In His ascension Christ is the Mediator, the Executor, of the new covenant (Heb. 8:6). In Greek the same word is used for both covenant and testament. A covenant is an agreement with some promises to accomplish certain things for the covenanted people. It can be an agreement signed by two parties, in which the first party promises what he will do for the second party. A testament is a will. When a person prepares to leave this earth, he makes a will, bequeathing all of his possessions to people. A testament is a will with certain accomplished things bequeathed to the inheritor (see Hebrews 9:16, note 1, Recovery Version).
Christ is the Mediator, the Executor, of the new covenant to guarantee the effectiveness of the new covenant as its surety (Heb. 7:22). He enacted the new covenant by His death, but who is going to bear the responsibility to guarantee that whatever is in this covenant is effective? The resurrected and ascended Christ in the heavens guarantees the effectiveness of this covenant. By His death He enacted, formed, and made this covenant. Then in His resurrection and ascension, He is the guarantee, the surety, of this covenant to guarantee that whatever is mentioned in this covenant is effective.
He also executes the new testament as a will bequeathed to us by His death (Heb. 9:16). When the Lord died, He bequeathed a testament to us. The Bible is a testament to us. The believers in Christ have a New Testament. It is a will full of items. One item of this will is that he who believes in the Son shall have eternal life. Another item is that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Every page of our New Testament, our will, is full of items that Christ has bequeathed to us. Every item is a bequest. Christ acts as the Mediator, the Executor, of the new testament.
In His heavenly ministry, Christ is the High Priest in His humanity and by His divine life (Heb. 2:14, 17; 4:14-15; 7:16, 26). If Christ were merely God, He could not be our High Priest. His humanity qualifies Him to be such a High Priest because He can sympathize with us in the things related to our human life. He lived as a man for thirty-three and a half years, passing through all the human sufferings. Today He surely knows our environment and understands all the sufferings through which we are passing. As such a God-man, He can sympathize with us. His humanity qualifies Him for this.
Besides being a man, our High Priest is the very God. We may be able to sympathize with others’ sufferings as human beings, but what can we do for them? While Jesus was on earth, He sympathized with the suffering ones, but He was also able to help them because of His divine life. He resurrected some who were dead, telling them to rise up (Luke 7:14-15; John 11:43-44). In His word there was the omnipotent divine life. He can sympathize with us because He is a man, and He can do everything that is needed for us because He is God. His humanity qualifies Him, and His divinity empowers Him. He is a High Priest in His humanity and by His divine life.
As such a priest, He intercedes for His redeemed (Heb. 7:25b). Today He is praying for us, interceding for us. Whatever our God-man Intercessor prays for will be fulfilled. His intercession is based upon His redemption, which was accomplished by His death. He undertakes our case by interceding for us. He appears before God on our behalf, praying for us that we may be saved and brought fully into God’s eternal purpose.
He saves those who come forward to God through Him (Heb. 7:25a). Christ died for all mankind, but not everyone will be saved. This is because not everyone comes forward to God through Him. Although we may have been saved in the sense of being regenerated, we still need more saving. If we do not come forward, we cannot receive His saving. It may be raining, but a vessel cannot receive this rain if its opening is not toward the heavens. Many real Christians today do not receive Christ’s saving because they do not come forward to God. Christ’s saving in His priesthood will not reach the ones who will not come forward.
Hebrews 7:25 says that He saves to the uttermost those who come forward to God through Him. Sometimes we may be saved from our temper only to a certain extent and not to the uttermost. A sister may be about to lose her temper, so she turns to Christ and is stopped from losing her temper. She may be saved from her temper but not to the uttermost. If she were saved from her temper to the uttermost, she would be rejoicing in the Lord. For the Lord’s sake, we may forgive others’ mistakes. But to be saved from remembering others’ mistakes is to be saved to the uttermost. We may forgive others and yet still remember their mistakes. We may even tell others, “This brother offended me in a certain matter, but I have forgiven him.” This shows that we forgive, but we still remember the offense. The Bible tells us that when God forgives us, He forgets (Heb. 8:12). This is why some have said that to forgive is to forget. If our forgiving does not equal forgetting, we are not saved to the uttermost. C. H. Spurgeon said that often our forgiving can be likened to burying a dead dog while leaving its tail sticking out above the earth. After we forgive, we may invite people to see the “tail” of what we supposedly have forgiven. If we have really forgiven someone, we should also forget the offense. We have to be saved to the uttermost in our forgiving of others and from all our daily troubles. When we come forward to God through Christ, our High Priest, He saves us in the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10) and by the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2).