1 Peter 5:6-106Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: 7Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 8Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: 9Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. 10But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:6‑10);
Hebrews 9:11-15; 7:23-2511But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; 12Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. 13For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: 14How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. (Hebrews 9:11‑15)
23And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: 24But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. 25Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:23‑25)
There are three great facts, three grand realities, which are unfolded to us, beloved brethren, in these three scriptures.
The first is God’s unfailing grace, and that, remember, presented in an epistle which is especially the wilderness epistle, which deals with all the ups and downs of our history as we go through the desert of this world; our changeable history and our failing history too, we may say, because it is just in that part of our life where the failings, and the haltings, and the slippings, are liable to come out; and therefore it was suitable in a very especial way for us to have alongside, and with all that, as the resource for it, and as the comfort for our hearts in connection with it, God’s unfailing grace. And hence He is spoken of in that beautiful way, as “the God of all grace.”
The second subject, is the eternal efficacy of Christ’s blood, in all its precious consequences and in its own nature. It has the infinite value of Him, whose blood it is, attached to it. It was by the eternal Spirit He offered Himself to God. By that offering He secured “eternal redemption,” “for us,” no doubt; yet it is of real importance to remember that those words are put in italics in the scripture, showing that they form no part of the sacred text; they no doubt express what is true, still here the sense is clouded instead of being improved by their insertion—it is eternal redemption which is the issue of it. And then, further, it is eternal inheritance that is the purchase of it. The eternal Spirit was the One by whom He offered Himself without spot to God; through that offering He obtained eternal redemption, and secured eternal inheritance.
And then the last subject, beloved friends, is the continuous intercession and advocacy of the great High Priest. He lives forever, and is able, because He lives forever, “to save to the uttermost,” which does not mean that He is able to save our souls from either the consequences of our sins or from the effects of sin; for you will notice that it is connected with His intercession; because He continueth ever, He hath a priesthood that does not pass on from father to son, like the Jewish priesthood, but He abides and remains a priest forever in heaven; and therefore, always living to intercede, He is able to save to the uttermost; that is to say, He is able to carry right through, on to the end, all that come to God by Him. His intercession is a thing commensurate with the existence of His priesthood; He lives forever, and therefore He intercedes forever.
Now let me say a word upon each of those three subjects this evening; and may the Lord fit the subjects to the needs of each one here.
We begin where we must always begin, and indeed, I was going to say, where we must always end. We begin with grace; we go on with grace and we end with grace that never ends; we end with it, yet it never ends. But it is just the very thing that I suppose our hearts never really get to the full extent of the marvelous grace of God in its fulness, in its divine comprehensions. It is a blessed basis of all the actings of God, “the God of all grace.” It is the eternal source and spring of everything that we get from Him, blessed be His name. There is a great difference, as it seems to me, between grace and mercy; both belonging to God. He is “rich in mercy,” but He is also “the God of all grace.” And I suppose the difference between the two is this, that mercy is that which belongs to God’s own character and nature, especially and peculiarly, because if He acts on the principle of mercy He is shut up to Himself; and what, may I ask, could be more blessed for you and me than that if He acts on that principle of mercy, then God (we may say it again with reverence), blessed be His name, is shut up to Himself.
Mercy, then, is that great principle in His nature which specially and peculiarly marks Him off; but grace is the ground or basis upon which He acts. Mercy is in God Himself, and grace is the principle of all His actings towards us: that is. to say, He acts towards us on the ground of grace, in contrast with acting towards us on the ground of law, or of any responsibility of ours entering into it. He acts towards us in grace; grace it is which underlies every part of it, The foundation of it, the great and precious platform of everything that has come to us from God Himself. Hence, He is “the God of all grace.” And, beloved friends, from the first moment that we had to do with Him, on to the very end of our journey through the wilderness here, it is grace and mercy too. Mercy we have, as we have to do with Him who is rich in mercy, but grace is the divine basis of it all; and therefore, He is “the God of all grace.” And for poor, wretched, feeble, failing things, such as we are, nothing could be more comforting and sustaining to our souls than that great truth. You can never get to the end of it. And what we shall find is this, even that it is the very thing that we are least well established in. Strange as it may appear, we seem to be far better exponents and expounders of law than we are of grace. The principle of law, somehow or other, is akin to our nature.
