Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:8, NIV)
God is exceptionally merciful, more than we can imagine. Yet, he is also just. The dynamic between these two qualities is something that, when understood, can be navigated to a yield stronger, more fruitful connection with God.
God loves us so much that he wishes to give us many more blessings than we receive. What keeps us from receiving them? We do not possess the character or live the life associated with them. It is very common for God to want to bless an individual, but is curtailed in his ability to do so by his justice. Through his sacrifice, the Lord Jesus made it possible for divine justice to endure while still extending forgiveness to those whose disobedience would otherwise subject them to punishment. He did not rob justice through his sacrifice, but rather satisfied it with his sacrifice. He paid the price of our penalty.
Intercession gives us the ability to obtain otherwise unmerited blessings for others through our own sacrifice. Just as the Lord Jesus paid the price of our sin, making it possible for us to obtain forgiveness that we didn’t earn, we can intercede for others to call down blessings on their behalf that they do not merit on their own. Even though the sacrifice on our part is miniscule compared to the sacrifice of Christ, the intervention of a righteous man can and does move heaven. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much...” (James 5:16)
Intercession is a special kind of prayer for other people. Normal prayer for others—supplication—consists of asking the Lord to take care of something for someone else. In intercession, the praying person invests their heart and soul into the problem for the other person. Intercessors are willing to stand in the gap, or risk their own life and salvation for the person. They truly love those they pray for more than than they love themselves. They pray as if their fate were tied up in the fate of those they pray for. In fact, they love those they pray for more than themselves, because they are willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing for those they pray for.
This kind of sacrifice tips the scales of justice by adding merit to the cause of the subject of prayer. By tipping the scales of justice, intercession can secure blessings that would otherwise not be secured: postpone prescribed judgment, reduce prescribed judgment, extend new truth to men who could otherwise not obtain it, and provide answers to prayers beyond what people would normally be willing or able to receive.
Why would anyone want to pray like this, almost always for those who abuse you, and many times for those you don’t even know well? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) You will be hard pressed to find a greater expression of charity than intercession. In fact, you can’t have charity without intercession for others, and you can’t conduct intercession for others if you don’t have charity.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the great intercessor. We cannot follow his example without interceding for others. He sits at “the right hand of God, [and] maketh intercession for us.” (Romans 8:34) Paul said “he ever liveth to make intercession for [us].” (Hebrews 7:25) Examples of his intercession include his atoning sacrifice, his condescension in coming to earth, how he forgives sins, and how he constantly pleads for us to the Father.
My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)
Without the Lord’s intercession, the justice of God would require all of us to be immediately slain in our wickedness. The Lord advocates for each of us with the Father. Kneeling before him, he displays the marks in his hands and shows him his blood which was shed. He pleads “Because of my righteous sacrifice, have mercy on them.”
Just as he intercedes for you at the throne of the Father, you are to intercede for others at his throne. You become their advocate with the Lord as the Lord is our advocate with the Father. The Lord’s joy is great when we emulate him. He is very close during intercession. He smiles upon those who do it. When you intercede for another, you are filled with the love that God feels for them. This draws you nearer to him.
The Lord Jesus is not the only intercessor. Intercession happens throughout his kingdom. A good example of the intercession that occurs at the throne of the Lord Jesus is given by the cherubim who stand beside it. Their form and function is described in the ark of the covenant:
And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. (Exodus 25:20)
These angels face the Lord, and form a two-way veil with their wings. From us, they veil the glory of the Lord, which would consume our flesh. From the Lord, they filter the wickedness of men. The name “mercy seat” comes from the fact that their mission is to constantly remind the Lord of his merciful nature. Their loud, constant cries of “Mercy! Mercy! Have mercy Lord!” cover the violent noise produced by our sins.
As we intercede for others, we embark on the spiritual errands normally reserved for angels, who are constantly interceding with the Lord on behalf of men, preventing the outpouring of judgments that would otherwise justly occur.
Intercession is fully for the benefit of others, but you cannot intercede without receiving blessings yourself. Intercession brings you closer to God because it unlocks real intent in your heart that can propel and elevate your desire for righteousness and strengthen your connection to God. It will cause you to grow in compassion. Compassion is a quality that, unlike gifts of the Spirit, will persist in your character far after this life has ended.
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13)
Compassionate prayer has a special power to pierce the heavens. When you have compassion for the subject of your prayer, your prayer somehow will overflow with fervor beyond what is found in your normal prayers.
In a strange way, compassion makes you willing to sacrifice your own needs for the needs of others, even when your needs are not trivial, and even when the benefit to the other person is less than the cost to you. This is an incredibly godly exercise, as it follows the Lord’s example.
Intercession is crucial to the Lord having a people on earth. When God makes covenants with people, there are consequent curses that go along with the blessings should the people turn away. When they fall short, it is up to intercessors to stay the Lord’s judgment and prolong their lives. To Ezekiel the Lord lamented: “I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” (Ezekiel 22:30)
It is possible for a people to be so wicked that even intercession cannot stay the Lord’s judgment. In Ezekiel’s time the people had become so wicked that the Lord said that even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were praying for Israel, they would be unable to deliver anyone but themselves (see Ezekiel 14:14). Eventually, a people can be so wicked that God says to stop praying for them:
7 O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy name’s sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against thee.
8 O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night?
9 Why shouldest thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save? yet thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name; leave us not.
