“Jesus” is such a short name for such an all-encompassing Person. Jesus is indispensable to the entire Creation. He is by Himself the basic nuts and bolts of existence, He is that which sustains the entire mélange of trillions of objects large and small. It is Jesus who makes the birds fly and the fish swim and gives mankind the ability to think and to ponder and to poke his inquisitive nose into questions of being that were once unanswerable. Some of them mankind will never know in this life. Jesus is everything a man or a universe could need because what we don’t know or don’t have that is necessary for our survival, He has in His all-sufficient Self. He wears a thousand hats and fills a gazillion offices.
To save space and time there is only one office we have arbitrarily chosen to consider here. It is just one out of the many Jesus fills flawlessly and effortlessly each moment of every day. The office is His position as Mediator between God and man. Coincidentally in Jesus’ office as Mediator He also fills another office: The Lamb of Sacrifice for all humanity, no mean office by itself. It is part and parcel of His role of Mediator.
Jesus the Mediator between God and Man
“Now a mediator cannot be of one (but must be of two parties whom he mediates between); but God is one” (not two: owing to His essential unity not admitting of an intervening party between Him and those to be blessed; but as the ONE Sovereign, His own representative, giving the blessing directly by promise to Abraham, and, in its fulfillment, to Christ, ‘the Seed,’ without new condition, and without a mediator such as the law had).” (Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown n.d.)
It is clear there can be no outside mediator between God and man due to God’s complete sovereignty and oneness. Who other than God can represent God? Therefore the Law, the instrument that requires a mediator in God’s dealings with man (e.g., Moses and the many high priests through the years), cannot be the means by which man may obtain salvation. Nor can it promote the very close personal relationship God wants between Himself and His creature. Many, many years before the promulgation of the Mosaic Law, God in His sovereignty dealt with Abraham by direct promise from Himself to Abraham. That was God’s preferred way of striking an agreement between Himself and His earthly subjects.
The Mosaic Law, in its need for a mediator (Moses, the priests, etc.) between God and man, was not the divine “norm”; it was applicable to the Jews only and served to pave the way for God’s preferred way of dealing with man, “face to face directly; by promise and grace.” God determined to deal with those who were of the seed of Abraham by faith as He did with Abraham before the Law was brought in: He would commune with them face to face directly.
Jesus, who we rightly suppose to be the mediator between God and man in this Day of Grace, was, as the scripture quoted above has declared, only ONE, uniting in Himself the nature of God and the nature of man. Jesus was the “love facet” of God and not another person. He was God come to earth as the true Son of God because God literally begot Him and dwelt in Him. Now there is only ONE God and ONE people of God without regard to race, nationality, culture or gender. As the Son of God, God was His own mediator between Himself and Man.
(The belief expressed above was derived in great part from A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown n.d., Commentary on Gal. 3.20)
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