Grace is not indigenous to any of us. It is not in any one of us naturally. Not one of us has got the sense, of what grace is, by nature; and even after we have found Him, or rather been found of Him in His grace, and have tasted it, and proved His goodness, and been saved by His grace, and lived on His grace, and been carried through His grace, and supported through it here, how little we have drunk in of it, how little and small a sense we have of it; though we have proved it so often, and so unfailingly been ministered to of it by God Himself, see what a poor impress that grace has made upon us. Hence it is that the apostle, in that first passage in Peter, when he is marking out the wilderness journey, and speaking of humbling ourselves, and resisting Satan, and all that belongs to us, while passing through present scenes, where we are tested and tried, sets forth God as the God of all grace. It is well to bear in mind the character of the desert. We are at school in this world, it is the place of our education, testing, and trial; heaven is the place of our home and rest; but here God is leading us and sifting us, and treating us in a variety of ways, individually and collectively, because our individual history comes under it, just as much as our collective history comes under it. He tests His people individually, and He tests His people collectively; but then, beloved friends, whilst He does this, the apostle brings this out so comfortingly for our souls; he says, Notwithstanding all, notwithstanding the kind of journey we have to expect through such a world, and what we are subject to here, still He is the God of all grace; and grace is the great spring and motive power of everything that we receive from His hand as we pass through present scenes. He does not deal with us on any other ground. If He comes to discipline us, it is on that ground; if He gives us a blow, it is on that ground; if we need the stripes, we get them on that ground; it is grace that fetches the whole thing out—it is not law, it is grace. And, beloved friends, that is an immense comfort for our hearts, because it is His own blessed principle of acting in everything, for He is the God of all grace.
And mark, He has called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus. He has called us to that glory; but then, between that glory, which springs, so to speak, out of His grace, there is a road along of suffering; “after that ye have suffered awhile.” You must go through the mill, so to speak, to reach the home; you must be subjected to the rack, and to pressure, and to difficulty, and all the rest of it, but after you have gone through the suffering, and by way of the suffering—after you have suffered awhile, not an unlimited time, but of limited duration, “after that ye have suffered a while, himself make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” Now nothing is more comforting for our souls than that. It is the end and issue of the whole thing; and what could be so wonderfully cheering to the heart? It is not progress, and it is not the mode of operation by which God secures this thing, it is the end. What is the issue which is in His mind? “Eternal glory!” Because we are looked at here as passing through the wilderness, this wretched world that was once the Egypt of our lusts, where we had our resource and our independences for that is what characterizes this world, we had our resources in it away from God, and we were independent of God; we had all that belonged to this world, over which Satan is the god and prince. But now, rescued from it, it is a desert where we have God Himself, and we go through this world with God. It is the same world that it was physically; it is not changed yet, it is the same world, in that sense, precisely as it was when it was the Egypt of our lusts; but its whole character is changed to us as Christians. It was the Egypt where we gratified ourselves with everything that belonged to it. Now it has become a desert, where we have in it nothing but God, and, beloved friends, where we are uncommonly well off in having nothing but God; so that, instead of being commiserated with, or any one pitying us, for having nothing but God, we are to be immensely congratulated. We should indeed be the objects of great compassion and pity,
If we wanted anything else besides God; but having nothing but Him is part of the glory of the way in which God leads us on. We have the God of all grace as our stay, we have suffering for awhile, and all that is connected with it, as our path, but then the issue is to “make you perfect,” perfect through all the things you pass through, and by them.
And, beloved friends, this is where God leads us in His grace, I do not say to understand, but He does lead us, in His grace, to accept the blessedness of the way by which He subjects us to all these things, and by which He trains us through all these things. And when we reach that glory by-and-by and really are in it, and look back over the whole Way, we shall be able to see that there was not one sorrow too many, and not one burden too heavy, and not one pressure too great, that He did not break our backs, nor break our hearts; He never does the one or the other; but He does subjugate and refuse the will; He refuses it, and leads us to abnegate everything of it that adheres to us; but, as to our hearts, God comforts them; and, as to our backs, the weariness and feebleness of the way to which we are subjected, only give Him occasion to uphold us, and that is what our souls need to get the sense of, and thus of His unfailing grace.
