THE MEDIATOR
Jim R Walkinshaw
Job 8: 20; 9: 1-3, 32, 33
1 Timothy 2: 5, 6; 1: 15
Romans 8: 22-27
It may be evident from the hymn (No 275) and the scriptures read that I have felt led to say a word as to the Mediator. What does the Mediator mean? I suppose in men’s affairs it is a person that takes up the cause of a person who may be in difficulty, or has done something wrong, or feels that he is due some retribution, and he pleads his cause with one who perhaps has a certain hold or influence over him or over the other party.
I read in Job because I think Job illustrates for us the situation of a man who is having to do with God and realises that, of himself, the situation is hopeless. So he raises a question here, “how can man be just with God?”. His friend had said earlier, “God will not cast off a perfect man”, and at the same time he said, “neither will he take evil-doers by the hand”. How sobering that is if you think about it! What that suggested to Job was that if Job could find a way of being perfect and doing what was right all the time, then God would take account of him, but at the same time, if he was an evil-doer, if he was a sinner, then God would have nothing to do with him except perhaps by way of judgment. And Job was feeling that because he was going through things. I think that illustrates the situation of every man, woman and child without God. Scripture says, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, Rom 3: 23. That is you; that is me; that is every man, woman and child on the face of this earth: “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”.
And the question is raised, as Job raises it here, “how can man be just with God?”. Have you had some sense in your experience of the hopelessness of your situation if you came face to face with God? That is a very sobering matter. There are men - and when I say men I include women, and children who have reached the age of responsibility - who would seek to pretend that God does not exist, or at least do “not think good to have God in their knowledge”, Rom 1: 28. Have you ever thought about what it would be if you came face to face with God? That time will come. We must “all be placed before the judgment-seat of God”, Rom 14: 10. How sobering that is! Job asks, “how can man be just with God?”. He said, “If he shall choose to strive with him, he cannot answer him one thing of a thousand”. What could any of us say to God in relation to the situation we are in? What Job came to realise was that what he required was an umpire or a mediator. He says, “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him; that we should come together in judgment”. Then, as feeling the awfulness of the situation he was in, he says, “There is not an umpire between us, who should lay his hand upon us both”. What a terrible situation to be in! What a hopeless state man is in through sin, and Job said there was “not an umpire”, not a ’mediator’, “who should lay his hand upon us both”. He wanted somebody who could take up his cause before the eye of a mighty God, a God who could not look upon iniquity (Hab 1:13), a God who would judge sin in all its awfulness.
The wonder of the gospel is that there is One, as Paul asserts in this verse that we have read in Timothy. Earlier than where we have read, he says, God “desires that all men should be saved”, v 4. You might say to me, ‘Well, in view of what you have said, how can that be?’. The wonder of the gospel is that there is a Mediator. As our hymn has suggested:
One Mediator, Christ, of God and men,
Who on the tree once died, and rose again.
It is a wonderful matter that there is a Mediator, that is, One who can take up your cause before God and One who has the answer too. Paul says, “For God is one, and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus”. Think about that: “the man Christ Jesus”! We were occupied with Him in the reading, were we not? What a glorious Man the Lord Jesus is, One who in His Person is God, One who in His Person subsists before all, One who was “In the beginning”, as it says in those verses we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, John 1: 1. How great is the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ! And yet, as this scripture suggests, the Mediator is a man, “the man Christ Jesus”. That is the wonder of the gospel, that there was a blessed Man, One who in His Person was God, prepared to come into this scene as a Man and to take up your cause and mine, to take upon Himself all that stood out against you and me before the eye of a holy God, and to settle that matter completely to God’s eternal and entire satisfaction.
What a wonderful thing that is that dawns on a soul that is troubled by sin, is troubled by conscience, is troubled by its history: to know that there is one blessed Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour. We might say the only Saviour, the only Name. Scripture tells us, “for neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved” ( Acts 4: 12), the only Saviour, but that Saviour is available in the gospel, and God desires that, through faith in Him and what He has done, all men should be saved. That is God’s desire. That is why the gospel is being preached tonight, and I am sure it is being preached in countless places throughout this earth, and God’s desire is that you and I and all men should come to know the Saviour Jesus, should know His precious service as Mediator, One who is able to take up your cause and mine before the eye of God and settle it completely.
So, it says here, “the man Christ Jesus”. That would speak to our hearts of what it meant to Him to go that way, coming into this world as a blessed lowly Man. John says, “And the Word became flesh”, John 1: 14. Paul says He “emptied himself … and having been found in figure as a man, humbled himself”, Phil 2: 7, 8. The gospels, as we read through them, would show what that pathway was, a pathway of perfection, a pathway of infinite pleasure to God, a pathway that did not deviate at all from the will of God and what was in view for Him. Indeed, He says prophetically - we were reminded of that where we were this morning - “thou hast prepared me a body … Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”, Heb 10: 5, 7. That is the Man that is spoken of here, the Mediator, “the man Christ Jesus”. Let our hearts get some impression of the wonder of that pathway, the wonder of what it meant to Jesus to come into this scene as Man, come in as a lowly Babe at Bethlehem’s manger! The story is well-known, even to the youngest, but let us see that the reason the Lord Jesus came in was that He might take upon Himself what was outstanding before a holy and sin-hating God, and He went that way in absolute and infinite perfection.
