Have you ever thought about that? The intercession that Christ makes: it is a great mystery. If you are a true believer and you're truly saved, and you have the evidence in your life, and you go to heaven to eternal glory, your security there is safeguarded by this: that Christ ever lives to make intercession for you. What is he saying on your behalf? Why does he need to say anything on your behalf? You won't stumble or fall in heaven; you won't sin. Why is he ever living to make intercession for us? Well it's a great mystery what he says. These are wonders we cannot altogether look into, but the very presence of Christ at the right hand of God the Father speaks. If we may say reverently, he speaks without necessarily opening his mouth. His very presence speaks and makes intercession for us, because his very presence in his glorified body with his visible glorified scars, speaks of his suffering and death which has everlasting power. If Christ is there at the right hand of God, we go on for ever and for ever and for ever covered by the blood of Christ. His very presence intercedes.
But there's more. In some way by his presence and his words, he eternally projects this message: that man, that woman, is mine. I suffered and died for him, for her. I have purchased him. And Father, thou hast given him to me and I safeguard him eternally. And further, somehow the very presence of Christ or his words, says of everyone in that vast, vast crowd of glorified happy saints, I have died for that man; I have transformed that man; I love that man, that woman with all the intensity of my eternal love. In this kind of way the love of Christ and the ongoing merits of all that he has done, makes everlasting intercession for us. There were so many things we could derive from everything that is said in this chapter about Christ. When you read it devotionally you can say, These are wonderful arguments, and I don't need them to be convinced, but I can be so moved at the positive descriptions of Christ that I will dwell on them and reflect on them, and praise him and worship and thank him.
Are you a husband, and you treat your wife badly? I don’t mean that you beat her, or are cruel to her, but you are not very kind to her, and you don’t speak kindly, and you are not gentle. You are not accommodating and you do not support her and help her as fully as you should. I have known people who were Christians or thought they were, who treated their wives terribly; not cruelly, but harshly and badly. But if Christ saves to the uttermost, what is the matter with such a man? Is he still an utterly unsanctified Christian, who has never prayed to God for help in his behaviour at home, so that he has not been changed and refined? Or is it that he is not saved? Because Christ saves to the uttermost and really makes a difference in our nature. Or are you in business and you are a Christian, or you believe you are, and yet you still cheat, and you cut corners and do unethical things. How can you be a Christian? Christ saves to the uttermost. Surely he should have sanctified you; surely if you were a true Christian your conscience would have hurt you; surely you would have struggled with that tendency and by the help of God you would have overcome it. Are you a Christian?