Think of that other instance—and a wonderful one it is—a small thing, if you like, but it is the small things that show what is in the heart of God. Think of the blessed God Himself, long before the day of Christianity, and the revelation of His own character in the Lord Jesus Christ, and His own name, and the relationships we are brought into; think of God saying to His poor servant, who was in a pet, and who really got disappointed, not only with himself, but with God, and wanted to be removed out of this scene, “the journey is too great for thee”: and therefore every provision is made for his need; the way was long, and the blessed God, as it were, saying, I have consideration for your frame. Would to God, beloved friends, we had the sense of the delicacy and affectionate care of our God and Father, that He can think about us, in His grace, as to everything, small and great; and, if you will allow me to say so, if we all had the sweet sense of this in our souls, we should not be so uneasily anxious as to what relates to ourselves, leading us so incessantly to think about ourselves. He thinks about us, thinks about the journey, “too great for thee,” thinks as to whether our bodies are equal to the strain. “Arise, and eat, for the journey is too great for thee”: as if He had said, “I have a watchful care for your body in it, I am thinking you need more sustainment; I have provided for you, and there it is.” I give that as an instance, and you may find hundreds of instances of the same kind in scripture, of the wonderful care and provision of God’s grace in everything, small and great, down here, as we pass through this world. We have the suffering, and there is a needs be for us to have it; God has no other way of lifting us up but by humbling us. His purpose and object is to lift us up, but the way by which He does it, is to subject us to the suffering and the testing, to “settle” us through it, to “stablish” us through it, to “make you perfect” through it—“after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect stablish, strengthen, settle you.”
Well now, it does seem to me this is a wonderful comfort for our hearts. For even if we fail a thousand times over, poor things as we are—though God forbid I should utter a word in excuse or extenuation of it, for there is no excuse for failure—yet, when we do fail, what would become of us, if we had not to do with this “God of all grace”? We should get into despair. Thank God, there is no reason to despair. And why? Because we have to do with a God that is unlimited in the resources of his grace. And it is not a question, beloved friends, of that grace being applied to us, when we go on all right; but it is an unspeakable relief to the heart, to know that there is grace for us in God in every circumstance. God’s grace is unfailing and unlimited; it is not at all, in the very least, that, there is found any desert on our part, nor is it that we are found as being what we ought to be. I fully admit we should be so. I repeat it, there is no excuse for failure, either individually or corporately; there is no excuse for starting aside, or for anything of the kind; but still, notwithstanding all, above all the shortcoming, and through all the breaking down, God is “the God of all grace.”
Now let me give you one other instance. Take Peter as an illustration of this principle. Here was a man who was warned by the Lord as to that denial beforehand, solemnly warned, warned because of the self-confidence that was in his heart; that is to say, the root of all Peter’s failure was this, that he trusted his love to Christ. Do you ever trust your love to Christ? If you do, you will, as is said, go to the wall, even as did Peter. He trusted his own love to Christ; it was his own affection, his own love, that he had confidence in. And it was not that he did not love his Lord; he did love Him, yea, better than any one on earth; and herein lay the bitterness of his denial. I do not believe that there was one whom Peter loved so tenderly as he loved his Lord, but he trusted the affection that was in his own heart towards Christ, and every single thing that was connected with that went to pieces with Peter. And what Peter was brought out to at the end was this, he was brought out to trust that blessed, precious love of Christ that was the only unfailing and unchanging love that was ever known: to trust Christ’s love, not his own, to trust Christ’s interest, Christ’s care, and Christ’s unchanging, blessed heart; that was what Peter had to learn. His confidence was in his own affection for his Lord, and therefore he broke down.
But the part of his history that I am referring to now is this, that after he was restored, and the depths of the failure were reached by Christ Himself, and his moral being searched, as in John 21, and the root of the denial manifested, and the blessed, skillful hand of Christ was, as it were, laid on the very sore; for it was not merely that he was restored in his conscience, but he was brought to judge his sin in its depths—what did the Lord do? Restored him to everything; restored him to the place of a martyr, restored him to the place of a follower, restored him to the place of a shepherd of His Jewish sheep and lambs.
