The Wednesday Word ~ 21 February, 2024 A.D.

Jesus the Go-Between

by D.G. Miles McKee

 

1Timothy 2:5. ¨For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.¨Between the all-holy God and sin-filled man there stands the awesome sinless person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The genius of the gospel is that Christ is Himself both God and man and thus is a fitting and qualified mediator between us and the Almighty.In Christ, man encounters the all-holy God and in Christ, God encounters the perfect man.Jesus, therefore, because He is both God and man, is the only one exclusively qualified to be our mediator. Indeed, He must be both God and man to qualify as an effective representative of both parties. If He was merely man, He could not represent God: If God only, He could not represent man.So, what is a mediator? In disputes, people often call upon the services of a mediator to help settle arguments where opposing groups feel hard done by. There are offences on both sides and the mediator carefully guides the warring parties through the troubled waters till at last a settlement of peace is reached. Of course, this picture breaks down when applied to the dispute between God and man. We alone have caused the breach. We are the offending party. God is entirely innocent of any suggested crimes and utterly filled with integrity in His dealings with us. We are the errant faction.So, let’s be clear on this, Christ is the only qualified mediator because He is both God and man. He fully represents us to God and fully represents God to us. He is the meeting place between God and man. If we will not meet with God in Christ, then we will not meet with God at all until that final and dreadful Day of Judgment (Acts 17:31). If a man will not meet with God through the appointed mediator, then he will have no advocate or lawyer to defend him against the record of sin that was his life.I would remind you that our hope of salvation rests in Christ alone. If He does not save us, then we will not be saved. If His blood has not paid the ransom, then we are still sold under sin.The gospel has inseparably bound us to Christ, our Lord and Saviour. But what if He is, as some say, not God? If He is not God, we are in serious trouble! Let’s say, for example, that Jesus is the highest exalted angel there is, but not God, what then would happen to us if Jesus and God argued and fell out? What if they fought and God banished Jesus from Heaven? That would be disastrous for us because if He gets banished then we get banished! If He is unaccepted then we are unaccepted. If that shocks you then perhaps you need to revisit your understanding of the Gospel.Listen to the truth of this scripture:”God has for Christ’s sake forgiven us” (Ephesians 4:32).We are not forgiven because we turned over a new leaf and became good. We are forgiven for Christ’s sake alone. Also, it is, ‘in Christ Jesus’ we have redemption (Ephesians 1:7) and we are accepted only in Christ the Beloved One (Ephesians 1:6). We must remember that we are saved only by His work, done for us and apart from us. He represents us in Heaven and we are clothed in His righteousness alone. If His work for us is entirely wrong, then we are entirely wrong! It is Christ and His doing and dying alone that qualifies us to be in Glory.He guarantees our welcome and thus it is of a necessity that He is God.And that’s the Gospel Truth!

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