Heb. 4-5. Continued.
WHERE we fail, where our life is not the expression of that life in Jesus, there comes the word. of God, which is the expression of it, and searches us; and thus there is sanctification by the truth. The word brings Christ to me where I am not showing forth Christ, and judges it.
But if I find difficulties and trials by the way? There I have the intercession of Christ. I have Christ interceding for me, as knowing all the comfort of the grace of God that flows out to this life upon earth. He has known hew a soul is comforted in this trial, and He takes it all for me, and pleads for me before God, according to His own knowledge of my need. There I find the supplies of grace that I want, through a person who understands the application of grace to a heart that is going through these difficulties. Before He stands in His place of priesthood, He has gone through them all. Thus His walk upon earth was ever that of a dependent man, and now He intercedes for us, as dependent ones, and thereby maintains our communion with the blessedness of God, in the place where our title is. You may be conscious of much infirmity, but if you say, I am weak, you are also entitled to say, God is for me in that. Do I want light? God is for me in that. Do I want direction for my path? God is for me in that. I get all that God is for my need; and such is the effect of the intercession of Christ. In all this path of trial below, there is not one of the difficulties to which grace does not apply it. There is not a step of my life that God is not thinking of me. There may be that in me which requires that God should deal with it, as, for instance, was Job's case. He sees that Job is not going on well, and He says, I must take that case up, and deal with it. And so He lets Satan loose upon Job, till Job was made nothing of in his own eyes; and that is exactly what was wanted. In Peter's case, Satan, took the start.
The Lord says, “Simon, Simon, Satan path desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” He prays there before the sin was ever committed. The Lord was thinking about him, and when the fitting moment was come, looks at him, and Peter weeps bitterly. It was good for him to be sifted. He was a man true and sincere, but with too much confidence in himself, and in his love for the Lord. Then, in order thoroughly to restore his soul, the Lord applies the word, “Lovest thou me more than these?” And Simon, conscious of how little love he had shown, is forced to appeal to divine knowledge of it— “Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” You know that I love you, though nobody else could. The Lord then says to him, “Feed my lambs.” There we get the application of it, “When thou art restored:” He had before said to him, “strengthen thy brethren.”
Christ having “learned obedience by the things which he suffered,” associates our hearts with Himself in the perfectness in which God is, by applying that perfectness in grace to all the wants of our souls. Then when we fail, intercession comes in, and restores the soul, and yet it always maintains the soul in the confidence of divine love. The Lord intercedes for us without even asking. We do not gain Him to intercede for us, because of our repentance or prayers. He did not intercede for Peter when Peter repented, but before he sinned: He interceded for Peter because he needed it. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” It does not say, If any man repent of his sin, but “if any man sin.” That is, he wants it. It is the exercise of grace in His own heart towards us to restore our souls.
“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” People are apt to talk about “strong meat,” as if it meant something very great. But the simple truth taught here is, that milk is fitted for babes, and strong meat for grown people, and therefore if you are not able to eat solid meat, you are in a bad state. I do not give milk to a grown man, because meat suits him. If we cannot take the solid food, the fact is, we have been content to stay babes, because we have not been growing up into Christ—the thought and intent of the heart is not right. We are called upon to have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil, and that is impossible except as we are walking in reality with God. But the place where Christ keeps our hearts is in the holiest of all. He has sanctified Himself in the presence of God for us, and that is the place where He keeps us. We may forget Him, we may fail in appreciating the position in which He has set us, and in walking according to it; but in the holiest He keeps us, in unmingled, untiring, enjoyment of what is there; there in perfect love and in the light, as God is in the light, sin put away, and ourselves made the righteousness of God in Him. I have nothing more to think about my competency to be there. I am there, and I cannot get there except as being perfectly cleansed. All sin blotted out, and there consequently, as thus cleansed, I enjoy the unclouded favor of God. The place into which I am introduced is the unclouded favor of God that has been brought in by the death of Christ, which has cleansed me. And now here, in this earth, I am to manifest Christ. But in the midst of all the trials and difficulties of the way, we find these two means which God uses to carry us on—the word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, which judges everything that is contrary to God; and the intercession of Christ which meets all our weakness and failure. He has trodden the same path which we have to tread, and has met the same temptations in that path. And now our very weakness, if we are kept in dependence upon Christ, is but the continual exercise of affection to Christ and the drawing out of His affections towards us.
Bridgewater, June 18th, 1858.