It is sadly solemn, and ought to be heartbreaking to us, beloved friends, that it should be said, as I have myself heard it said, and that not many days ago, that there is very little hope of any one being restored or forgiven by the Lord’s people if they fall. And I know perfectly, it is not in any one of our hearts by nature, if a man break down, if a man fail (I am using the words that are commonly employed), to have such person put back again, even as Peter was; why, beloved friends, it is in perfect contrast, with our whole nature; we should shrink from any such thing, we should cherish an everlasting suspicion about that person. But then, that is not what Christ did. That was not Christ’s grace to a man that had denied him three times over, cursing and swearing; one too, who had been warned of it; that man, I repeat, was put back into the position of a shepherd of Christ’s sheep and lambs. That is the manner of Christ’s grace; that is God’s grace, to call that man to be a follower of Christ, and to say to him, “Follow Me”; and not only so, but to say to him, “You shall be even a martyr for Me, and shall have the path of a martyr; that path that you essayed to pursue and walk in, in your flesh and natural energy, you shall tread it now as a restored, broken man.” He restored him to everything; there was not a single position that pertained to Peter, that he was not restored to: that is grace.
And now, I pray you, mark this—and I know it so well, because one is made to know the workings of one’s poor heart within one—it was not that Peter was to be watchful. Now I do know that when souls are brought back, when the Lord in His wonderful restoring grace brings back the soul after failure, or any other turning aside, how earnestly we seek to press upon such a person, the following: “Now you will have to be very watchful and very careful, and walk very guardedly”; and so forth. I do not deny it, it is perfectly true; but oh beloved friends, do let us try and occupy people’s souls with the producing power, God’s grace, and not with themselves. You never can secure a person that has failed, from further failure by pressing upon him what he is to do; there is only one source and spring for lifting us up or keeping us up. It is the grace of God. I quite admit there should be watchfulness, I quite admit there should be care, there should be diligence, but there is no power to keep or restore in all the watchfulness, or in all the care. And I maintain more than that, that the more His grace is in my heart, it is productive of the watchfulness, it is formative of the care needed, it is causative of the diligence called for. You must have a spring to produce those things; and it is God’s grace that is the source of watchfulness, it is God’s grace that is the spring of care. The more my soul has drunk in the sense of that grace, that unchanging, unalterable grace of God, the more diligent, and careful, and zealous would I walk with reference to everything that was before me. Whereas, if you press upon souls, as I have often heard it, that unless they walk watchfully, and unless they are very zealous and very guarded, and all the rest of it, they will fall again; you are occupying them with produced things, which have no power to produce themselves. You must have a spring to call those things into exercise, and that spring is God’s grace; and therefore you can see what a blessed thing it is to imbibe this into our souls, that He is “the God of all grace”; grace to us as sinners, grace to bring us back when we have wandered, and grace to keep us. How is one to be kept? Is it not grace that keeps? And have not we often sung, and rightly too, that beautiful verse –
Twas grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.
What is it has ever kept any one but grace? What is it has ever saved any one, but grace? What is it has ever restored any one, but grace? Nothing. And therefore I delight to dilate on the subject; but I cannot get to the end of it. Look at the wonderful field it is. Look at -the many sides of the glory of it. It is impossible to get to the full extent of it, this marvelous, precious, wondrous grace of God. “The God of all grace”; “the grace of God”; but the grace of God is the grace of Him that is the God of all grace. God is the God of every kind of grace. Oh, may the Lord impress our hearts more, with the sense of it, because that is what will keep us, and guard us as we go along. Law never could do it; it never could accomplish it. The law is just as bad for a saint, as it is for a sinner. I suppose we should all admit law was a rule of death for the sinner; it is just as much a rule of death for the saint. And you will find that the only principle which wears well every day, as it is for the sinner, so for the saint as well, is the grace of God. Grace is the great source, the great spring, the great principle of every single thing from God to us.
Well now, let me say one word on the second subject—I need not speak long about it—and that is, the preciousness of the efficacy, the eternal efficacy of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because, observe, it is in the power and virtue of that blood that we were put in relationship with God. And a wonderful thing it is to think of, beloved friends, that every soul in this company tonight, who through grace has been brought to God, is before God, mark you, is before God in a double way—before God, in Christ. I know of no other footing to stand upon before God, no other platform to stand upon before God, except in Christ. But I am before God in Christ in all the eternal blessedness and efficacy of His blood. I stand before God in the acceptability of the Person who shed the blood; and I stand before God in His own appreciation and measurement of that blood; it is not our sense of its value, it is God’s. None but the blessed God Himself could appreciate and estimate in its full efficacy the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is God’s value of the blood; it is what God has found in that blood; it is what God sees in the blood. And therefore the relationship is unchangeable; must be, beloved friends. If that is the basis of it, it must be.
