This is a quotation from Isaiah 53:12, from the passage where Isaiah so wonderfully prophesies of Christ and the redemption He was to work out by His sufferings unto death. He made intercession, but not for the righteous. How emphatically Paul expressed himself to the Romans: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (3:10)! There never were any who, apart from a divine work, were righteous, and there never will be. But there are transgressors, who have crossed the boundaries that God has set for human behaviour. And Christ, as priest, is making intercession for such people.
A priest is one who represents sinners before God; Aaron represented the Israelites, as did his successors. And Christ as priest represents sinners from all parts of the world before God. He was acting as priest when, in the words preceding the title of this article, He “poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many”. He, as the great High Priest, was offering up Himself as a sacrifice which could really take away sin; God the Father treated the Son as a transgressor, for He was bearing the guilt of a multitude of transgressors; He was enduring their punishment instead of them.
Old Testament priests not only offered sacrifices; they also offered incense. If we wish to understand the significance of offering incense, we might turn to Psalm 141:2, where David asks the Most High: “Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense”. So in the Old Testament High Priest offering up incense we are to see a type of Christ, as the Mediator between God and men, making intercession before His Father. Christ was doing so on the basis of the sacrifice He had offered. So Abraham, after pitching his tent near Bethel, “builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 12:8), which brings before us the connection between offering sacrifice and prayer. We sinners cannot come before God apart from a sacrifice, and so Christ Himself makes intercession for sinners on the basis of the sacrifice by which He made atonement for them.
On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest went into the most holy place in the tabernacle, on behalf of Israel. But “Christ is not entered into the holy
places made with hands . . . but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb 9:24). He sat down on the right hand of the Father the place of power – where He rules over everything that happens. And there He makes intercession: He is expressing, on the basis of the work of atonement He carried through in this world, His will to grant blessings, especially spiritual blessings, to His children and to those who are yet to become His children. He is presenting His will for the good of His Church and for everything that will lead to the good of each of His people.
Even on the cross, Christ made intercession for those who were crucifying Him: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). We could quote the whole of John 17, but let us note verse 20. Christ had been praying for His disciples and added, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word”. These disciples were to go out to preach the gospel, beginning at Jerusalem, and He made intercession for those who were to believe the good news about salvation through Himself, who was so soon to be crucified as the sin-bearer.
This no doubt implies that, after He finished His work in this world and ascended to glory, He would make intercession for His disciples as they preached in Jerusalem in obedience to His command. And He would continue to make intercession as they, and others called to the same work by the same authority, went to other parts of Palestine and beyond to make known the glad tidings of salvation through a crucified Redeemer. His intercession would cover every aspect of their lives and ministries, including their bodily health, as far as it was His will that it should continue; besides safety in travel and protection from temptation – again only as far as these would be for their good. He would make intercession for everyone who had been given to Him in the everlasting covenant, that they would not only hear the gospel, but also believe it.
In Psalm 2 we find God the Father inviting His Son: “Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (v 8). In Old Testament times, God had taken Israel as His inheritance; in the New Testament age, on the basis of Christ’s work on earth, the gospel was to go out to the whole world. And the risen Saviour was to claim peoples who were then heathen as His possession – multitudes were to be delivered from Satan’s kingdom through the preaching of the gospel and brought into the kingdom of grace, where they would serve Him throughout the rest of their lives.
Significant in the spread of the gospel was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, according to Christ’s promise to His disciples, “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter” (Jn 14:16).
Christ made intercession for the coming of the Spirit, after finishing the work of redemption. The result was seen at Pentecost, when “there appeared unto [the disciples] cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:3,4). The result was their ability to speak in other tongues, but even more significantly, the Spirit was to accompany their words as they proclaimed the good news about Christ and His finished work. The outpouring of the Spirit was itself the result of Christ’s intercession, and the effects included 3000 conversions on that day when the gospel work of the New Testament age began. He died for each of those converted; for them He presented before His Father the merits of His saving work, and His intercession was accepted.
Christ was asking for the heathen as His inheritance when Peter was sent to Cornelius, the Gentile centurion, to say, “In every nation [not only among Jews] he that feareth [God], and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:35). And we must see the intercession of Christ behind the sending out of Paul and other gospel messengers to Gentile cities around the Mediterranean, such as Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Athens and Rome.
We must see Christ’s intercession behind the awakening of the jailer in Philippi, and the wise words of Paul and Silas to him, and the Holy Spirit accompanying these wise words to this Gentile’s heart. Again we should remember Christ’s intercession when we think of men being called to missionary work in Pacific Ocean islands, for instance – including John G Paton and others to the New Hebrides – which, from a Jerusalem-centred perspective could be described as among “the uttermost parts of the earth”; Christ was then beginning to take these islands as “His possession”. Here, as elsewhere, Christ’s intercession was followed by sinners becoming convinced of sin and beginning to obey the calls of the gospel, such as the one that Paul and Silas had long before used in Philippi: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).
We all have a duty to pray. But how can we polluted sinners enter into God’s presence with our requests? It is through the Mediator, Jesus Christ. It is because He is on the throne of grace as the great High Priest that He is able to take our petitions, purify them and, so to speak, sieve out everything that is inappropriate or worse, and present these petitions in His intercession before the Father. This should encourage us to persevere in prayer; we are not to despair of being heard because of the imperfections in our prayers and the mixed motives with which they may be offered. Yes, we should seek to be sincere in our prayers, but let us earnestly ask to be purified by the Spirit of prayer. And let us look to Christ, not only as the One who made atonement for transgressors, but also as the One who makes intercession for them.