Lesson 87: Christ the High Priest, part 3
And then follows our Lord’s prayer for a still wider circle. “I pray not only for these, but for them who through their word shall believe.” His priestly heart enlarges itself to embrace all places and all time, and He prays that all who belong to Him may everywhere be one, as God’s proof to the world of the divinity of His mission, and then that they may ever be with Him in His glory. Until then “that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
The disciple of Jesus, who has first in his own circle proved the power of prayer, cannot confine himself within its limits: he prays for the Church universal and its different branches. He prays specially for the unity of the Spirit and of love. He prays for its being one in Christ, as a witness to the world that Christ, who has worked such a wonder as to make love triumph over selfishness and separation, is indeed the Son of God sent from heaven. Every believer ought to pray much that the unity of the Church, not in external organizations, but in spirit and in truth, may be made manifest.
So much for the matter of the prayer. Now for its mode. Jesus says, “FATHER, I WILL.” On the ground of His right as Son, and the Father’s promise to Him, and His finished work, He might do so. The Father had said to Him, “Ask of me, and I will give You.” He simply accepted the Father’s promise. Jesus has given us a like promise: “Whatever you will shall be done unto you.” He asks me in His Name to say what I will. Abiding in Him, in a living union with Him in which man is nothing and Christ all, the believer has the liberty to take up that word of His High Priest and, in answer to the question “What is your will?” to say, “FATHER, I WILL all that You have promised.” This is nothing but true faith; this is honoring God: to be assured that such confidence in saying what I will is indeed acceptable to Him. At first sight, our heart shrinks from the expression; we feel neither the liberty nor the power to speak this way. It is a word for which alone, in the most entire submission of our will, grace will be given; but for which grace will most assuredly be given to each one who loses his will in his Lord’s. He who loses his will shall find it; he who gives up his will entirely shall find it again renewed and strengthened with a Divine Strength. “FATHER, I WILL:” this is the keynote of the everlasting, ever-active, all-prevailing intercession of our Lord in heaven.
It is only in union with Him that our prayer is effective; in union with Him it accomplishes much. If we but abide in Him, living, and walking, and doing all things in His Name; if we but come and bring each separate petition, tested and touched by His Word and Spirit, and cast it into the mighty stream of intercession that goes up from Him, to be borne upward and presented before the Father—we shall have the full confidence that we receive the petitions we ask: the “Father, I will” will be breathed into us by the Spirit Himself. We shall lose ourselves in Him, and become nothing, to find that in our impotence we have power and prevail.
Disciples of Jesus! Called to be like your Lord in His priestly intercession, when, oh when! shall we awaken to the glory, passing all conception, of this our destiny to plead and prevail with God for perishing men? Oh, when shall we shake off the laziness that clothes itself with the pretense of humility, and yield ourselves wholly to God’s Spirit, that He may fill our wills with light and with power, to know, and to take, and to possess all that our God is waiting to give to a will that lays hold on Him.
Prayer: Blessed Lord, be it here, as through all the spiritual life: You are all, I am nothing. And be it here my experience too that he that has and seeks nothing for himself, receives all, even to the wonderful grace of sharing with You in Your everlasting ministry of intercession.