Does the blood lose its value? Does the blood change value? Is it more valuable at one time than another? Is it more efficacious this year and less efficacious next year? You know well, thank God, it is not. You know full well that the precious blood of Christ has an eternal value in God’s estimation. And therefore it is said, and it is so precious and blessed, that verse that is so often used, so often on our lips, and I trust as well, fixed in our hearts—I am now thinking of the Epistle of John, that blessed word of our God in 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7). Oh, what heart can conceive, or lip adequately convey its full, deep, eternal blessedness, namely, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” He is speaking of what that blood is in its own actual nature before God; and what is that? That it cleanses; that is to say, that is what it effects, that is its abstract nature. As poison kills and food nourishes, so that blood cleanses. It is not the continual application, as some would in their mistaken zeal assert. The perpetual application of the blood would be the destruction of its efficacy; no surer way to cast a slight, even though unwittingly, upon the efficacy of the blood of Christ, than to speak of it as continually applied: hence to say here is “cleansing,” meaning thereby as continually applied, is to reduce it to the level of the blood of bulls and goats. But when you speak of it in its own blessed nature as God does, and say that” the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin,” it is simply unfolding it as God does there. And so blessed and so full is it, that the believer stands before God in the acceptability, and nearness, and dearness to God, of Him who shed His blood, and in all the value of that blood as God measures it.
Now what a blessed, living reality that is! Here then, is a basis that never changes, here is a relationship that never can be broken, here is a place in Christ before God, that knows no variation nor shadow of turning. The precious blood of the Christ of God in its efficacy, is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever”; that is, to the age of ages. What He has accomplished in His grace by the shedding of His blood, puts us, in all the unchangeableness of its own blessedness, before God, according to God’s measure of it. And it is an immense thing for our souls, to know the ground upon which we are, and that it is on no less a footing than this our God has set us. And I am assured nothing could be more important, for every one of us, than to be established in all the truth and reality of it by Himself. And bear in mind it is not our taking a place. We have no right to take a place; but if God puts us in such a place before Him, can we exaggerate its blessedness, or make too much of the grace that bestows it upon us? Or would it be possible to exalt too highly the changeless efficacy of Christ’s blood, and thus the glory of the One that shed it?
Oh, beloved brethren, how much the truth of God has suffered from, and how much it has been lowered by such thoughts. What a really blessed thing it is to look at that precious blood as the blood of Him who upheld and vindicated all the glory of God. And who will limit the issues and consequences of all this work? Christ glorified God down to the very dust of death, where His precious blood was poured forth and shed, for remember, the blood came from the side of the One who had been crucified, it came from the side of a dead Christ, not of a living Christ. If, let me say, Christ glorified God down to the very dust of death, down to where we lay in our moral ruin and distance from God, who will deny that we must be blessed up to the very heights of where that Christ is? If you lower the blessing, you must somehow reflect upon the Blesser. And that is the very reality which we should strive to impress upon one another’s hearts more and more every day.
If you limit or lower the blessing, you correspondingly take away from the glory of the One who secured it. But the more your heart has been impressed with the sense of the glory and perfections of Him, who has made all this good for His Father’s glory, and for us, the higher your conceptions must be of the blessing. I repeat it, if Christ has given to God a glory that He went down into the dust of death to secure and make good, if the blessed God has been glorified down to the lowest, where He went and lay in death, then I say, the believer must be blessed up to the very heights of where that precious One is, whom God has raised up from among the dead, and claimed as His own. And therefore, Christ’s acceptance, blessed be His name, is the measure of ours. His acceptance as man, the glorified Man in heaven, is the acceptance of His saints, who through grace believe in Him. Then see, beloved friends, what a wonderful comfort that is; because it settles and establishes everything as certain. It does not leave things uncertain or undecided; it settles everything, and forever; it puts everything into a fixed, settled position before God, and that is outside all the fittings, and all the ebbings, and all the flowings of our poor life down here: well may we sing
“Oh, I am my Beloved’s,
And my Beloved’s mine;
He brings a poor vile sinner
Into His ‘house of wine’!
