“Then who is this mediator—true God and at the same time a true and righteous human? Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given to us to completely deliver us and make us right with God.”
Direct conversation is best. On rare occasions mediation might be necessary for direct conversation to occur. Perhaps you have found yourself in a family quarrel in which no one would or could speak honestly with one another. You needed a mediator. Perhaps you have found yourself in a business arrangement in which no party, yourself included, could serve as an honest broker because each of you had a vested interest in your own outcome. Perhaps you have found yourself in a conflict in which you could not or would not work towards reconciliation because you no longer saw the situation, nor your own role in it, clearly. Sometimes a mediator is needed.
Now we have put ourselves in a situation in which a mediator is needed. By sin, we humans have put ourselves in an impossible situation with God. For our part, we not only have sinned, but we cannot stop sinning. It’s as if we sit down at the negotiating table with God and immediately make it our business to offend Him. We blame God for our own sin just like Adam and Eve in the garden. We sign a promise to stop sinning and then break it while the ink is still drying just like Israel at Sinai. We are far more confused and unreasonable than we can ever understand.
For God’s part, He can’t simply overlook these offenses. It isn’t because He is unreasonable. He can’t overlook our continued offenses because He is holy. He can’t overlook our continued offenses because He is just. We’ve seen that if He were any different, this life would quickly become a literal hell on earth.
So, we humans are unreasonable and unable to stop offending God and God cannot simply gloss over this situation and pretend that everything is fine. If God and humanity are ever to reconcile, a mediator will be needed. We don’t need a mediator to explain our side of the situation to God. We don’t need a mediator who can urge a compromise between ourselves and God. We need a mediator who can do justice to God’s holiness while doing justice to our sin. There is only one who can mediate these irreconcilable differences. Jesus the Son of God is the only possible mediator between us and God. That is the claim of this sermon: Jesus is the only possible mediator between us and God.
We see this in four points. First: the mediator’s incarnation. Second: the mediator’s atonement. Third: the mediator’s intercession. Fourth: the only mediator between God and humanity.
First: the mediator’s incarnation. Jesus is the only possible mediator between God and humanity because he is both. He is God. He is human. This has been the burden of our previous two studies. Jesus is able to reconcile God and humanity because he is both.
He is like us. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”
Jesus knows the temptations of the flesh just like you do. He knows the temptations of the world just like you do. Jesus knows the temptations of the devil just like you do. He stands with us on our side of the negotiating table in this regard. He knows what it is like to be born under the law. Like us, he has been called to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” He knows what it is like to live under authority. Like us, he knows the gravity of saying, “not my will but Yours be done.” He knows the terror of facing death for sin. He asked the same question that we ask regarding death, “if it be possible may this cup be taken from me.” He stands squarely with us in so much of what makes us human.
One of the reasons that people love to read the gospel accounts is that Jesus is so clearly one of us. His tears at the death of his friend, his hunger and thirst, his need to retreat from the busyness, his sorrow unto death—these make clear that he stands with us. We could not choose a better mediator for our side of the equation.
God could not choose a better mediator for His side of the equation. Jesus shares His holiness. He shares His unwillingness to gloss over sin. The Son of God has stood with the Father since the beginning. The Father and Son have always and will always be on the same page, which is why Jesus could say, “I and the Father are one.” If you want to know what God is like, you need only listen to what Jesus says in the gospels, watch how Jesus responds in the gospels, and consider Jesus’ choices in the gospels. He says, does, and chooses exactly as God would. God could not choose a better mediator for His side of the equation.
The Son of God is the only mediator who can do justice to both our side and God’s side of this discord in which we find ourselves. That is what the Catechism teaches, “who is this mediator—true God and at the same time a true and righteous human? Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given to us to completely deliver us and make us right with God.”
The incarnation should make it clear to you that God cares deeply about this enmity between us. He is eager to reconcile while at the same time being rightly angry at our sin. Now, you need to hold both sides of that tension in your mind. If you focus only on God’s wrath upon sin, you will see Him as inhospitable to sinners. If you focus only on God’s desire for reconciliation, you will see Him as a cosmic sap. He is both angered by sin and eager for reconciliation. This is why He sent our mediator. God loved the world in this way: He sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.
