A SERMON BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS.
“Who also maketh intercession for us.”—ROMANS viii. 34.
OUR Lord’s intercession in heaven is a subject at once wide, and deep, and mysterious. We shall for the present confine our attention to the following aspects of a great theme:—
I.—How may we warrantably come to the conclusion that we have a personal interest in this intercession?
II.—What is the nature of this activity of the Redeemer?
III.—What does it mean to justified persons?
IV.—We shall conclude with a word of application.
I.—How may we warrantably come to the conclusion that we have a personal interest in Christ’s intercession?
This is an all-important question, for, on the one hand, we are forbidden by John, xvii. 9, which teaches that not everyone is
included in Christ’s intercession, to take it as a matter of course that we must have a personal interest and part in it. On the other hand, it is certain that if we do not regard the matter as something in which we have a personal interest, we cannot study the subject with much devotion or love; dispositions and mental attitudes, in the absence of which our meditations are in danger of being very unprofitable. (To illustrate, in this last connection, the greatest things from small things: who does not feel that the amount of a sixpence, that is our own, is of more consequence to us than the sixty millions which the millionaire possesses, but upon which we can never put a finger? And if a little that is our own, be it ever so little, is of some consequence to us, how much more will it be of consequence and make the greatest difference to us if, with a good warranty, we realise that the greatest things of all are our own; when we come to know and to acknowledge Jehovah not only as the true God, but as our own God, and Christ’s intercession at God’s right hand, not merely as a truth, whether we believe it or not, but as an activity of Christ in which we are personally interested.)
But how may we with good reason conclude that we have this desired interest in His intercession? Well, in order to answer that question we have to bear in mind that the intercession presupposes “the sacrifice,” and is based upon the sacrifice where-with Christ perfected for ever upon the Cross of Calvary them that are sanctified. What think you of this sacrifice, or what interest have you in it? Under the law, if an Israelite came to realise that he had broken one of the laws of the Lord, there was a way of reconciliation set before him. He must take one of the prescribed animals, as a lamb, or a goat, or a bullock, and he must bring this animal to the door of the tabernacle, and must put his hand upon the head of the propitiating animal, and so, in a symbolical way, transfer his guilt to the sacrificial lamb, or goat, or bullock; and further, he must slay the animal. Then one of the priests takes the blood and sprinkles it upon the altar, which last act meant that the priest had offered the life of the animal on the transgressor’s behalf unto God; and, in this way, atonement was made for the offending Israelite. If such an Israelite, as we have now been speaking of, were asked whose was this lamb or goat or bullock, through whose blood he was in some sense reconciled, he would say that it was his own, and that for the good reason that he had taken it out of his own fold, and inasmuch as there was, in a general way, atonement made for such a sin as he was guilty of by the blood of such an animal slain in sacrifice, he would not be likely to question that now atonement had been made for his own violation of Jehovah’s law in particular, inasmuch as the animal slain was certainly his own.
Well, by way of answering our present main question, we have to observe that those who are warranted to conclude a personal interest in Christ’s intercession are persons who, to begin with, like
the supposed Israelite, if in a deeper sense, have laid to heart that they have violated the law of God; that by what they did not do and by what they did do, they were so far from meriting the honour that comes from God only that on the contrary, if God were to enter into judgment with them, they deserved to receive from His hands only indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, because that is what every soul that doeth evil properly merits. In a word, those who have warrant to conclude that they have a personal interest in the Sacrifice, and consequently in the Intercession, come all of them, with more or less clearness, to apprehend that they stand in need of a propitiation, that they need that God’s judicial wrath should be turned away from them, and His judicial favour procured, and that they need that their conscience should be purged in order to their entering into life. But over and above this first lesson, they have also been taught that, in the proper sense, the blood of lambs and of goats and of bullocks could not in respect of them satisfy the justice of God, that such sacrifices could not magnify and make honourable the law which they violated, that those sacrifices could not bring peace into their conscience; yea that, in the words of Micah, thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil could not avail to put away their sin, not even if they gave the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul could their sin, in the sense desiderated, be put away.