I stand upon His merit,
I know no safer stand;
Not e’en where glory dwelleth,
In Emmanuel’s land.”
Now one other word upon the third subject that I named. I would say affectionately and humbly to you, I felt, I trust of the Lord, led to touch these subjects in a kind of way as introductory tonight, as I felt one not only ought to do so, but, thank God, the delight of one’s heart is to look at these great transactions as between God and Christ. I do not know anything that is more comforting to the soul than to stand outside of contingencies, and to look at divine transactions and facts which never can change. One is continually impressed with all the change down here, but, oh, to have to do with the things which know no change! The glory of such things is their changeless character. The exact failure of everything on earth is their changeability. It is just the contrast between what is divine and what is of the creature. This poor world needs constant change; men of the earth and world, could not endure the monotony of its sameness—they crave for the change; sameness is to them wearisome in the extreme. Is there anything whereof it may be said “See, this is new?” This is the craving of man’s heart, and his disappointment finds vent in the words of the reply: “It hath been already of old time, which was before us.” The glory of Christ is that He is the same, that is redemption’s glory, that is the glory of the place in which we are set before God, in virtue of the blood; there as been secured not only eternal redemption, but eternal inheritance.
Well now, allow me to say a little on this third subject, the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have often thought lately whether our hearts have really given to that subject the importance that attaches to it, whether we have thought enough about the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and whether we have traced sufficiently to its source in fellowship and divine intimacy with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, the blessings that we derive from our Priest on high. Because, just reflect on this, in all its blessedness, here we are, going through this poor wretched world, where we need sympathy, and want succor and sustainment continually; we are down here, poor weak things; if I think of myself up there in heaven, I have a home, a rest, and no want, no care; we do not want sympathy or succor, or sustainment in heaven. Oh, what a moment, when we are forever out of the scene where we need those things! But, then, whilst our home and rest are in heaven, and that is our true place, still we are going through this world and it is in our life in this scene as we pass through it, our life down here as in the body, and surrounded by all the things that belong to this world—this, I say, is the sphere, and these are the circumstances where this wonderful grace of Christ is made known to us. Now we have need of sympathy, and what a sympathy is that of Christ!
There is a very marked difference between a person who knows Christ’s sympathy and a person who does not. There is nothing that so softens the heart as sympathy. There is nothing that ministers such real divine softness to the heart as sympathy. It is just the very lack that you may often see in souls. If they only knew Christ’s sympathy, with all the softening and subduing influence of it, what a change it would make. But then, who in very truth can meet us in that way save Christ? There are scenes and circumstances through which we pass down here, where no one can really sympathize with us but Jesus. And you will find, beloved friends, and I have no doubt many of you have often proved it for your own hearts—you will find that whilst there are many who will feel for you, there are but few, if indeed any, who can feel with you; how few there are who are free enough from themselves to say to you, “I feel so with you I have gone that road, I have traversed that path, I have passed through those circumstances; my heart has entered into all that.” And that is just what is so blessed in its perfection about Christ, that He came down here, and went through the circumstances, in order that He might be able to feel with His poor saints when in them!