The incarnation should make it clear to you that God cares deeply about this enmity between us. This was God’s idea, not ours. Left to ourselves we would have tried to justify our sin and ourselves until the final judgment and then we would have continued to do so in hell throughout eternity. CS Lewis’ excellent book The Great Divorce drives this point home. One of this book’s characters came across Napoleon in hell. He reported that Napoleon spent all his time blaming everyone else for his troubles. ‘“It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.” Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it,’ Lewis writes. That is what man would do unless God made the first move. ‘It was my parents’ fault. It was my friends’ fault. It was God’s fault.’ You wouldn’t be able to stop.
The world likes to think that it is reasonable and desirous of good relations with God, but that is not the case. We are prejudiced, unreasonable creatures who self-justify constantly. God is the reasonable party here and the reason that we can have hope is that He desires to make matters right between Himself and us. He makes matters right through the incarnation. He makes matters right through the atonement. That is our second point: the mediator’s atonement.
The word ‘atonement’ was created from two other English words – ‘at’ and ‘one.’ Combine the words ‘at’ and ‘one’ and you have the word ‘atone.’ Atonement is the process by which two unreconciled parties, in this case us and God, are brought together as one—at-one-ment.
Atonement is an important theme throughout Scripture. There was a Day of Atonement under the Sinai Covenant. This was the day on which the high priest would offer sacrifices for the sins of the people and take the blood into the Holy of Holies. This day was a reminder that forgiveness is possible, but it comes at the cost of blood. Now those people understood that, as the author of Hebrews put it, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” The sacrificial system was a preparation. It helped the people make sense of the blood of Jesus.
Jesus is both the high priest who offers the sacrifice and he is the sacrifice which is offered; “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy,” as Hebrews puts it.
The cross is the place of atonement. The cross is the means by which humanity and God can be reconciled. Paul explained it this way to the Romans, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— He did it to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
The cross is the means by which justice is done to God’s holiness. His side of the equation is handled by the mediator. “[God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement] to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just.” Try to imagine a world in which God did not deal with sin as it deserves, be it your sin or someone else’s. In other words, try to imagine dealing with a God who is indifferent to holiness. He would be erratic. He would be capricious. You would never know what He expected or how He would respond. This is not a God who would deserve worship. The mediator does justice to God’s holiness.
The mediator does justice to our side of the equation. He suffers the consequence for our sin. He lives the life that we should have lived and he dies the death that we should have died. You appropriate this transfer of righteousness and sin by faith. “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.”
If you have faith in Christ crucified, you can know that your sins have been fully dealt with. If the death of the Son of God is insufficient to forgive your sins, there is nothing that is sufficient to forgive your sins. You must trust Christ.
“The way to preach sinners to Christ is to preach Christ to sinners,” as Spurgeon put it and that is what I am doing. I am making the work of the mediator plain to you because this is the only way that you and God can be reconciled. You aren’t reconciled to God because you’ve tried to be good. If that were the case, you would have a right to stand in judgment upon those whom you do not consider good and you have no such right. You aren’t reconciled to God because you grew up in a covenant family. If that were the case, what hope is there for someone who grew up differently from you? Do not put your faith in anything other than Christ crucified.
We all make a god out of whatever justifies us. If it is something other than Christ that justifies you to yourself, then you have made a god out of something other than Christ. Please know that whatever idol you have created will not justify you on the final day. You must trust Christ and Christ alone. “Not the labor of my hands can fulfill Thy law’s demands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone.”
The mediator has made atonement between humanity and God by his blood. He also intercedes for his people. That is our third point: the mediator’s intercession. Jesus’ work of mediation does not finish with the cross. He continues to stand with us in prayer. This is what is called the intercession of Christ. Hebrews describes it this way, “[Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
Jesus continues to stand with you today just as certainly as he stood with you when he hung on the cross. He knows what you need. He knows what you need better than you do. You didn’t know that your deepest need was grace. He did and he did what was necessary to secure it. You probably don’t know what your deepest need is today. He does and he does what is necessary to secure it.