10 Thus saith the Lord unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins.
11 Then said the Lord unto me, Pray not for this people for their good.
12 When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence. (Jeremiah 14)
Until then, we are under the admonition to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
Intercession requires sincere, patient, and intense sacrificial prayer. You may find yourself praying for someone for an entire day:
10 Now it came to pass that when Nephi, the son of Nephi, saw this wickedness of his people, his heart was exceedingly sorrowful.
11 And it came to pass that he went out and bowed himself down upon the earth, and cried mightily to his God in behalf of his people, yea, those who were about to be destroyed because of their faith in the tradition of their fathers.
12 And it came to pass that he cried mightily unto the Lord _all that day_ ; and behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying: (3 Nephi 1)
You may find yourself fasting for three days or risking your life:
16 Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. (Esther 4)
You may find yourself fasting for forty days and forty nights:
18 And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins which ye sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.
19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, wherewith the Lord was wroth against you to destroy you. But the Lord hearkened unto me at that time also. (Deuteronomy 9)
Self-abnegation for others produces results with God.
Like our prayers themselves, sacrifices have a critical mass commensurate with what we are asking for. Intercession in any significant way requires the person to present a significant sacrifice. Typically, the person offers up their salvation or their life. The more righteous you are, the more weighty the sacrifice.
Moses once offered his salvation to God in order to spare the Israelites from destruction for worshiping the golden calf:
31 And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. (Exodus 32)
If Moses’ name was not in the book of life, he could not have offered his salvation as a sacrifice for the sins of the people.
Those whose lives have not been spent in the service of God have less to offer, and those who have not yet obtained salvation cannot offer it in sacrifice.
Offers of sacrifice to God are serious. Do not make this offer to God unless you mean it. God sees all hearts, and he doesn’t respond well to those who mock him. Moses was completely serious when he offered his salvation. In his case, God granted the requested action without requiring Moses’ life, but that doesn’t mean he won’t require it of others. John the Beloved provides another example of intercession. When he asked the Lord to delay his entrance into heaven so that he could bring more souls to the Lord, he was exercising intercession. The people did not deserve Moses, and they do not deserve John, but the sacrifices of Moses and John allowed a just God to transmit great blessings to them anyway.
Sacrifice isn’t the only mechanism in intercession. All the prayer tactics discussed in this book apply, such as leveraging God’s character and God’s promises. For example, as Moses was receiving the ten commandments, God sent Moses down to the people to interrupt their worshipping of the golden calf. God told Moses he would destroy them. As he related later,
25 Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because the Lord had said he would destroy you.
26 I prayed therefore unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
27 Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin:
28 Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.
29 Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power and by thy stretched out arm. (Deuteronomy 9)
Most of the examples in the chapters on leveraging God’s character and God’s promises in prayer are examples of intercessory prayer. They are valid techniques, and they work.
Here is an example of Daniel applying the techniques in intercession. Notice how, despite the fact that he is righteous, he includes himself with those whose sins he is praying for. He is pleading for forgiveness of sins on behalf of people who have not yet repented. He also invokes the promise of God:
2 In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
3 And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes:
4 And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments;
5 We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments:
6 Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
7 O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee.
8 O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.
9 To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him;
10 Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
11 Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
12 And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem.
13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.
14 Therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice.
15 And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and hast gotten thee renown, as at this day; we have sinned, we have done wickedly.
16 O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us.
17 Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake.
18 O my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies.
19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name. (Daniel 9)
When you attempt to intercede for someone, be ready to have a conversation (even a debate) with God. He once said, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord...” (Isaiah 1:18) He wasn’t speaking figuratively.
Elijah’s experience with the widow’s son gives us an example of how we can make a case with God in intercession:
16 And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah.
17 And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him.
18 And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
19 And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed.
20 And he cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?
21 And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.
22 And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. (1 Kings 17)
Elijah’s host had sacrificed a great deal to care for him. To have such tragedy befall her would irreparably damage her faith. Meanwhile, he was a well-known servant of God. If this sort of thing happened to those who helped him, what would that make people think about God? Elijah took this petition to God, and God granted for him to raise her son from the dead.
Much of the gospel is about rising to God’s blessing through your consistent obedience, then condescending to sacrifice those blessings by sharing them with those who will not appreciate it or accept it. When you exercise mercy, especially in behalf of those you don’t know, and especially in behalf of those who don’t deserve it, you activate a law in heaven whereby God must act. God is much more merciful than any man, but he chooses to exercise mercy according to certain laws. For example, we are told that with what judgment we judge, we will be judged. There is no way to work around this law in this sphere of existence. Likewise, if we are righteous, we can place ourselves on the altar for the benefit of another and move heaven with our compassion to provide blessings to that person that they do not otherwise qualify for.
We should not underestimate the impact of intercession. Have you ever considered how it is possible that cities and nations far more wicked than Sodom and Gomorrah are not destroyed? It is because of many intercessions by the righteous on earth and in heaven. That is the scope and magnitude of the work of intercession. If it weren’t for the intercession of the righteous, this world would have been destroyed a long time ago. Even on a much smaller scale, unseen intercessions by others impact your life every day.
God’s kingdom runs on intercession. It’s a hidden ministry of men, angels, and even the Lord. By learning this art and practicing it, you will have a significant impact on the Lord’s work here on earth.