So, to draw from that scripture in Philippians further, it says that He was “found in figure as a man” and He “humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death”, v 8. How affecting that is! That is what it meant for the Saviour. If He was to be preached in the gospel, proclaimed as a Mediator, proclaimed as a Saviour, it meant that that blessed One had to go that way of suffering, had to tread that pathway in obedience to the will of His God and Father, a pathway that led to death. He is the One who came here to die. How touching that is as we see the pathway of Jesus that led to the cross! As the apostle says, “becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”. If you read through the epistle to the Galatians, you will find another reference to the Mediator there. It comes after a reference to the fact that Christ became a curse for us, a reference, I think, to the way in which the Lord Jesus went. It says “Christ … having become a curse for us, (for it is written, Cursed is every one hanged upon a tree)”. How touching the way that the Lord Jesus went that this should be so. The scripture says here, “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”. Think of what that meant to the Saviour, taken by wicked hands and nailed to the cross, there the object of man’s rejection, man’s ridicule, man’s cruelty and hatred, poured out upon the head of the Saviour there. Think of what that meant to the Saviour! He endured it all; He endured it patiently. Indeed, only love flowed from Him. Hanging on the cross, He says, “Father, forgive them”, Luke 23: 34. Of those very persons that were inflicting such cruelty on Him, He says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. There was One who was prepared to give Himself “a ransom for all”.
Another scripture in Hebrews speaks of Him offering Himself “spotless to God”, chap 9: 14. The One that hung there on the tree as bearing the curse was One who had not sinned, One that was sin apart, “Him who knew not sin”, 2 Cor 5: 21. There was one there that recognised it. There was one man who was crucified next to Him - you can read it in Luke’s gospel chapter 23 - who “spoke insultingly to him”, v 39. He said, “Art not thou the Christ? save thyself and us”; that man got no answer. There was another man who rebuked him, a man that was hanging there for the same or similar sins as the other. He said to the other, “We indeed justly, for we receive the just recompense of what we have done; but”, turning to Jesus, he says, “this man has done nothing amiss”. Beside him was One who had done nothing amiss, One who was giving Himself, as this scripture says, “a ransom for all”. At the sixth hour there came darkness, “darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour” (Luke 23: 44), three hours of darkness that could not be penetrated. In another place, it says that God “made him sin for us” (2 Cor 5: 21); and the wrath of God, the judgment of God, was poured out upon His head. But here we have He “gave himself a ransom for all” and in those three hours of darkness the question of sin and sins was worked out before the eye of a holy and righteous God and, as made sin on the cross, the Saviour was forsaken of God. He says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matt 27: 46. That cry received no answer at that point. The blessed, sinless One was made sin, and God poured out His judgment upon His head. The judgment that Jesus bore was exhausted; that judgment was spent upon the head of Jesus; you can know if you will believe that the judgment that was due to you because of your sins was borne by Jesus in His body on the tree in those three hours of awful darkness. That judgment was exhausted by the Saviour and, at the end of those three hours of darkness, He delivered up His spirit; He went into death. He went into death that the penalty of sin might be paid; the penalty of sin is death, and, as the scripture tells us, death rests upon every man. The truth of that is evident all around, even more so in the days in which we are. But that penalty was undergone by Jesus. He went into death that the penalty might be paid, and the wonder of the gospel is that God was satisfied with that work. He was satisfied by what was accomplished there on the cross, and He raised Him from among the dead the third day; and He has set Him down at His right hand in glory, a Prince and a Saviour, One who is able to save, who gave God the basis “to save completely those who approach by him to God”, Heb 7: 25.
Do you have your faith and trust in Jesus? The scripture says He “gave himself a ransom for all”. I love that. It gives confidence in preaching the gospel because you can say that the Saviour is available to all. The ransom price has been paid. The question of sin and sins has been settled before the eye of a holy and sin-hating God, and the evidence of that is that God has raised Him from among the dead and has set Him at His right hand and is proclaiming now, through the gospel, that Jesus is the Saviour. How wonderful!
Have you laid hold on that? There is one here who did. Paul says in that verse we have read, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first”. What an appreciation he had of the work of Jesus! What an appreciation he had of that precious blood, which was shed on the cross, a witness to that completed work! We might turn to the Old Testament to see the blood that was put on the mercy-seat. Indeed, it refers to it in Romans; God is offering righteousness to all through faith in Christ’s blood: “God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”, chap 3: 25. The blood is on the mercy-seat, meaning that God has been propitiated in relation to sin. He has given “himself a ransom for all”, and the blood is there, available before God, and it satisfies God in relation to the whole question of sin and sins. Then, as we are often reminded, the blood is sprinkled before the mercy-seat; that is, it is available for you and me to take account of, Lev 16: 14. As John says in his epistle, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1: 7), and as it says here, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first”.
