“CHRIST IN INTERCESSION”

I would like to begin tonight with a few Scriptures, starting with Zephaniah’s prophecy in chapter 3:9: “For then will I give to the people a clear and pure speech from pure lips, that they may call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one unanimous consent and one united shoulder [bearing the yoke of the Lord]”. 

You may remember that Zephaniah’s call indicated that a converted people will call upon the name of the Lord with pure lips, with words coming from purified hearts, serving the Lord together with one mind.

Prayer was to be their spiritual offering by which they would serve the living God with ‘one unanimous consent’ and with ‘one united shoulder’.

And, then let us go to Rom.15:5-9: “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: 
That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.
Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:
And that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to Thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto Thy Name.”

We will come back to this passage in a moment.

And, now, to see Jesus’ promise to His disciples in John 14:13: “And whatsoever you shall ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

And His prayer in John 17:5 and verse 24: “And, now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”

John 17:24: “Father, I will that they also, Whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My Glory, which Thou hast given Me.”

And, lastly, let us turn to Heb.3:1-6 where the writer has identified those who have been consecrated, set apart, to a holy calling and has shown the superiority of the glory of the One Whose house we are: 
                                    
“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ, Who was faithful to Him that appointed Him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.
For this Man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who has built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by some man; but He that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for the testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a Son over His own house, Whose house we are...”
                                    
In Rom.15:5-9, Paul wrote to the Church: “May...God...give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one mind and one mouth, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
                                    
In the first few verses, he appealed to the Church on the grounds of Christ’s example of consecration to the divine determination.

And, starting in verse 5, Paul prayed a prayer of intercession on their behalf that they would be likewise in attitude so that the glory of God in accordance with Jesus Christ would follow.

Paul seems to have interceded often for others with such a personal devotion to God that his prayers - far from being a stereotyped formula - were the natural outflow from his innermost being.

His complete dependence upon God and the hope of ‘God’s glory seen in the face of Jesus Christ’ was kept in clear focus before him, even in his prayers of intercession for the saints.

You have probably noticed that as you have read through his writings.

His prayers were just naturally lifted above the human level of things into the higher level of God’s thought for man.

Yes - there were the normal, conventional issues for which Paul prayed and many are recorded for our benefit.

But - always, always, if you would follow them through carefully - he sincerely credits all things to God first - all things starting from the divine viewpoint first, and accruing good to others within the framework of God’s glory in Christ Jesus.

To boil it down to one full thought, we can say that all Paul was doing was walking in the footsteps of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, employing the means Christ has prepared for such as Paul and for Christ’s Church.

In this passage of Rom.15:5-6: “May...God...give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” - notice that Paul invoked a blessing of unity upon the saints, to so live that together they would be one voice, one mind, one heart for God’s glory alone.

His immediate aim was for the edification (the building up) of the Church, for its spiritual development. 

But, the long term reason was something deeper, far weightier because it involved the divine glory in the light of Jesus Christ.

Being one with one another for the effectiveness of advancing the glory of God in Christ Jesus was to be the common denominator among them.

This was for maintaining a convincing testimony before the world to the revelation of God in Christ.

Through the common witness and experience of the life of Christ in their midst, the common Source of the Church’s life, there would quite spontaneously issue forth a common likeness of concern and expression of the glory of God in Christ.

This is how, they, too, would walk in the footsteps of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

They would walk within the means He has prepared for them and become God’s revelation to the world.
We can glean those means by looking closely at Christ and His means.

When yet a young lad, we know that He had said to His mother in Luke 2:49, “...I must be about My Father’s business”.

This was later summed up in the words of His last prayer of intercession in John 17:4 with this thought, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.”

It was by this time that the human nature of the Man, Christ Jesus, had advanced and ripened.

“God’s will to be done” was His resonant chord in life. 

That was a strand that was within Him from childhood.

It was His Father’s business that had wholly immersed Jesus, absorbed every other interest in life, from His youth onward, totally enveloping Him in the spirit of consecration to the glory of God.

Often, we let the higher fact of His Divinity cover over the fact of His humanity and what was involved in His growing into manhood in being the Son of God.

Jesus ‘grew and waxed strong’ the Scriptures tell us in Luke 2:40.

And He ‘increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.’ (Luke 2:52), all of which indicates the natural process of physical, human growth that was taking place before He reached John 17:4 where we see the full development of His consecration to the glory of His Father.

Sometimes we forget that the qualities reported in the Messianic Psalm of 45:2 show the mature fruit of this process in which, even the Son of God, reached this maturity by degrees.

Psalm 45:2 reads: “Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore, God hath blessed Thee forever.”

Year after year, day after day, His humanness unfolded itself in this process of human life and, as it went along, its beauty increased so that what the Psalmist foretold was true of Him.

This process included growing in favor with God, a difficult fact to grasp and understand, but - yet - it is just as much a fact of the growth of His humanness as the other aspects of His progress.

We have already seen how this was attested to at the Transfiguration scene when His Father said of Him: “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.”

Thus, when we see the gradual ripening of the moral and spiritual nature of Jesus, we can know that it was not a passive, involuntary process that was just poured out upon Him arbitrarily.

