration of the Scriptures of truth is that
“God is of one mind, and none can turn him.” That he is the Lord and he changes
not. That with him there is no variation nor shadow of turning; and that he
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will; these solemn and emphatic
declarations from the throne of God in tones of peeling thunder, have no weight
with them, for they do not believe what God the Lord has spoken. They fear not
God, nor do they tremble at his Word. Some of the modern revivalists, as they
are called, and as they profess to be, have been heard to preach to sinners that
Christ has been interceding a long time for them, and the Holy Ghost has as long
been unsuccessfully wooing, striving and entreating them to yield their
opposition and consent to be saved, but all in vain. And yet they assure them
that if they will come up to their altar and be prayed for, they shall be saved:
thus presumptuously and blasphemously assuming that they can do what Christ and
the Holy Ghost has tried but failed to do. This delusion is greedily received by
the world generally; for infatuated mortals love dearly to be deceived. We have
not the faintest expectation that any thing we can write or say will make the
slightest impression on them to convince them of their delusion. Our exposition
may make them angry, or mad; but nothing less than the power of God can turn
them from the error of their ways, as the rivers of water are turned. Our labor
is not with them, we leave them where we find them, in the hands of that God
whom we trust has translated us from the power of the same darkness, into his
marvelous light. Our object is to elucidate the subject of divine intercession,
so far as the God of truth may enable us, to the understanding of all who have
ears to hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
The great object of divine intercession for the saints cannot
be regarded, consistently with divine revelation, as intended to produce any
change in the immutable God, in his purpose, love, grace, or any other fixed
purpose or counsel of his will. To suppose that God could change, would
unavoidably involve the absurdity, that such a change must either be for the
better or the worse. If we say for the better, then we imply that before the
change he was not absolutely perfect; if we say it is for the worse, then we
take the other horn of the dilemma, and conclude that subsequently to such a
change he is not as perfect as before.
Nor can we understand that there is, or ever was, the
slightest disagreement between the will, design or desire of the Father and the
Son. In the Godhead they are One, and in his Mediatorial Sonship, as the Head of
the church, his work is not to reconcile the Father to sinners, but to reconcile
us unto God. Hence in his advent to our world, he himself declares that he came
by his Father’s will; and that he came to do the will of the Father, and to
finish the work which the Father gave him to do. And so far from any discord or
discrepancy between his will and the will of his Father, it was his meat and his
drink to do the will of the Father, for their will was identically the same.
“And this is the will of the Father, that of all that he hath given me I should
lose nothing, but raise them up at the last day.” Does the will of our adorable
Redeemer differ from this? Hear him. “Father, I will that they also whom thou
hast given me be with me where I am,” etc. So far is our adorable Intercessor
from desiring any change in his Father, or in his will; he has instructed all
his saints to pray, saying, “Thy will be done.” How could we rely on him to
reconcile us unto God, if he were himself unreconciled, and desirous for a
change?
So far is he from importuning the Father to save more than
the Father has eternally designed to save, he says expressly that he prays not
for the world, but for those whom the Father has given him out of the world,
embracing precisely those of whom Paul assures us that God hath saved and called
with an holy calling, not according to their works, but according to his own
purpose and grace, which was given them in Christ Jesus before the world began.
And we are also told that “Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it
seemed good in thy sight.”
The intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ for and in behalf
of his people pertains to, and is performed under, his priestly office, and is
therefore restricted to those of his priesthood, and to them exclusively. As the
names of all the tribes of Israel for whom Aaron and his sons officiated, were
borne upon their breastplate when they made intercession by sacrifice at the
Jewish altars, so the “Great High Priest of our profession” has carried and
borne all his people all the days of old, and in his one offering he was
delivered for their offences, and raised from the dead for their justification.
They are “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a peculiar
people.” But of the work of intercession, we may speak in a two fold sense.
First,
his priestly intervention between his people and God; and secondly, that
intercession which he by the indwelling of his Spirit makes unto God in them. As
their Advocate with the Father, and the Propitiation for their sins, he has met
all the demands of the law and justice of God, which no other could have done,
“And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all
things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things
in heaven. And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by
wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh, through
death to present you holy and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight,” (Col.
1:20-22). Having put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself, and by one
offering perfected forever them that are sanctified, he has entered into heaven
itself, having obtained eternal redemption for us. The Father is well pleased
for his righteousness’ sake, in which he has magnified and honored the divine
law, and brought in everlasting righteousness for us. Now, not to overcome or
obviate an unwillingness on the part of the Father, but in perfect accordance
with the eternal and immutable will of the Father, as all his prayers and
intercessions have always been; on our behalf, he says, “I have glorified thee
on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O
Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto them which thou gavest me
out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept
thy word, now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are
of thee; for I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they
have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they
have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them; I pray not for the
world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine
are thine, and thine are mind; and I am glorified in them,” (John 18:4-10). The
nature and extent of his priestly intercession is clearly expressed in Isaiah
53:10-12. “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He
shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge
shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the
spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he
was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sins of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors.”
