With Jesus Christ, you are never without an intercessor that can overcome all your enemies, comfort all your wounds, advocate for all your needs, and sustain even the greatest of doubts and the weakest moments of faith. You are covered in his grace from this day until the very last. You may feel weak and unworthy, but take heart, Jesus lives for you!
To intercede means to intervene on someone’s behalf. It means to entreat, to argue, to plead, and to stand in the gap between two people with a view of reconciliation. Intercession is prayer but of a specific kind. There is much that is mysterious about Jesus’s intercession, but the Bible and great theologians of church history offer some clarity. Referring to Christ’s intercession, the Puritan John Owen defined it as “his continual appearance for us in the presence of God, by virtue of his office as the ‘high priest over the house of God,’ representing the efficacy of his oblation [offering], accompanied with tender care, love, and desires for the welfare, supply, deliverance, and salvation of the church.”[1]
In other words, by virtue of his all-sufficient atoning sacrifice, Jesus stands at the Father’s right hand in heaven, working and praying for us to accomplish our full salvation.
Whenever we approach a biblical doctrine, there is the temptation to leave it in the realm of the intellectual. But it is good to consider how the doctrine applies to our lives. How does what we now know of Christ’s intercession make our hearts burn within us (Luke 24:32)?
Here I will make three primary applications.
Application 1: Christ’s Intercession Reveals His Heart for Sinners
Though we are justified in Christ for all time when we first trust his saving work, we do not stop sinning until the age to come when we are with him in glory. Though we know the truth of God’s love, we still have low thoughts of God, disbelieving, mistrusting, and doubting him. Though we know we are saved by Christ’s works, not our own, we still fall into the old ruts of our self-salvation projects, denying the power of his life, death, and resurrection. Our fleshly desires may wane, but they do not disappear, and we continue to use God’s good gifts for improper ends. Who will save us from this body of death (Rom. 7:24)? Jesus, by the power of his intercession.
John Bunyan wrote a whole book about Hebrews 7:25 called Christ a Complete Savior. In that book, he said,
“Many there be that begin with grace, and end with works, and think that this is the only way…But to be saved and brought to glory, to be carried through this dangerous world, from my first moving after Christ, until I set my foot within the gates of paradise, this is the work of my mediator, of my high priest and intercessor. It is he that fetches us again when we are run away; it is he that lifts us up when the devil and sin have thrown us down; it is he that quickens us when we grow cold; it is he that comforts us when we despair; it is he that obtains fresh pardon when we have contracted sin; and he that purges our consciences when they are loaded with guilt…We are saved by Christ; brought to glory by Christ; and all our works are no otherways made acceptable to God, but by the person and personal excellences and works of Christ.”
Christ’s intercession is there to save us from the sin that remains. God did not expect us to become perfect and never again struggle after our conversion. He factored our ongoing fight against sin into the equation and provided the intercession of Christ to preserve and encourage us. That shows how great the love of Christ is for us sinners. Why would he intercede if he didn’t care? Why would we be continually on his mind if he did not love us? As a parent loves a child and thinks about them all the time, so Christ considers us and always thinks of our good. He prays on our behalf. He takes our prayers and rewords them on the way up (Rom. 8:26). He holds the door to heaven open for us. He is more committed to our salvation than we are, and he will never leave us nor forsake us. He cares for us and sends affirmations of that care to us by his Spirit.
The Puritan Thomas Goodwin spoke of 1 Corinthians 2:16, where Paul says we have the “mind of Christ.” You know those moments when you sense a word from the Lord, a verse of Scripture, or a reminder of the love of Christ, those seemingly invasive thoughts that remind you of God’s love? Those are Spirit-sent thoughts from Jesus himself. They are sent down from heaven to tell us what he is thinking of us and for us in that very moment. Those are holy moments with our interceding Christ.
And in those moments when we find ourselves weak and wounded because of sin, when we long for a holy moment but fear we have blown it big-time, we must remember his intercession. We must remember his heart for sinners and sufferers, how gentle and careful he is with us. Hear Goodwin describe it.
“Your very sins move him to pity more than to anger…For he suffers with us under our infirmities, and by infirmities are meant sins, as well as other miseries…”