It had many obstacles and difficulties to meet as any other human life does.

So, we know it was the result of much holy will and effort.

As sinless as He was, His high human attainments were ripened only by degrees, with much pain attending it, and with much prayer supporting it.

But - from childhood on - and, this is what is so important, and what gripped Paul through the ministry and power of the Holy Spirit - Jesus, from childhood on, was wholly absorbed in the glory of God His Father - He was always ‘about His Father’s business’. 

His consecration to His Father’s business is the same attainment with which the Church is specifically concerned.

This is the underlying concern that is to make the prayer of intercession effective.

We can see His attitude of mind that was always connected with the divine glory finds its fruition in the Philippians 2:5-11 passage.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name:
That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

There we see the qualities that Paul encouraged the Philippians to have, that of a spirit of humility, of self-abnegation, of that self-emptying, in laying hold of the mind of Christ.

But, what I want to emphasize here is that the fruit of this habitual direction of Christ’s mind, - that supreme renunciation, that attitude of His mind toward the glory of the Father, that which absorbed Him above all else - this attitude of mind connected with the glory of God the Father is now linked with the acknowledgement of full divine glory where He is highly exalted and has been given a Name that is above every Name!!

He Himself had given this keynote of His life in John 8:50: “I seek not Mine own honor (or ‘glory’):...” 

And, in John 7:18, He was seeking the glory, the honor of the One Who sent Him; namely, His Father’s.

Look again at John 17:1,4-5: “Father...glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee...I glorified Thee on the earth...glorify Thou Me with Thyself...”

He asked to be taken up into the Divine Glory.

On what ground?

He had glorified His Father on earth and would continue glorifying Him when He Himself would be divinely absorbed into His Father’s glory - ‘into’ His Father’s glory!

He and His Father would be one, in glory and honor.

Now notice - that toward the end of His earthly life, He said to His disciples in John 14:12-13, “...I go to the Father. And whatsoever you ask in My Name, that will I do, that My Father may be glorified in the Son...”.

That was the goal of His earthly ministry, and the disciples’ ministry of prayer and intercession was to be connected to this revelation of the divine oneness of glory.

In praying, they were to pray in His Name - in the Name of the One - Jesus Christ - Whose goal of full divine glory has been consummated by His death, resurrection, and ascension.

And, if the disciples would pray in His Name in this self-same attitude of the mind Jesus had, “...let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus...”, their prayers would be answered.

He promised this in verse 14 of that same chapter of John 14: “If ye ask anything in My Name, I will do it.”

The prospect of the answer being obtained was to be dependent on this one, solitary, divine object - the mind of Jesus Christ absorbed in the divine glory. 

The Amplified reads: (verse 13) “And I will do [I Myself will grant] whatsoever you ask in My Name [as presenting all that I AM], so that the Father may be glorified and extolled in (through) the Son.”

Other translations read: “That the Father, may be glorified in the Son”, ‘may be honored’, ‘may have glory’, ‘that the Son may bring glory to the Father’.

“If you ask any thing in My Name, I will do it.” (verse 14)

Every answer to their prayers would have the object of the glory of God in the answer - “...that My Father may be glorified in the Son.”

Can you see why James 4:3 states: “Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts”?

This is far from the mind of Christ in a personal prayer life and certainly, more so, far from the mind of Christ in corporate intercession.

Man was to be drawn to love and honor God the Father, to walk in righteousness before Him, to be able to understand and embrace the grandest reason for living, to know of the highest good to which he could reach - a life absorbed into the mind of Christ - ‘into’ the mind of Christ.

Jesus had taken up His Father’s banner, continued His work in the Salvation history of God’s plan, and through it vindicated the Divine Law that men had trampled and beat down into their own ideas and concepts.

It was this thoroughly absorbing dedication of Jesus, in all its stages from childhood onward, that Paul also caught for his own life.

This is what he prayed for when he interceded for the saints in the early Church.

It is a difficult place to come to in an individual sense, for the question sometimes arises, if not outrightly stated, then certainly demonstrated in attitude: ‘Why would I care about God’s business, about His glory?’

That is the question that must be answered - unconditionally and fully - within each individual heart first before the Church can be effective in its ministry of intercession.

And that question can only be answered in truth when the struggle with sin, unbelief, and doubt has been, at last, overcome, as we all know by now.

It is, then, that we can begin to see that this desire for God’s glory comes about when the whole life, in all of its parts, is absorbed into the effectiveness of living out His glory.

The disposition of self-emptying, the attitude of the mind of Christ, defined in the Philippians 2nd chapter, is the starting point.

This kind of a life-consecration to the extent that Jesus’ example lays before us, and to the extent that Paul was able to grasp it in order to intercede effectively, is the Church’s first step to effective intercession.

This, then, is the secret to answered prayer: it is a secret that the Church, in its individual life, must learn.

It is simply that intercessory prayer is answered when God’s glory is its prime concern, when the mind of Christ has absorbed its corporate mind.

That one concern of the advancement of the Gospel News of Jesus Christ and the glory of God seen in Him - that is the purest base from which intercession rises and is effectual.

Next week, Lord willing, we will continue with this line of thought concerning ‘Christ in intercession’.