Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “From Confession to Consolation”. Once again, our quarterly talks of “intercession” (in Tuesday’s lesson). The quarterly maintains that “intercessory prayer… touches God’s heart, staving-off judgement and bringing deliverance from enemies instead… As we pray for family members, friends and other people and situations, God hears our prayers and intervenes”. Is this what happens? Does our prayers change God and soften His vindictive side? Stave-off His judgements, as the quarterly maintains? I find this whole concept rather repugnant. At this late date in earth’s history, haven’t we who claim to know Him best, really know what He is really like? Isn’t He just like the Son? Did someone need to intervene, mediate or beg forgiveness from the Son? So yet once again, I’d like to write upon the concept of Christ as our “Intercessor”. Historically, all of us Christians have had a misunderstanding about this.
1. We assume that it is necessary for Christ to intercede between us and the Father because the Father cannot dirty His hands with us sinners (figuratively speaking). He is too holy to look upon sin and sinners.
2. Or we assume that Christ is the only member of the Godhead qualified to represent us before the Father because He has “special” knowledge regarding the human condition due to His incarnation.
Both of these assumptions are a distortion of the facts. Let’s look at each assumption Biblically to see if they hold water. In order to do this, we will need to “push” each assumption to its logical conclusion to see if it represents our God accurately. “There is no excuse for anyone in taking the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that all our expositions of Scripture are without an error. The fact that certain doctrines have been held as truth for many years by our people, is not a proof that our ideas are infallible. Age will not make error into truth, and truth can afford to be fair. No true doctrine will lose anything by close investigation” (Council to Writers and Editors pg. 35). This is the defining line. Not to see if the assumption matches what we have been historically taught or have “held as truth for many years”. Not to see if the assumption matches any previously held personal conviction. But if it speaks truthfully about our God. It is the one thing that makes any doctrine “false”. If it places our God in a “false” light.
1. Is Christ our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Intervener? If so, from whom to whom? Does the Father need Christ as a Mediator between us sinners and Himself? Do we need this… or do we just think we need a Mediator? Isn’t Christ, God Himself? Does God Himself need Himself between sinners and Himself? “Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one” (Galatians 3:20). Does God the Father need God the Son mediating between us and Him? I hope the idea of God needing Himself to be between us and Himself, sound a little ridiculous. Yet Christ does take upon Himself this role as Mediator. Therefore the conclusion must be… that He takes this role upon Himself for OUR SAKES, NOT GOD”S SAKE. “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die’. And the Lord said to me: ‘What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him’” (Deuteronomy 18: 15-19).
From this quote, we see that the idea of a “Mediator” was our idea because we were so afraid of God. Implying that when we come to see the Father as He really is (just like the Son) then we will no longer be afraid of Him (but be afraid of sin) and will no longer need a “Mediator” or “someone in-between”. Which also helps explain EGW’s controversial statement, “Those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above, are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator” (The Great Controversy pg. 425). We no longer need a “Mediator”. In fact, there was never really a need for one at all on God’s part. We the people pleaded for a “Mediator” in our ignorance of who God really is. And God allows this until we actually come to know Him. The entire Godhead does not need nor require a Mediator to insulate itself from us sinners. In fact, Christ took upon Himself sinful human flesh… “Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin” (Desire of Ages pg. 49). And the Holy Spirit is given to us sinners as God’s abiding presence. “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever…” (John 14:16). He dwells or abides in the deepest recesses of our sinful minds and heart. So away with the idea that us sinners are too repugnant for our God to approach. In fact, it is only the intimate contact with Divinity that can cleanse our hearts and minds, cleanse the well-springs of sin from our polluted souls. His presence consumes sin! Unfortunately, though, in the end “If you choose sin, and refuse to separate from it, the presence of God, which consumes sin, must consume you” (Mount of Blessing pg. 62). God does not toy with sin. Nor does He forgive sin (He forgives you). He purges sin by His presence in your heart and mind… where sin resides. Praise God for His abiding presence!
