The Intercessor

Hebrews 7:25 KJV 1900

25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

Luke 16:26 KJV 1900

26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

Luke 22:32 KJV 1900

32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.

ALL growth in the spiritual life is connected with a clearer insight into what Jesus is to us. The more I realize that Christ must be all to me and in me, that all in Christ is indeed for me, the more I learn to live the real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ. The Christian life is no longer the vain struggle to live right, but the resting in Christ and finding strength in Him as our life, to fight the fight and gain the victory of faith. This is especially true of the life of prayer. As it too comes under the law of faith alone, and is seen in the light of the fulness and completeness there is in Jesus, the believer understands that it need no longer be a matter of strain or anxious care, but an experience of what Christ will do for him and in him--a participation in that life of Christ which, as on earth, so in heaven, ever ascends to the Father as prayer. And he begins to pray, trusting in the merits of Jesus, or in the intercession by which our unworthy prayers are made acceptable, but in that near and close union in virtue of which He prays in us and we in Him."

The whole of salvation is Christ

Himself:

He has given HIMSELF to us; He lives in us.

Because He prays, we pray, too. When the disciples saw Jesus pray, they asked Him to make them partakers of what He knew of prayer. Now, as we see Him as an intercessor on the throne, we know that He makes us participate with Him in prayer.

How this comes out in the last night of His life. In His high-priestly prayer (John xvii., He shows us how and what He has to pray to the Father and will pray when once he ascends to heaven. And yet He had in His parting address so repeatedly also connected His going to the Father with their new prayer life. The two would be ultimately connected: His entrance on the work of His eternal intercession would be the commencement and the power of their new prayer life in His Name. It is the sight of Jesus in His intercession that gives us power to pray in His Name: all right and power of prayer is Christ's; He makes us share in His intercession.

To understand this, think first of His intercession: He ever liveth to make intercession. The work of Christ on earth as a Priest was but a beginning. It was as Aaron He shed His blood; it is as Melchizedek that He now lives within the veil to continue His work after the power of, after the power of eternal life. As Melchizedek is more glorious than Aaron, the atonement has its true power and glory in the work of intercession.

It is Christ that died: yea more, who is even at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us.' That intercession is an intense reality, a necessary work, without which the continued application of redemption cannot occur. In the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, the wondrous reconciliation took place, and man became partaker of the divine life and blessedness. But the real personal appropriation of this reconciliation in each of His members below cannot occur without the unceasing exercise of His Divine power by the head in heaven. In all conversion and sanctification, in every victory over sin and the world, there is a real forth-putting of the power of Him who is mighty to save. And this exercise of His power only takes place through His prayer. He asks of the Father, and receives from the Father. There is not a need of His people but He receives in intercession what the Godhead has to give:

His mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the cross. Nothing takes place without His intercession: it engages all His time and powers, is His unceasing occupation at the right hand of the Father.

And we participate not only in the benefits of this His work, but in the work itself. This is because we are His body. Body and members are one: The head cannot say to the feet, I do not need thee.' We share with Jesus in all He is and has: The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them.' We are partakers of His life, righteousness, and work: we share with Him in His intercession too; it is not a work He does without us.

See on the difference between having Christ as an Advocate or Intercessor who stands outside of us, and having Him within us, we abide in Him and He in us through the Holy Spirit, perfecting our union with Him, so that we can come directly to the Father in His Name, — the note above from Beck of Tubingen.

We do this because we are partakers of His life: Christ is our life; No longer I, but Christ liveth in me.' The life in Him and in us is identical, the same. His life in us is an ever-praying life. When it descends and takes possession of us, it does not lose its character; in us, too, it is the every-praying life that, without ceasing, asks and receives from God. And this not as if there were two separate currents of prayer rising upwards, one from Him, and one from His people. No, but the substantial life union is also a prayer union: what He prays passes through us, and what we pray passes through Him. He is the angel with the golden censer: UNTO HIM there was given much incense, the secret of acceptable prayer, that He should add to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar!

We live, we abide in Him, the Interceding One.

The Only-begotten is the only one who has the right to pray: to Him alone it was said, Ask, and it shall be given Thee' As in all other things the fulness dwells in Him, so the true prayerfulness too; He alone has the power of prayer. And just as the growth of the spiritual life consists in the clearer insight that all 172 With Christ in the School of Prayer

the treasures are in Him, and that we too are in Him, to receive each moment what we possess in Him, grace for grace, so with the prayer-life too. Our faith in the intercession of Jesus must not only be that He prays in our stead when we do not or cannot pray, but that, as the Author of our life and our faith, He draws us on to pray in unison with Himself. Our prayer must be a work of faith in this sense, too, that as we know that Jesus communicates His whole life in us, He also, out of that prayerfulness which is His alone, breathes into us our praying.

To many believers, it was a new epoch in their spiritual lives when revealed how truly and entirely Christ was their life, standing good as surety for their remaining faithful and obedient.

It was then that he really began to live a faith life. No less blessed will be the discovery that Christ is surety for our prayer life, too, the centre and embodiment of all prayer, to be communicated by Him through the Holy Spirit to His people.

He ever liveth to make intercession as the Head of the body, as the Leader in that new and living way which He hath opened up, as the Author and the Perfecter of our faith. He provides in everything for the life of His redeemed ones by giving His own life in them: He cares for their life of prayer, by taking them up into His heavenly prayer-life, by giving and maintaining His prayer-life within them. I have prayed for thee, not to render thy faith needless, but that thy faith fail not:' our faith and prayer of faith is rooted in His. It is, if ye abide in me, the ever-living Intercessor, and pray with me and in me: ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you!'

The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of what He has taught us more than once before: how all these wonderful prayer promises have as their aim and their justification the glory of God in the manifestation of His kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit-bearing branches of the Vine; it is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent Him, to live for perishing men; it is to His faithful servants and intimate friends who take up the work He leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the seed-corn, losing its life to multiply it manifold;--it is to such that the promises are given. Let us each find out what the work is, and who the souls are entrusted to our special prayers; let us make our intercession for them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the promises of power in prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin to realize how our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us makes us share in His own joy of blessing and saving men.

O most beautiful intercession of our Blessed Lord Jesus, to which we not only owe everything, but in which we are taken up as active partners and fellow-workers! Now we understand what praying in the Name of Jesus is, and why it has such power. In His Name, in His Spirit, in Himself, in perfect union with Him. O wondrous, ever-active, and most efficacious intercession of the man Christ Jesus! When shall we be wholly taken up and always pray in it?

'LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY!

Blessed Lord! In lowly adoration, I would again bow before Thee. Thy whole redemption work has now passed into prayer; all that now occupies Thee in maintaining and dispensing what Thou didst purchase with Thy blood is only prayer. Thou ever livest to pray. And because we are and abide in Thee, the access to the Father is always open, our life can be one of unceasing prayer, and the answer to our prayer is sure.

Blessed Lord! Thou hast invited Thy people to be Thy fellow-workers in a life of prayer. Thou hast united Thyself with Thy people and makest them as Thy body share with Thee in that ministry of intercession through which alone the world can be filled with the fruit of Thy redemption and the glory of the Father. With more liberty than ever I come to l bee, my Lord, and beseech Thee: Teach me to pray. Thy life is prayer, Thy life is mine. Lord! teach me to pray, in Thee, like Thee.