The first question that might arise in the gospel is whether you realise you are a sinner? There was a man who heard the gospel once many years ago and we asked him how he got on, and he said, ‘Well, I thought it was a very good word that the preacher gave, but what really upset me was when he said that I was a sinner’. He said, ‘I am not a sinner. I do not do anything wrong. I live a very good life here’. Do you know, that man was deluded? I trust that in God’s ways he came to realise that he was a sinner, a sinner before God, lost and undone. But the wonder of the gospel is that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”, and if you have a realisation that you are a sinner, the gospel would say He is available to you as a Saviour, One who is a Mediator, can put His hand, as it were, on God, and put His hand on you, and you can know salvation and you can be brought in that way right into the very presence of God Himself. Paul says, “Faithful is the word, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. It makes it very personal. As we have said, He is a Mediator; He is set forth by God as a Saviour; and He “gave himself a ransom for all”; that is, that the work that Jesus did there is available to all and if every man, woman and child on the face of this earth put their faith in that work, there is sufficient there to save everyone.
But then, the apostle brings it down closer, more individual. He says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first”. Can you say that Jesus has saved you from your sins? Can you say that you are sheltering under His precious blood? Have you some sense in your soul of what it would be to face God in your sins? Yet the wondrous fact is that there is a Saviour available in the blessed Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is He your Saviour? That is a matter that has to be faced up to in the gospel. How wonderful if you can say He shed His precious blood for me! The hymn-writer says,
Precious, precious blood of Jesus,
Shed on Calvary!
Shed for rebels, shed for sinners,
Shed for me
. (Hymn 167).
Can you say that? How wonderful if everyone who hears the gospel tonight can say that, ‘Shed for me’!
So, I just close with this reference in Romans. It is a wonderful matter that those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus and know Him as Saviour can know the power and the presence and the help of the blessed Holy Spirit. How necessary that is in this world in which we are! The apostle speaks of it; he says, “For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now. And not only that, but even we ourselves … groan in ourselves, awaiting adoption”. That is, awaiting sonship, awaiting the time when the Lord Jesus will come to take all His own, and we will be taken to heaven to be forever with the Lord. What a wonderful hope the believer in Jesus has! One who knows Him as Saviour, one who owns Him as Lord has this wonderful hope that He is soon coming to take us to be with Himself. You might say, what about the meantime? In the meantime, the Holy Spirit is available. So “the whole creation groans together and travails together in pain until now”. How true that is! And as the days go on, you see increasingly how real these matters are, but the wonderful fact is that the Holy Spirit is available and, as it says here, “joins also its help to our weakness”. What power is available as we take advantage of the help and the service and the strength that the Holy Spirit provides!
I was asked a question earlier in relation to the Spirit. Is the Spirit a mediator? I said, ‘The Spirit is not the mediator. There is one Mediator, “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”’, but what I should have said further on from that is that the Spirit’s mediatorial service is very real. The Spirit acts as a mediator. It says here “the Spirit joins also its help to our weakness; … makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered … intercedes for saints according to God”. What power and help is available in the mediatorial service of the blessed Holy Spirit, One who is able to strengthen and sustain us here, One who is able to keep us in spite of all that has come in and is still coming in, able to keep us in the joy of our salvation. Do our hearts rejoice when the Lord Jesus is spoken of as a Saviour, when we realise He has given “himself a ransom for all”, and that you have taken advantage of that yourself? He has come to save sinners “of whom I am the first”. And then, as laying claim to what is available in the redemptive power of His precious blood, you may know too what it is to have the gift of the Holy Spirit, come from God as a result of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus there. It says early in Acts, “he has poured out this which ye behold and hear”, chap 2: 33. The Spirit has come as a consequence of the Lord Jesus exalted there on high.
May our hearts rejoice in these things, get a fresh sense of the wonder of the fact that there is a Mediator! Job struggled with that. Of course, he came through in his experience with God. How wonderful that is! But how wonderful in our dispensation to know that there is a Mediator, “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”, but then to put ourselves amongst those who accept Him. Again, the scripture says elsewhere, ”he bore the sin of many”, Isa 53: 12. Would that everyone hearing the gospel tonight were amongst the “many” who have their faith and trust in His precious blood, owning Him as Saviour and Lord, knowing the power of the Holy Spirit, keeping these things bright in our heart, looking on to that soon coming day when He will come to take all His own to be with Himself!
May we remain in the joy of it for His Name’s sake and God’s glory!
Maidstone
11th November 2020