Is the case, then, a hopeless one? Certainly it is, so far as creatureal resources are concerned or can help. But what was impossible to any mere creature was not impossible to God. God has provided a sacrificial Lamb—the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. God found not this Lamb in any man’s fold; He found Him in His own bosom. And thus it was that when the time destined and promised had come, He sent forth His own Son, made of a woman made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. It may with truth be said that it was God, even the Father, that brought this Lamb of God to the door of the tabernacle; it was He that laid our iniquities upon Him; it was He that slew this sacrifice; for does He not accept responsibility for these mysterious transactions when He says, “The Lord hath laid upon Him (Messiah) the iniquity of us all”; and again, “It pleased the Lord to bruise him”; and again, “Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd; I will smite the Shepherd.” In a general way one cannot question the truths that by the blood of this Lamb satisfaction is made to divine justice, sin is put away, and consciences are purged, without doubting the Word of inspiration entirely. But the pressing question here regards our personal appropriation of the Lamb of God. It is certain that we could not provide an adequate atonement for the sin of our soul; it is certain also that we did not deserve that God should come to our rescue. But He has come to our rescue, and although this Lamb of God was not found in
our fold, and could not, on this account, be said to belong to ourselves, the Lamb which is God’s, which He found in His own bosom, is given us in the offer of the Gospel as freely and as unstintedly as if it had been a lamb taken out of our own fold, and which we could on this account call our own. The Lamb is God’s Lamb, but if we be willing to have Him, we are welcome to make Him ours also.
Have we pressed forward to make Him our own? Have we received and rested upon Him alone for salvation, as He is freely offered to us in the Gospel? If we dare answer this question in the affirmative, then we say there is not only present, as a thing known to God, a sealing of forgiveness through the gift of the Spirit, but ordinarily there is a sensible experience of this sealing. Yet inasmuch as all the Lord’s people have not had this experience to the same degree, and inasmuch as, through the hiding of His face, even those who at one time were least of all disposed to question it in respect of themselves, may, through the temptations of the devil and for other reasons, call the reality of this personal sealing into question, we deem it safer to determine our personal interest in the sacrifice and in the intercession, by insisting only on the questions, “Have you realised that you need a propitiation? Have you welcomed the Lamb which God has provided and offers freely to sinners as such in the Gospel, appropriating Him as your own, and as being for you, believing upon Him and trusting in Him, the end of the law for righteousness?” If your answer be in the affirmative, then, beyond question, you have more than a speculative and theoretical interest in the intercession; you have a personal and practical interest in it.
On the other hand, if one refuses to answer these two decisive questions which we have now put, with an affirmative, we may surely say to all such that they are without excuse. How can any who in heart maintains that he is not a guilty person by nature, that he did not deserve the wrath of God, that he did not in respect of himself need that God’s judicial wrath should be turned away from him, how, we ask, can such a person be excusable? Can this species of unbelief be indulged in without making God, who in His word tells us of our ruined state by nature, a liar? And if all such as, in heart, deny their need of a sacrifice are without excuse, how much more may that be said of all such as refuse the sacrifice provided by God, and offered to them by God? Is Christ not worthy, as the Lamb of God, that He should put away your sins? Is there not merit in His blood to meet your case? Is not the calling of this in question the guilt of all gulits, that in respect of which Christ Himself has said that “this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil”?
II.—But in the hope that through the grace of God, we may consider this intercession, not as a matter of mere speculation,
but as something which is our own, we proceed in the second place to inquire into its nature.
