Jesus our Intercessor

In Heaven, then, we have Jesus as our King and our Friend, and it is as our Friend that he speaks for us to God our Father.

When we think of the nasty way in which we sometimes behave I don’t know how we could ever dare ask God for anything unless we had Jesus to ask it for us, and that is what he does.

When we pray to God we have Jesus to speak for us.  When we pray to God for something Jesus takes our prayer and asks it for us.  So although we address our prayers directly to God, you will often hear these words at the end of prayers: “through Jesus Christ Our Lord”. 

This ought to make us very careful what we pray for, because Jesus asks only for things which are good and right.  When we say, “through Jesus Christ Our Lord” it means that we must try to ask for the kind of things which God would want us to have.  Our prayers must be the sort of prayers which Jesus himself can take and pray himself.

Sometimes you will hear prayers ending with the words’ “We ask this in Jesus’ name’, which is another way of saying that we want our prayer to be in accordance with God’s will – “Thy will be done”.

So Jesus not only reigns in Heaven but he also ‘intercedes’ for us, that is, ‘comes between’ us and God and prays to God for what we need (Hebrews 7:25).