WEEK 34

THE MEDIATOR

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” (1 Tim 2:5 ESV).

The Father gave a people to the Son, and the Son voluntarily made Himself responsible to God for them. God the Father said He would grant forgiveness, reconciliation, restoration, new life, and a new nature to all who belonged to His Son. The condition was that the Son should come into the world and take human nature and the sin of mankind upon Himself to bear its punishment, stand for them, represent them, and suffer for them.¹

Because we were alienated from God by sin, we needed someone to come between God and ourselves and bring us back to him. We needed a mediator who could represent us to God and who could represent God to us. There is only one person who has ever fulfilled that requirement: ‘There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). In order to fulfill this role of mediator, Jesus had to be fully man as well as fully God.²

“The grand end of Christ’s mediation is the appeasing of God’s anger and the securing of His favor. He is the Advocate with the Father on behalf of His sinning people, pleading His righteousness and blood for them.”³

“The Lord Jesus is the anointed Mediator.”⁴ “Christ presents His people before God as those who are inestimably dear unto Him. He not only died for them, but lives for them (Rom 5:10). He died to render satisfaction to God on their behalf; He lives to keep them secure.”⁵

Christ sits at God’s right hand as no silent and inactive Spectator, but as an industrious and mighty Intercessor: to prevent the sins of His people making any breach, to preserve a perpetual amity between God and them. Thus we have ‘a Friend at court’ who spreads before the Father the odours of His merits as the all-sufficient answer to every indictment which Satan prefers against us. He requests not the Father to show mercy at the expense of justice.  There is no compromise of holiness in God’s pardoning His children, for Christ made full atonement for all their sins.⁶

[Christ’s] mediation on the throne is as real and indispensable as on the cross. [I]t engages all His time and powers [and] is His unceasing occupation at the right hand of the Father. And we participate not only in the benefits of this His work, but in the work itself.⁷

ENDNOTES

(34) I See a Man at GOD’s Right Hand

            1. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “God’s Great Plan of Redemption,” Free Grace Broadcaster 236 (summer 2016) : 3.

            2. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994) 541.

            3. A.W. Pink, 1 John, Part One 1:1-2:11 (Pensacola, FL: Chapel Library, 2005) 123.

            4. Charles Spurgeon, “God’s Purpose Consummated,” Free Grace Broadcaster 236 (summer 2016) : 27.

            5. A.W. Pink, 1 John, Part One 1:1-2:11 (Pensacola, FL: Chapel Library, 2005) 120.

            6. Pink, 120-122.

            7. Andrew Murray, “With Christ in the School of Prayer,” PC Study Bible by Biblesoft, Inc, 2003, twenty-sixth lesson.

            8. Horatius Bonar, “I See A Man at God’s Right Hand,” 1872 Hymnary, 20 February 2021 https://hymnary.org/text/i_see_a_man_at_gods_right_hand.

            9. “Oh the Valley,” music and melody, author unknown.