Now, here we must distinguish between what we may speak of as the things for which this Intercessor and Advocate pleads, and the ground upon which He presents His petitions. His petitions may be said to be many, but the ground or plea or argument is one. One may see this by a careful reading of John xvii., in which we have an example of Christ’s work as Intercessor. One may find in that chapter a petition having in view Christ’s own exaltation, another petition for the safe-keeping of His disciples, another petition for their sanctification, another petition for believers who should afterwards appear in this world, and still another petition for the glorification of all believers; but although the petitions are thus many and varied, the ground upon which these petitions are offered is one: “I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” Now it is to this aspect of the intercession, its ground, or the argument made use of, that, at the present time, we wish mainly to call attention. The intercession is, in a word, based upon the sacrifice and upon it alone. That sacrifice is the argument made use of by this Intercessor or Advocate. The Reformed Divines were wont to make use here of an illustration which, although it may not be pushed beyond the direct purpose for which it is introduced, is fitted to set forth clearly what the Reformed Church taught, and what we believe the Scriptures teach concerning the nature of Christ’s advocacy and intercession. A certain king, it was said, who lived in days now long gone by, had a devoted subject who, in the king’s service, lost his right hand, so that he was no longer able to act for the king in the capacity in which, so long as he could do so, he, with the utmost devotion gave himself up to the king’s service. This loyal subject, however, had a brother who was of a very different disposition to himself, so that for his misconduct, he was made at length to appear to give an account of himself before the king, who, in those days, was also supreme judge in his own person. It came to the loyal subject’s ear that his brother was thus arraigned, and that it looked as if a decision adverse to his brother should issue from the king, and so in pity for his disloyal brother, he rushed into the court, and, speaking not a word, he showed the judge his own amputated limb. The king-judge, it is said, called to memory all that he and his country owed to this loyal subject, who had lost his right arm in his country’s service, and thus the king-judge was moved to overlook and to forgive his disloyal subject’s delinquencies. The loyal subject was in this case an intercessor, but he needed no argument to move the king save the sight of the amputated limb. So it is with Christ. He needs no argument in heaven, but the presentation of the sacrifice offered once for all upon Calvary’s Cross. For does He not appear even in heaven as a Lamb that had been slain? And if He could, after He was alive from the dead, show to His
disciples the print of the nails in His hands, and the piercing which the spear had effected in His side, how may he not in heaven in the capacity of an Advocate appear as the Lamb that had been slain?
Christ’s intercession, from this point of view, may be regarded as a continuous offering of the sacrifice. The ceremonial law teaches us to consider the idea of “offering” from several points of view. To begin with, the person who brought a lamb, say, to the door of the tabernacle, who put his hand upon the lamb’s head, who slew the lamb, was said to “offer” the lamb. But not the person who thus brought the lamb to the door of the tabernacle could sprinkle its blood upon the altar. This was exclusively a priestly function, and the priest who did sprinkle the blood upon the altar, or who poured it out beside the altar, was the person who, in the strictest sense, “offered” the sacrifice, for in thus sprinkling the blood upon the altar he was offering the life of the animal to God, and not everyone dared to approach God. None could do this but such as had a divine warrant and call, as had Aaron. But, further, there was not only the “offering,” in the sense of the blood of sacrificial victims being daily poured out beside the altar of burnt-offering, there was the function of the high priest in entering into the holiest of all once in the year, bringing with him the blood of animals slain as sin-offerings. Now, this bringing in of the blood into the holiest of all, and this sprinkling of the mercy seat with blood was a species of “offering.” Corresponding to the offerings now referred to, we have, in regard to the Lamb of God, the Father Himself, who is said to offer. He it was that provided this Lamb; He it was that laid the sins of the sheep upon the Shepherd; He it was that smote this victim with the sword of divine justice, and of Him it is said (Isaiah liii. 10) that He made the Messiah a sin-offering. God the Father “offered,” in this sense, the Lamb of God. This was to “offer” in the first of these senses which we have named. But to “offer” in the second sense, in the capacity of Priest, was not the work of the Father but of Christ Himself. In this second and strict sense, it belonged to Christ alone, as He was Priest, to “offer,” and this He did when, upon the Cross of Calvary, He offered Himself a sacrifice to God of a sweet-smelling saviour (Ephesians v. 2). By His own supreme act, Christ, as the Antitype, realised all that was typified by the blood that scarcely ceased to flow by the altar of burnt offering under the law. But over and above this primal “offering,” the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches us to regard the typical act of the high priest on the great day of atonement, when he entered into the holiest of all to be in order to “offer,” and further, that the typical entering into the holiest of all looked forward to Christ’s entering into heaven, after He rose from the dead—an entering which was in virtue of the blood, and was in order to “offer” blood. We are not suggesting that the service of the great day of atonement was
not at all typical of the death of Christ, and of the offering of the sacrifice in the sense of Him giving His life to God in His death. Such a view of the spiritual meaning of the activities of the great day of atonement is impossible, in view of the facts that, on the great day of atonement, emphatically the bodies of the animals, which were for sin offerings, were burnt without the camp (Hebrews xiii. 11), and that Christ, the great Antitype, realised the meaning of this typical circumstance in Himself when He was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem. What is meant is, that the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews appears to us to be that part of the services of the great day of atonement, when the high priest went, with the blood of animals offered as sin offerings, into the holiest of all, had an eye mainly to Christ’s entering heaven with His own blood, and that is the sense in which He entered heaven after He rose from the dead, that is, when all His sufferings were past. If the question therefore be put, “What, in the sense of merit, was it that opened the grave to Jesus Christ?” The Biblical answer is, “It was His own blood.” And if the question be put, “What was it that opened the doors of heaven, doors which were shut by the disobedience of the first Adam and by our own personal transgressions?” the answer is, “It was the merit of Christ’s blood.” And when He entered heaven, He was received with a welcome: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;” and not only so, but “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec.” Melchizedec was at once a priest, priest of the Most High God, and a king—King of Salem. And so is Christ in His estate of exaltation. “He sitteth as a priest upon His throne.” And the counsel of peace is between God the Judge of all and this person that sitteth as a priest upon his throne. (Zachariah vi. 13.) As a King everything in being, that is not God Himself, is put under His feet; heaven, earth, and hell are under His feet. But as a Priest, He still has somewhat to “offer.” (Hebrews viii. 3.) And this offering is an offering of the merits of the obedience and sufferings of His life and death in this world. It is a continuous offering, and this “offering” is the ground of all His petitions. In this “offering” we, so far, have light on the nature of His intercession.
