It is my desire to say a little on the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here we are, going through this poor wretched world where we need sympathy and want succor and sustainment continually; we are poor weak things down here; if I think of myself up there in heaven, I have a home, a rest, and no want, no care; we do not need 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 while our rest and home are in heaven, and that is our true place, still we are going through this world, and it is 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 while 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 much 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 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 learned 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 a 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 Himself hath suffered being tempted"; and "He is able... to save them to the uttermost 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 much of our history down here—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 through 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 "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. "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 evangelistic 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, but a Priest for our trials, our sorrows, our difficulties, our weaknesses. A saint cannot do without a Priest for his weaknesses; a poor sinner needs 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 represents us on high. He sustains us in weakness, He cheers us in sorrow, and He sympathizes with us in all our trials and distresses.
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 continues 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!