The intercession of Christ is a sign of the love of God. Jesus isn’t interceding on our behalf with God because God is angry with us. Jesus is interceding on our behalf because God is pleased with us as His children. Think of it in terms of embassies. Nations at war do not have embassies with one another. Nations at peace have embassies with one another. The embassy is a sign of peace with another. Jesus’ intercession is a sign that we are at peace with God just like an active embassy is a sign that nations are at peace with one another. Jesus’ intercession should give you confidence. It is a sign that God is for you and not against you.
Jesus’ intercession is the reason that nothing can separate you from the love of God.
It is the reason that neither trouble nor hardship nor persecution nor famine nor nakedness nor danger nor sword can separate you from the love of God. The ground of those promises in Romans 8 is found in the words, “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”
Please don’t limit Jesus’ mediatory work to the past. It is happening right now. “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room,” said M’Cheyne, “I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” It will continue to happen until the new creation when it is clear and obvious that nothing separates you from the love of God.
The mediator between God and humanity took on flesh to fulfill his role. He died to fulfill his role. He intercedes to fulfill his role. He is the only one who can fulfill this role. We see that in our final point: the only mediator between God and humanity.
We have seen that Jesus is uniquely qualified to serve as the mediator between God and humanity because he is both. The fact that he is uniquely qualified means that there is no other mediator; “there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.”
This means that unless you are securing the benefits of this mediator, you are at enmity with God. God did not send His Son to simply prove that He loved the world; rather, “He loved the world in this way: He sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
If you do not believe in Jesus, you are, in fact, rejecting the only mediator between yourself and God. The man who rejects Jesus rejects God’s invitation of peace. Imagine that two nations are at war, and one desires peace. This nation sends an ambassador to make peace. That ambassador is rejected and killed. That is the story recorded in the gospels.
Rejecting Jesus necessarily entails a rejection of God because Jesus is God. It is impossible to be anti-Jesus but pro-God or pro-Jesus but anti-God. To know one is to know the other. To love one is to love the other. To reject one is to reject the other.
If you are rejecting Jesus, please consider why. I’m sure that you are not rejecting him because of the way in which he treated people. Are you rejecting him because of his teaching? I would think that you want the world to operate along the lines of the Sermon on the Mount. Are you rejecting him because he is too much like you? Are you rejecting him because he is too different from you? Or more likely, are you rejecting him because you’ve never really considered him in any serious way? Or perhaps you are rejecting him because you love some sort of evil. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”
Why are you rejecting Jesus? He is clearly willing to serve as a mediator between you and God. The cross makes that abundantly obvious. I beg you not to reject him. How will you explain it on the final day? What reasons will you be able to give as to why you rejected the offer of salvation?
If you have secured his services as a mediator, remember that he is the only mediator. In other words, don’t look for any other justification. Don’t try to make yourself right with God if you are already right with God. Far too often Christians to try secure what has already been secured on their behalf. Jesus meant what he said when he said, “it is finished.”
Don’t add to what Jesus has done. Imagine that you are a peace envoy who is trained in international relations. You are the only one who is able to secure peace between two groups. You set about your task and after painstaking work you succeed. You finalize the peace plan only to find a few days later that one side of the conflict has been tampering with the treaty. Now if you try to add to Jesus’ work to make yourself right with God it is you who are tempering with the trusty. Don’t try to make yourself right with God if Jesus has already made you right with God.
Don’t doubt the sufficiency of what Jesus has done. Far too many Christians are looking for something that they already have. They are looking for assurance by way of experience or a feeling; they don’t recognize that they already have all they need by virtue of faith in Christ. Assurance is about the sufficiency of the mediator’s work not the sufficiency of your faith.
I hope it is clear that the directions remain the same whether you are a Christian or not. You need to trust Christ. He is your only hope. If you do not trust Christ, you must. If you do trust Christ, trust Christ. Don’t find your security in anything else. He is the only one who could do what must be done and he has done it. “It is finished.” Amen.