What, we may well ask, can they lack who have an interest in this intercession? What can they lack who have seen their need of a propitiation, and have become debtors to God for the Lamb which He has provided, and with which He calls upon us to identify ourselves? Surely when we have said “God, and all that is not God,” we have left out nothing. But Christ’s priestly function secures that God should be “for us.” Christ’s kingly function secures that all that is not God should be made to subserve our highest interests.
III.—A question occurs as to what this intercession means for persons already justified.
In putting the question in this form we are far from suggesting that it has nothing to do with such as are yet “the children of wrath.” It is plainly revealed that it is only as Christ, as Intercessor, asks, that any soul, hitherto dead in sin, turns with repentance and faith towards God in Christ. But we put the question in this form, because, in a single discourse, one can touch only upon certain aspects, not upon all the aspects, in which the Bible teaches us to consider the intercession of Jesus. And for the present we have chosen this particular question for consideration, just because it is sure to occur to an enquiring mind to say:—Such as are in Christ are justified once and for all, and they shall never come into condemnation, the reason for that being that just as the disobedience of the first man Adam is put to the account of everyone descending from Adam by ordinary generation, so the obedience of Christ is put to the account of everyone that is united to Christ by faith, which is of the operation of God. How then can we imagine that those thus fully justified stand in need of Christ’s intercession, at least so far as the benefit of their justification is concerned?
Well, at any rate, the Scriptures plainly teach us that it is in virtue of Christ’s intercession that believers continue in a state of grace, or in a justified state. This ought to be continually felt by persons who, notwithstanding their being justified, have to acknowledge that they are so far from being able, perfectly, to keep the Commandments of God, that they do daily break them in thought, word, and deed. But it is not at all unlikely that the full force of the truth we are insisting on has ordinarily dawned upon believers, one by one, in connection with a more than ordinary severe effort, on the part of the accuser of the brethren, to cut off their hope in the mercy of God. But howsoever this doctrine be experimentally realised, certain it is that the justified are daily kept from falling from a justified state through Christ’s intercession. This is implied in Christ’s reassuring promise to Peter: “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” It was as much as to say that if Christ did not intercede for Peter, Peter’s faith would have failed him, Peter would have fallen from grace, from a justified state.
The two aspects of truth upon which we have been insisting—the perfect justification of believers once for all and their indebtedness to Christ’s intercessions for not falling from the state of justification—may seem a paradox. I would suggest that its solution is found in the fact that, in the widest sense, the reason for their justification is what may be called a reason that is “alive,” and that reason continues to act conformably to its own nature, which, of course, will be something different from what would be the case if the reason were a mere work detached from a person. But whether this solution be accepted or not, the facts which call for a solution are certain—it is impossible that those to whom Christ’s obedience unto death has been imputed should
fall from the grace of a justified state, and it is also certain that but for Christ’s activities as an Intercessor, they would fall from grace in every sense of the term.
