The Intercession of Jesus Christ

If the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are One, why then does Jesus Christ pray to God the Father? Would He continue to pray to the Father after arriving at the right hand of God? The prayer of Jesus Christ to His Father reflects and manifests the internal and eternal relationship of God the Father to God the Son within the life of the Godhead Himself. Jesus Christ, the Image of the Invisible God, the heir of all creation, firstborn of the dead (Colossians 1), reflects the glory of His Father for all eternity, for He is eternally begotten of the Father 'before all worlds,' that is, before all creation, i.e., forever. From all eternity, there has never been an aeon or epoch in which the Eternal Son was not begotten of the Father. God the Son, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God is coexistent and coeternal with the Father. The Son, within the mystery of the Holy Trinity, 'One of the Holy Trinity,' obtains His eternal existence from the Father forever. 'The Father Unbegotten, the Son only-begotten, the Spirit proceeding' (Athanasian Creed). God the Son eternally prays to the Father, that is, He exists with the Father for all eternity in a perfect communion of love, self-donation, self-giving and self-abandonment, an exchange of life, love and grace which is revealed through prayer, or communication. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and was God' (St John 1.1). The Word of God, or the Logos, eternally begotten of the Father, continually offers to His Father a perfect oblation, a complete oblation, a rendering of sacrificial filial obedience and love - for all eternity. In the very heart of God, the Word of the Father forever offers and presents Himself to His Father in an action of unending worship. God the Son loves and perfectly adores the Father within the eternal relationship we call the Holy Trinity. This endless and perfect love is expressed by means of what we would call prayer, the expression of love through mutual communication. Therefore, God Himself is a Communion of Persons, a divine Family giving and sharing life, eternal existence, and prayer within Himself.

The Tri-Hypostatic God, One God in Three Persons, is forever a life of mutual participation: in technical theological language called 'mutual indwelling,' perichoresis, circumincessio. This language simply means that as a Communion of Persons Who live in each other, each of Three Persons, by participation in Their common Divine Life and Nature originating from the Father, continually supplies and communicates life and prayer to the Others. These Three, Father, Son, and Spirit, are tri-equal and tri-eternal. The Three dwell in one another and make their Home in each other forever. Their Union exists as one of Essence, and is therefore as absolute as the undivided unity of God Himself. Within this eternal Family, this participatory Communion, the Father is the Source, Beginning and Cause of the Godhead, the Fount of Deity. From Him, the Son and Spirit receive what could be paradoxically called 'eternal origin': the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, originating from Him by eternal generation; the Holy Ghost originates from the Father by procession - the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. St Irenaeus of Lyons, therefore, calls the Son and Spirit the 'Two Hands of God.' The unity of the Three Persons of the Trinity is the ultimate Mystery, and the foundation of the fundamental truth about God and His Nature. God the Son is the eternal adorer and worshipper of the Eternal Father, the Eternal Word spoken by the Father, who now and beyond eternity prays to His Father in an indissoluble Communion of Persons, a fellowship of being, love, grace, life and prayer which we call the Godhead of the Blessed Trinity. In short, Jesus Christ prays to the Father because this prayer, the communication, expresses the relationship which Our Lord shares with the Father within the life of God Himself. Jesus, the obedient and loving Son of the Father, prays to the Father.

In the fulness of time, God the Son was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made Man; the Word Himself assumed human nature, thus uniting manhood, the completion and totality of human nature, to Himself as God. 'In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that thou art no longer salves, but sons; and if sons, then heirs; heirs of God through Christ' (Galatians 4.7-8). This mystery is called, of course, the Incarnation, the mystery of God made Man. One Divine Person, the Person of the Son of God, now possesses forever two complete and unconfused natures, divine and human. God became Man, and the Incarnate Lord was given the Name Jesus Christ. So, it follows that the perfect prayer and life of God the Son, His filial obedience and offering, condescended to us, so that now in human nature, God the Son offers His perfect prayer to God the Father, just as He did in Heaven forever before His Incarnation. Jesus Christ, God the Son made Man, now offers to His Father the same obedience, love, fidelity and adoration that He has offered eternally within the mysterious Unity of the Trinity, only now in human flesh, in time and space and beyond, in a completely human life, as the Second Adam, the New Man, the New Creation in whose human nature the whole human race has been recreated and renewed. Jesus Christ, the Perfect Man, the representative Man, brings into the sphere of humanity the all-sufficient response of obedience and self-offering to God that was lost upon the transgression of the first fallen Adam. The hypostatic union, the union of God and Man in Christ, remains forever. Our Lord, after His glorious Resurrection from dead, did not lose His human nature, just as when He took human flesh He did not lose His Deity, but wonderfully united it to human nature. Our Lord came essentially to sweep the human race up into His own prefect life of prayer, so that the whole human race may be made one with God through participation in God's life through Jesus Christ and the human nature He shares with us. 'God became man so that man may become God.' 'We become by grace what God is by nature.'

Human nature, and therefore the stuff of our reality, is raised up with Jesus to live and reign with Him forever in heaven, in the life of God, to be offered in union with Christ’s perfect self-offering, perfect sacrifice, perfect prayer, which culminated in His human death on Calvary and His Resurrection. Through Jesus Christ, the Father has adopted all who are incorporated into Christ and made members of Christ’s Body by Baptism as His own sons, making them partakers of the divine nature (II St Peter 1.4), divine by grace, sharers of the very life of God through the deified and God-bearing human nature transformed by Our Lord in His Incarnation, death and glorification. In Baptism, we become one with the human nature of Christ which was inseparably united to God - and therefore in our own human nature we now, in the communion of Christ's Body the Church, participate in the very life, energy and power of the Trinity. 'If a man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him' (St John 14.23). 'That they may be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may also be in us.' (St John 17.21).

Our Lord continues to pray to the Father for all eternity, and now His prayer has been perfected by the ultimate expression of His filial love: obedience and worship demonstrated in His Death and Third-Day Resurrection. The Ascended Lord entered into Heaven, before the Father's throne, to plead Himself and His perfect Sacrifice as our great High Priest, our Heavenly Intercessor, our only Mediator and Advocate between man and God. Jesus Christ is our Priest and Victim, who eternally presents before the Father the complete work of His self-emptying and obedience on earth. Now, within the veil of heaven, before the presence and glory of God, Jesus presents healed, restored, divinised, glorified human nature, a human nature we share with the Lord by being incorporated into Him who is the worshipper and adorer of the Father, one Priest with one Sacrifice, one Altar, one Mission, one Prayer. The Father, by virtue of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, loves and receives all regenerate men as His sons, united to Jesus Christ, the consubstantial Son of Man and consubstantial Son of God. The God-Man represents God before man and man before God, and we are in Him, made one with Him by His coming to be one with us in His Incarnation.

Jesus Christ, the Risen and Ascended Lord, prays for you and me before the Father, and unites all of His Body the Church to Himself, thus pleading us with Him in His prayer. We become God's Family, God's Sons, united as Christ's Body to our divine Head in His eternal worship of the Father. 'God has raised us up with Christ and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus' (Ephesians 2.6). 'Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us' (Romans 8.34).