2. What of Christ’s need to become human so the Godhead would have One Member who “knows” what it means to be human… so the Godhead can understand the sinful pull and the sinful plight of mankind? We often say that God is omnipotent. But if Christ in His Divinity needed to become human so that He can know what it is to be human, then the Divinity (the Godhead) is not omnipotent. There are some things God does not know (sounds foolish when stated plainly like this). But Christ did come as one of us. Was it so that He could know what it’s like to be on this sinful earth? Or, did He do this, became the One in-between, for our sakes. “Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with our trials, and sympathizes with our griefs” (Desire of Ages pg. 25). I contend that Christ became a man for our sakes, not for the Godhead’s sake.
But what of the text that says, “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest ‘according to the order of Melchizedek,’” (Hebrews 5:8-10)? Doesn’t this say he needed to “learn”? It also says elsewhere that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). Jesus “increased in wisdom” just as mankind must do.
“Although He was the Majesty of heaven, the King of glory, He became a babe in Bethlehem, and for a time represented the helpless infant in its mother's care. In childhood He did the works of an obedient child. He spoke and acted with the wisdom of a child and not of a man, honoring His parents and carrying out their wishes in helpful ways, according to the ability of a child. But at each stage of His development He was perfect, with the simple, natural grace of a sinless life” (Christ’s Object Lessons pg. 83).
The Phillips translation has the following for Hebrews 5:8-10; “Son though he was, he had to prove the meaning of obedience through all that he suffered. Then, when he had been proved the perfect Son, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who should obey him, being now recognized by God himself as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek”. The perfect obedience achieved through suffering has nothing to do with the Godhead learning something unknown. The suffering Christ endured was the culmination of all that had gone before and “perfected” that existing knowledge… knowledge that He had acquired as a “Man among men” (Desire of Ages pg.119). Becoming human necessitated that He perfect or prove that obedience, even as we must perfect or prove it. The fact Christ “increased in wisdom and stature” and “learned obedience by the things which He suffered” is a testimony to His humanity, not His Divinity. And has nothing to do with educating the Godhead. Instead, it is an indication of just how much of humanity Christ took upon Himself. Truly, He is Immanuel, God with us.
“As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. ‘In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren’ (Hebrews 2:17). If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was ‘in all points tempted like as we are’ (Hebrews 4:15). He endured every trial to which we are subject. And He exercised in His own behalf no power that is not freely offered to us. As man, He met temptation, and overcame in the strength given Him from God. He says, ‘I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart” (Psalm 40:8). As He went about doing good, and healing all who were afflicted by Satan, He made plain to men the character of God's law and the nature of His service. His life testifies that it is possible for us also to obey the law of God” (Desire of Ages pg. 24).
God the Son’s role as Intercessor is not for God the Father’s sake. Christ brings the things of God to us… for He is God Himself. God the Son’s “learning” was not so He can understand us better but so you and I would have confidence in both God the Son and God the Father. That they both understand and “know” us. Remember, all that God does is for our sake, not for His sake. The Sanctuary in the Wilderness, Christ’s sacrificial death, all that God does is designed to change us, not to change Him. Not to enable Him to forgive us. It is all designed to lead us to trust Him, come to Him, love Him, and follow Him. To lead us to repentance and conversion… and to lead us to die daily with Him. We sinners grossly misunderstand the Father and the Son. We interpret all His actions from our own perverted self-centered view. No wonder we need a new heart!
And so with our intercessory prayer, so-called. God is anxious, desiring “to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). But He will not act without our permission... our agreement and assent. Our prayers of confession are for our sake, bringing our minds into conformity with the working of the Holy Spirit already at work in our minds. Recognizing and affirming the conviction we feel. Giving voice to those convictions enables us to own them and places us more at “one” with our God. Puts us in a place where He can work with us. Not to change His mind. But to change our mind so that His Divine love can finally be poured-out through us who so pray in unity with His convicting Spirit. When Daniel so prayed in unity with God’s convicting Spirit, God could communicate to Him truths that have comforted so many for so long. Any “intercession” on our part enables God to do what He has been longing to do, but could not because we were not in a place to receive. Our prayers do not change God’s attitude toward us at all. They change us and place us in a proper position to receive.
With brotherly love,
Jim