This divine arrangement whereby justified persons are kept from falling from grace, is fitted to teach us two things very impressively. First of all, the evil of sin. It is possible for one so to construe the doctrine of justification, and of the non-imputation of sin to believers, as, in the long run, to give the impression either that the sins of the Lord’s people are not properly sins at all, or else that God looks with a kindlier eye on their sins than on those of others. It is possible, I say, for one so to construe the doctrine of justification as to indulge thoughts such as I have just now given expression to. But such a way of looking at the sins of believers or of the reason why the blessing of justification is perpetual, finds no countenance from the Bible. “Because of the provoking of his sons and of his daughters, he abhorred Israel” (Deut. xxxii. 19). I have made bold, therefore, to think of Christ’s constant intervention in heaven against His people falling from the state of grace thus: John Bunyan, in his “Pilgrim’s Progress,” tells us how “the Interpreter took Christian by the hand and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always casting much water upon it; yet did the fire burn higher and brighter.” Then the Interpreter brought Christian to see the solution of this mystery. “He lead him to the back side of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.” By this, of course, John Bunyan meant to teach that, apart from Christ’s gracious intervention by His Word and Spirit in the heart of believers or in the court of conscience, the work of grace could not be maintained against the devil’s temptations and the believer’s own corruptions in the soul. But may we not say that in order to maintain grace in the soul, in order to keep the soul from falling from grace, not only is it necessary that Christ should intervene in the court of conscience by the oil of His Word and Spirit, but that in order to maintain the soul in a state of grace He must constantly appear for us in the court of heaven itself, His intercession being even there as oil, preventing any more judicial wrath? Is not that implied in its being said, “that if any sin, we have an advocate with the Father,” and “that he is able to save perfectly, because he ever liveth to make intercession”?
But this activity of Christ as Intercessor is not only fitted to teach us impressively the evil of sin in the sight of God, even if that sin be the sin of persons in a justified state, but it is specially well fitted to bring the nature of that love which passeth knowledge to light. For in His intercession Christ intervenes continually between His people and death. It is not sins of peculiarly aggravated guilt, such as we may suppose to be referred to in 1 John v. 16, that in their own nature are fitted to cause the
believer to fall from grace, and which, apart from Christ’s intercession, would actually thus affect them; but, inasmuch as every sin is hell deserving, and inasmuch as the Lord’s people must acknowledge daily, hourly sins, even these sins would, of their own nature, and apart from Christ’s constant intervention, cause them to fall from grace. What love thus appears in Christ’s incessant intervention on our behalf! And what love does thus appear to have been in Christ’s death! For the intercession merely makes explicit what is already implicit in His death. There is not an instance in which Christ intercedes for us in heaven, but means that He puts His life between us and death, even the life that He gave in sacrifice to God upon the cross. Of how many forfeitures have we been guilty? But Christ, by interceding on our behalf, by pleading the merits of His sacrifice on our behalf, as much as intimates to us that He would sooner die, and die, and die again, than that we should perish! But He need not die, for His one death was equivalent to millions of millions, yea to an innumerable number of deaths. It is as we are conscious of coming short of God’s glory, and as we are conscious of our need of Christ’s intercession, and as we realise in ourselves that virtue goes forth from Him to heal us, that we begin to have an inkling of the nature of that love that many waters could not drown, a love that passeth knowledge, a love that virtually died such an innumerable number of deaths for us, a love therefore with which the destruction of its objects is not compatible. It is the manifoldness of His death—a death in which, as Antitype, He realised the significance, not only of the frequent typical sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, which were for sins that could be specified, but also of the daily, yea almost constant, burnt-offerings, which were for sins that could not be specified, and the manifoldness of the love which many waters could not drown, that is brought out in these incessant interventions on our behalf.
IV.—As we began this discourse by inquiring into the grounds of one’s confidence in an interest in this intercession, so would we now close by an appeal to your experience.
Christ’s intercession is all-prevailing, and has blessed results following it. It is on account of this intercession, that godly sorrow for corruption and for daily shortcomings is kept alive in the heart. What know we of it? It is on account of this intercession that mourners in Zion, mourning on account of sin and transgression, receive the oil of joy, in their being anew enabled to exercise faith upon the Lamb of God, and in their being anew enabled to apprehend that forgiveness is still their own. Great forgiveness to great transgressors. What know we of it? It is in answer to Christ’s intercession in heaven that mourners in Zion have not the Holy Spirit taken away from them utterly, as they deserve; but, on the contrary, have the joys of God’s salvation restored to them, and they are upheld by His free Spirit. What know we of it?