Intercession For Us

In the opening of this chapter the Apostle insisted that the church of Jesus Christ is under no condemnation for sin because Christ died in our place. Paul wrote, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus’. God transferred the sin of the elect onto the body of Christ on the cross and condemned it in the flesh of His Son. The sin of all for whom Christ died was laid upon Him, atoned for in Him and carried away by Him. 

A real sacrifice for real sin

Substitutionary atonement is the heart of the gospel. The Lord Jesus really suffered in our place. He really delivered us from guilt and judgment. By taking our place He secured real, full and free salvation for all for whom He died. Christ personally took our sin. He mercifully and lovingly rendered us holy and without blame before God, in time and for eternity. Divine justice was served by Christ’s suffering and God is satisfied by the sacrifice of our Substitute.

God has spoken

No one can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect when God has justified them from all sin and made them righteous in His sight. Our Lord God, removed every condemnable act, word and thought from the account of His elect and laid them upon His Son. Having once declared there is no condemnation for sin He rejects the very idea of censure. Our God will not allow anyone to inflict guilt upon the innocent, culpability upon the faultless, or blame upon the irreproachable.

The body of this death

Again, we stress, this holy state does not mean God’s people are perfect or without sin in this world. We are not free from sin in our nature nor immune from its effects in our flesh but we are ‘pure in heart’ having been made ‘clean through the word’. As believers in Jesus Christ we are, in the sight of God, free from all condemnation. We are free from the guilt of sin, free from the dominion of sin, free from the punishment of sin. God sees no sin in His people. It has been imputed to Christ; laid upon the sacrificial lamb (John 1:29), laid upon the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:21) and conveyed by a fit man into the wilderness never to be seen again.

Christ our Fit Man

Our happy state is wholly because ‘It is Christ that died’ and while we are justified by the death of our Saviour there is yet more blessing. Christ ‘was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification’. Having purged our sins by shedding His blood Christ rose from the dead that He might personally represent His people to His Father in heaven and intercede for us there. 

At God’s right hand

Having risen, our Lord Jesus physically returned to His Father where He ‘is even at the right hand of God’. This is a great comfort for believers. Our Lord Jesus is alive today and seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. There in that place of highest esteem the Saviour makes intercession for us. Observe the Apostle’s specific words. Christ does not make intercession for the whole world but ‘for us’. He intercedes in heaven for those He died for on earth.

Christ’s work in heaven

This passage returns us to Christ’s continuing priestly role in heaven where He appears in the presence of God for us. The Apostle writing to the Hebrews confirms this, saying, ‘by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us … For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us (Hebrews 9:12, 24).

Our Advocate with the Father

Christ’s representation and advocacy with the Father for His people is founded upon His own perfect sacrifice. As long as the church remains on earth, at least in part, our Saviour will continue to claim, and by right obtain, all the promises of the everlasting covenant on our behalf. These include such blessings as the Father’s love, the Spirit’s quickening grace and Christ’s presence with us for which He prayed in John 17. 

Consider Him

In our service tomorrow we shall consider our Saviour seated at God’s right hand where He mediates and intercedes ‘for us’. Our Saviour retains His human nature and body of flesh at His Father’s side. There He represents us as a merciful and a faithful high priest, our King of Righteousness and King of Peace. As Mediator He brings us with Him into His Father’s presence, grants us access to the throne of grace and is ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities’. 

Amen.