The infallible success of his intercession rests on this,
that it is always according to the will of the Father; whereas, if we were
compelled to believe that his intercession was intended to overcome any
opposition on the part of the Father, we should not only despair of its success,
but the thought would fill our mind with horror.
But
secondly, we may
contemplate the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ, as carried on in the
hearts of all his children. He is our High Priest, not by the law of a carnal
commandment, but by the power of an endless life. “Thou art a Priest forever,
after the order of Melchisedec.” The power of an endless life is the power of
that immortality which is brought to light through the gospel, by his
resurrection from the dead, and in this immortality all his people are made
partakers; for he says, “I give unto them eternal life.” And again, I am the
Resurrection and the Life, the way, the truth and the life. He dwells in them,
and they in him, and by his Spirit which dwells in them, he makes intercession
in, as well as for, them. What would our prayers amount to, if they were not
inspired by the Spirit of Christ, by which he dwells in us? “God is a Spirit,
and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” “As many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” But, “If any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” It is only by this Spirit we can
worship God in the beauty of holiness. If left to express our desires without
the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ, we would only ask for carnal or fleshly
gratifications, for things to be consumed on our carnal lusts. Christians may
indeed, and sometimes do, “ask and receive not, because they ask amiss.” And we
would always ask amiss if the Spirit were withheld from us. “Likewise the Spirit
also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which
cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of
the Spirit; because he maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will
of God,” (Rom. 8:26,27). Every holy aspiration that arises from the saints of
God is inspired by the Spirit of Christ in them. All their prayers and songs,
their confessions, thanksgivings and supplications, uttered or unuttered, to be
acceptable to God must be led, indited and directed by the spirit of our
Intercessor, and then they cannot fail to be according to the will of God. This
Spirit searcheth all things; even the deep things of God. And it is by this
Spirit of Christ in us that God worketh in us, both to will and to do his good
pleasure. How often have the children of God, in their experience, felt this
unutterable groaning within them, while their lips were sealed with a death-like
silence, when no language at their command could express the emotions which were
felt within. Such groanings do not arise within us from any desire that the will
of God should yield to our gratification; but it is rather a struggle for
language to express in prayer and praise what we are feeling at the time of the
blessed Spirit’s work in our hearts.
It is thus by the power of an endless life our great High
Priest, our risen and glorified Savior, our dear Redeemer, Advocate with the
Father, and divine Intercessor, ever lives to make intercession for us, and in
us. He not only lives for us, but he lives in us, and living in us, by his
Spirit (for we know him no more after the flesh) carries on this intercession in
all his children. “No man can come unto the Father but by him.” No intercession
can prevail with God, but that which he makes continually for and in the saints.
Forms of prayer may be poured forth in flowing eloquence, with fluent utterance,
and may even be expressed in unobjectionable words, and yet being uttered in
empty sounds, with cringing formality, are rejected by taking the sacred name of
God in vain; while the heart burdened, humble sinner, like the poor publican,
with downcast eyes feels the power of the divine intercession within him, which
maketh the intercession, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
How vitally important then is the intercession of Christ, by
his Spirit, for and in us; not a desire can go up from us to God with acceptance
without it. No heavenly blessing can come down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, but through it. Since the
world began no man has ever uttered without hypocrisy the words, “Thy will be
done,” unless prompted thereto by the intercessory Spirit of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
While writing this article, our mind has reverted to our
early experience, and the traditional views we entertained of the intercession
of Christ. More than fifty-six years ago, when we were a child, a deep sense of
guilt and condemnation pressed us down with crushing weight, and while in this
condition imagination described to us an offended Father, incensed against us,
and ready to hurl his fiery vengeance upon our guilty head, in an everlasting
storm, and truly we felt a consciousness that we deserved his wrath; but in our
thoughts the Father was austere and exacting; we imagined the Intercessor, as
pleading anxiously in our behalf, trying to prevail with the Father to spare us
at least a little longer. There seemed to us to be a wide difference between
them in regard to us. But when it pleased God to reveal his Son in us, we beheld
the light of the glory of God in the face of our dear Redeemer, and we were
amazed to find that it was the love of God to us, when we were dead in sins that
provided a Savior for us. And we shall never be able fully to express what was
our transport and joy to know that God was in Christ reconciling us to himself,
and that the salvation of all the redeemed people of God is according to God’s
own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ before the world began.
