“CHRIST IN INTERCESSION” (continued) - part 2.

Tonight, I would like to spend some time considering the mind of Christ in the matter of intercession - that Servant/self-emptying disposition of His in seeking the glory of His Father as it relates to His Father’s will.

There are many Scriptures we will consider in this regard.

I would like to look quickly at the examples of Paul and Epaphras first and then go to the Supreme Example of Christ.

For Paul’s great directive of his life in his ministry of intercession, let us look at Romans 1:9: “For God is my witness, Whom I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers...”. 

And, of Epaphras, it is written in Colossians 4:12: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in the will of God.”

Then, in John 5:30, Christ said: “I can of Mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is just; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.”

And then, John 6:38-40: “For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone which sees the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.”

And, now over to chapter 7:16-18: “Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.”

John 17:9,22,24: “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine.
And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: 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: for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world”

Last week, we looked at the secret to answered prayer and intercession: the mind of Christ absorbed by and into the corporate mind of the Church, that mind that has as its primary concern, the glory of God in the light of Jesus Christ.

We also saw, briefly, how Paul had captured this transcendant disposition of Christ’s mind in his Philippian letter where he encouraged believers toward this same mind of Christ to the glory of God.

Paul had often stated this same disposition as he prayed for the Christian saints indicating that spiritual attitude that is of cardinal importance - that heart knowledge and attitude that is set continuously and plainly upon the glory of God. 

And one of the central facts along with this absorption of the glory of God in Christ was his alert readiness to do the Lord’s bidding - the invariable mark of the one for whom God’s will is the great directive of all life.

Paul indicated both the organ of service to God and the sphere within which it is exercised in Romans 1:9, when he said: “For God...Whom I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son...”.

With everything within, he advanced the glory of God with his spirit in the most important setting of his life - in the Good News of God’s Son.

This was the content of his work as an apostle that absorbed him completely.

Thus, he prayed for those believers living in Rome - “without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers...”.

Even though he had never visited them - and, many were strangers to him, unceasing intercession was one of the marks of his apostolic life.

Most of us pray sometimes and - some-, occasionally.

But, in the most solemn context of the ‘Gospel of God’s Son’, Paul could say that his praying for them was ‘unceasing’.

That is, he interceded on behalf of those who had been placed upon his heart repeatedly, remembering them before the living God, as he yielded to the impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer for others seemed to run like an unbroken thread through all his days, up until the time he died.

This had its importance in his own spiritual life, no doubt.

But - it had its greater importance in preparing the ground for God’s preparatory work in and among the people he prayed for in answer to Paul’s praying.

It was the best possible preparation for doing any service to any man - a spiritual process that affected the inner beings of the objects of his prayers to the fuller truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Obviously, Paul came to realize that intercession on behalf of the advance of the Gospel of Christ was a reconciling and unifying factor, an incalcuable power binding together the divine with the human in Divine Glory.

In Philippians 2:21, Paul stuck with this unbroken chord of concern for the Gospel of Christ when he compared Timothy’s qualities to those who “look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”

That was the subtle corruption that we saw two weeks ago that has been the curse of the Church in all ages.

But what Paul said to Timothy carried an eternal significance.

That is that the power of God, Who alone can redeem man from devisive selfishness and Who alone can create unity, is transmitted alive only through human instrumentality - instrumentality that is absorbed and constrained toward the divine Thought, His will, in Christ.

Everything in God’s history of salvation was first and best expressed in this world through utterly surrendered lives unto Him in living out His will.

We started out with this thought when we first looked at Samuel’s influence in God’s salvation history - in God using Samuel to turn hearts heavenward.

We know that religious principles, moral ideals, theological beliefs, written and spoken words all have their place.

But, the world cannot be saved by talk, not even talk about the most perfect ideals; nor can people be finally changed and moved by reasoning, however persuasive, except as reasoning comes from the one whose life itself is persuasion. 

All power that remakes persons must come through the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeing Him, believing Him, and living out His will.

That is the meaning of the Incarnation-saving power from God that has been revealed and activated through Him.

The worth of workers and intercessors in the Kingdom of God is marked by genuine concern for others in this regard, as that concern relates to God’s glory. 

With this eternal significance in view, they “serve with one unanimous consent and one united shoulder.” (Zeph.3:9)

Paul could be placed under this classification of his service in the Lord.

He was under a certain urgency in this regard, as he registered a deep sense of necessity to advance God’s concern in Christ.  

The Lord Himself confirmed this as He declared to Paul in Acts 23:11: “...for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.”

“You must...” - the urgency to Paul to do God’s will is what the words of Jesus conveyed to him.  

And, then, let us also look at Epaphras, who, like Paul, was a servant of Christ, devoted absolutely to God’s will. 

Paul, in sending the greetings of Epaphras to the Colossians, took the occasion to commend Epaphras to them. 

Notice Col.4:12: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ...always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.”

Paul stressed the fact that Epaphras had worked hard for them; literally, ‘...he has heavy toil on your behalf...’, directly referring to Epaphras’ intercession for them.

As a faithful minister to the Church at Colossae, Epaphras prayed earnestly and fervently for them.

The words in the King James Version are ‘laboring fervently’, an interesting use concerning intercessory prayer.

It describes the struggles for this supreme issue of the believers life - to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God!

Can you see the sense conveyed here?

It conveys the thought that Christian prayer, especially intercession for others, is no perfunctory (superficial, indifferent, unconcerned) motion.