Oh, think of that precious grace! Think of Jesus coming down here, and passing through all the circumstances that belong to a man down here in this world, that He might know, and be able to enter into the feelings, and sorrows, and the afflictions, and the trials of His poor beloved saints when they are passing through them; so that the sympathy that we get from Christ is a sympathy which He has learned to accord to us. How blessed! He learned it for us. He did pass through it all as man; He learnt it as man. And it was His human life down here, through all the circumstances of this world, and what He endured and passed through, that fitted Him to accord that sympathy to us when we are in like circumstances. And that is one thing that comes from priesthood—even sympathy; He is able to sympathize. And that is the meaning of that passage in the beginning of Hebrews, “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”; literally, who is not able to sympathize with our weaknesses. It is put in that negative way to present the intense reality of His sympathy. We have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses: He is able to do it. How precious! He is able to sympathize, He is able to succor, and He is able to save; the three things that are said of Him in connection with His priesthood. “He is able to sympathize”; “He is able to succor,” inasmuch as “he hath himself suffered, being tempted”; and “He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth”; to carry them in His arms, in His affections, and to lift them up—“He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”
Oh! beloved brethren, it is connected with so much of our history down here, things that we never could have got over, things we never could have surmounted. Have you not often found yourselves face to face with circumstances in which you could say, “I do not know how I ever got over that, how I passed through that trouble, or was able to endure that pressure that was upon me”? I will tell you. The Priest on high succored you, saved you, carried you, because that is the meaning of it, “He is able to save to the uttermost.” There is no circumstance which He is not able to carry you through; there is no wall too high that He will not carry you over; there is no pressure too grievous that He will not support you through it. “He is able to save to the uttermost.” I remember very well how that scripture has been used to set forth the gospel; and though I have a longing desire for more gospel energy and evangelic desire after the souls of the miserable and perishing, still, I am jealous of that passage being misapplied, and this is the case, if it be attempted to bring the gospel into it. Further, it would be an entirely false conception of the gospel to connect it with the intercession of Christ.
If it be a question of the salvation of the soul, that is connected with His cross, and blood-shedding, and death, and not with His intercession. This in Hebrews is the salvation of a saint, not of a sinner. The saint needs to be carried through the wilderness, over the difficulties, through the trials, lifted over all the ups and downs—that is the salvation a saint needs. He must be carried in the arms of the Priest, if he is to get through: but that Priest is the One who bled, and wept, and suffered, and died in this world. He died to be the Savior, and He lives to be the Priest. He died, and it is His death as the Savior, and the shedding of His blood as the Savior that settles the question of our peace with God, even the question of our sins; but it is His life in the heavens that supports, and carries, and sustains through all the difficulties down here. And such a High Priest became us; not a Priest for our sins, a Savior for our sins, but a Priest for our trials, a Priest for our sorrows, a Priest for our difficulties down here, a Priest for our weaknesses. A saint cannot do without a Priest for his weaknesses, a poor sinner wants a Savior for his sins, thank God, He is both; He is the Savior of our souls, and He is the Priest for our weaknesses.
Bear with me if I apply it in a personal way: I would ask, Are you conscious of this gracious ministry? Have you got the sense of this blessed priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ in its sustaining character in the heavens? What a cheer it is to the Christian as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, to know that there is One up there on the throne of God, who came down to earth about his sins, and now He is gone up from earth to heaven about his infirmities. Think of the blessedness of that! It was our sins that brought Him to earth; it is our infirmities that He is occupied with in the heavens. He came down about our sins, settled the question of them forever on the cross, and now, raised up from among the dead, and gone into glory, He sustains, and supports, and He represents us on high; He sustains us in weakness, He cheers us in sorrow, He sympathizes with us in all our trials and distresses, where we feel them aright.
The Lord give our hearts a better, a more divine sense of what we owe to the all-prevailing priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, His unceasing intercession. Oh! how blessed to think of those hands ever lifted up, those unwearied hands of intercession, those hands that do not grow weary like Moses’ hands. Poor Moses! his hands failed and fainted; he was a poor weak man, like ourselves, though while those hands were lifted up Israel got the victory, but Moses had not divine continuity, and his hands failed. The hands of Him who continueth forever never grow weary, blessed be His name; His hands are ever uplifted, His heart is eternally interested in the objects of His love, and that is supreme comfort for our souls as belonging to Him. We are not only borne on the breastplate of judgment upon His heart, but we are borne upon the strength of His shoulders. We are borne on His affections, and we are borne on His strength. Just as the High Priest bore the names of Israel on the breastplate of judgment, ever on his heart when he went in before the Lord continually, and bore them, too, upon his shoulders, so Christ has got the names of all his people indelibly recorded on his heart, and on His shoulders; the Lord be praised for such cheer!
I commend those three subjects to your prayerful, earnest consideration, so that you may receive the full blessing that God would give each of you individually through them—the grace of God in its unfailing character, the blood of Christ in its unchanging blessedness, and the intercession of Christ in its eternal continuity And, oh, may the Lord give our hearts to be fully encouraged and comforted by those blessed realities, and increasingly, too, for His name’s sake.