“ONE MEDIATOR”
The word “Mediator” is a familiar word in our English vocabulary. We most commonly associate the word with the arbitration of labor and management disputes. It is also a familiar term to Bible students who find it used in the Bible (Gal. 3:20; 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24) with much the same meaning as is given to the word today.
A MEDIATOR DEFINED
A mediator is a middle man, an arbitrator, a go-between, who umpires between two warring parties in view of uniting the parties in peace. A mediator is a peacemaker!
A MEDIATOR NEEDED
Man is at war with himself, the whole creation, his fellow man and with God! God is the offended party and man is the offending party.
In the oldest book in the Bible, the Book of Job, Job correctly sees the problem! God is holy, sovereign, mighty and “wise in heart” (Job 9:4-12), and man is unclean, condemned, and “perverse” (Job 9:20, 30-31) and his days are swiftly fleeing away (Job 9:25-26). He must soon meet his Maker! “How should a man be just before God,” he cries (Job 9:2)? He reasons God “is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any Mediator betwixt us, that might lay his hands upon us both” (Job 9:32-33). Job says in effect, “I need a Mediator!”
In Job’s day, there was a legal advisor or pleader who would appear daily at the gates of the city to arbitrate in any dispute. So, also, sinful mankind needs a Mediator before a Holy God.
A MEDIATOR ILLUSTRATED
In the days of Moses, when God’s voice was very terrible in the giving of the Law, the people could not bear it; so Moses came in and as a “mediator” spoke on behalf of God to men. Then, when the presence of God was so great and glorious on the mountain that men could not approach or endure the great sight, again Moses came in and as a “mediator” spoke on behalf of men to God (Deut. 5:4-5; Gal. 3:19-20). Aaron is also an illustration of mediatorship (Num. 16:48).
A MEDATOR PROMISED
God promised that a prophet like unto Moses would come (Deut. 18:15-18). Only as Moses represented the Old Covenant, a “shadow of heavenly things,” and an inferior mediatorship (Heb. 8:5), so Jesus Christ is the Mediator of a better covenant and promises (Heb. 8:6-8; 9:12-15; 12:24). Jesus Christ is the “new and living way” into God’s presence (Heb. 10:19-20; Jn. 14:6; Eph. 2:18). This mediatorship of Christ was planned in eternity past (Prov. 8:23; 1 Cor. 5:18-19; 1 Pet. 1:19-21).
A MEDIATOR IS COME
There is but “One Mediator between God and men; the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). His mediatorship is two-fold: (1) A Mediatorship of intercession for the believer in time (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25; 1 Jn. 2:1); and (2) A Mediatorship of reconciliation for the believing sinner (Eph. 2:13-18; Col. 1:20-22).
Reconciliation presupposes a former state of friendship (Gen. 1:28-2:25), BUT sin separated man from God; the fellowship was broken and man died spiritually (Isa. 59:2). The human race is in Adam (1 Cor. 15:22) and under the condemnatory sentence of death (Rom. 3:23). Man is helpless to save himself. HE MUST HAVE A MAN TO STAND IN THE MIDDLE—someone who can “lay His hands upon both.” He must be able to satisfy both the justice of God and to die in the sinner’s place. CHRIST JESUS IS THE MEDIATOR Who brings God and man together. Christ satisfies the Father for the offense committed. He appeases injured justice. He makes “righteousness and peace to kiss” (Ps. 85:10, cf. Rom. 3:25; 1 Jn. 2:2; 4:10).
A MEDIATOR QUALIFIED
Jesus Christ is qualified to be our Mediator because He has both the nature of God (Jn. 1:1-3) and of man (Jn. 1:14). He can espouse both causes. He can lay His hand on the head of God because He is God! He can lay His hand on the head of man because He is man! He is Emmanuel: God with us! Such condescending grace, that Jesus Christ “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made of Himself no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man: And being in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).