Instead, it is described as a strenuous spiritual exercise for the purpose of the will of God to be fully perfected in those believers.

That was the supreme reason for the intercession: that they would stand perfect, mature, and complete in all of the will of God.

In following strictly the will of God, they could come to the highest degree of spiritual life attainable for the believer. 

In this giving of themselves unreservedly as Christ’s ministers, who, together, made up part of Christ’s Church, both Paul and Epaphras indicated clearly what the will of God is in Christ Jesus for the Church: to be so absorbed in and by the work and ministry of God’s Son that the glory of God is published and kept in all of its purity throughout time and eternity.

It is no wonder that they felt such an urgency - so constrained toward this ministry of intercession!

They were following exactly what Jesus proclaimed and did in His earthly life as the Supreme Example for the Church.

Christ had given Himself so completely to the will of God, from childhood onward, that nothing else mattered.

Of course, we are well aware that the obligations He faced involved the most horrendous ordeals ever placed before any man, so that Paul and others could never match them.

The Scriptures had foretold of Christ’s sufferings - that they would be dark and terrible in tone.

We see some of it in Isaiah 53:10 where it speaks of “making His soul an offering for sin” and “pouring His soul out unto death”.

The verses 10 and 12 read: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He hath put Him to grief; when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin...because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

It is plain, when turning over to the New Testament account of this scene, that Jesus felt the pain of what lay ahead of him very deeply and keenly and spoke of it as the ‘coming hour and power of darkness’, and spoke of that unprecedented baptism by which He was so straightened, constrained and restrained until it was over.
   
In 2.Cor.5:21 we read: “For He [God] hath made Him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

To stand in the room of sinners and be numbered as one of them, even though He was completely sinless, to be treated as though He was a heretic, when all the while He so detested anything that depreciated the glory of God His Father, to be killed as the ultimate Sacrifice of that which was prefigured by all the blood of the bulls and goats that was spilled from the very beginnings of salvation history - the horror of it all, caused the heart of the very Son of God great, great sorrow.

But Christ was constrained to give Himself on earth, as He had given Himself while He had been yet in heaven, and lived with this great urgency toward the will of His Father.

He was able to declare to the world of sinners who were challenging Him at the moment: “I seek not Mine own will, but the will of My Father which hath sent Me.”

And, in spite of the hardships He was facing, He devoted Himself to the carrying out of this mission to the uttermost.

The inclination of the human flesh had to be met.

It had to be overcome by higher and nobler considerations through His profound submission to the carrying out of God’s will to its very end.

It became the great business of His life - to make God’s will visible and accessible to humankind.

How often is He quoted as having said, ‘I must’: ‘I must be about My Father’s business’ (Luke 2:49) is where He started.

‘Other sheep I have; them also I must bring in,’ (John 10:16)

‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men.’ (Luke 24:7)

‘This that is written must yet be accomplished.’ (Luke 22:37)

‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’ (John 3:14)

‘I must work the works of Him Who sent Me.’ (John 9:4) - Why? ‘...for I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of him that sent Me.’

Do you catch the urgency of His devotion, that sense of necessity, to carrying out the will of God to the uttermost?

He knew the truth of His Father’s will and obeyed that known truth.

This developed in Christ that discernment to know the difference between what was a false step and what was a true step toward fulfilling His mission in the context of His Father’s will.

Therefore, in following the will of His Father, Jesus could always know Who He was and is, - so that the necessity to carrying out His will would resound to the divine glory.

It was God’s initiating will for the world that all who see His Son shall live to His glory. (John 6:40)

It is so easy for us in this present day to diminish Who Jesus is and what Jesus said by trying to decide how to “relate” in some way, how to turn all of this (and, I place this phrase in quotes) “obsolete Biblical truth” of Jesus Christ into illustrations and instructions for contemporary living and thereby miss the ‘doing of His will’.

But let me unequivocally state that any such reduction into our interpretative dimensions diminishes the absolute centrality of Jesus Christ in the Church’s ministry, and negates His glory.

And the effect of it distances contemporary Christians so much so that they are content to operate out of a lower branch of relationship to the divine will.

The Church is dependent on Who Jesus is.

Everything is at stake in the recognition of Jesus as the Sent One of God, as doing the Father’s will to the uttermost, as being so intent in it that the glory of His Father was His prime objective.

We, the Church, need these moments of proclamation and teaching that make the case for Jesus Christ, - to hold up before the community of faith His extraordinary presence, to anounce Who He is, what He did, and what He offers simply because He fully fulfilled His Father’s will.

So, in John’s Gospel in the verses I read earlier, Jesus, in His intercession for the community of believers asked God to do for the disciples what God had already done for Him - to set them apart for God’s will to be done in the world.

It would be His glory that would mark them, the character and identity of God having been made known to them - “...the glory You have given Me, I have given them...”.

The community’s knowledge and willingness to do His will as one in Him depended on Jesus’ gift to them of God’s glory.

Paul, Epaphras, and countless others down through the ages, have caught the message - of the urgency to the need of being faithful to the will of God and proclaiming His glory as it is seen in Christ Jesus.

The Church is called to be so absorbed with the doing of God’s will in this regard - called to be the vessels linked to the divine Sovereign will - through the ministry of intercession.

Oh, how I pray, that this will grip our hearts that the whole reason of our prayer and intercession will be His glory alone in the fulfilling of His will to its ultimate conclusion.