Christ, the Mediator

Sometimes we miss things because we are so used to the "well, that's just the way things are" syndrome. Christ was not the only mediator between God and man. There was Adam whose disobedience plunged us all into sin. As a mediator and the federal head of all mankind he failed in his obedience. As a result God placed a curse on us all. Apart from the Lord Jesus, there was only one other mediator (so far as we can tell) whose obedience would affect the whole human race.

That was Noah. He was the chosen one to save the whole human race from extinction. If there was anyone who might be looked on as a mediator between God and man, who might set the stage (as it were) for a return to obedience it was Noah. His example of obedience would lead his children and through them (since they were the only ones left) the whole of mankind back to obeying God. As obedient servants, they could again be called the children of God in truth. Yet, after the flood, whose effects were so terrifying that it could never be erased from memory, Noah was found drunk. We might find many mitigating circumstances for his state but he allowed his worldly appetites to interfere with his serving God.

Though he became a mediator for only a part of the human race, the next was Abraham, the friend of God. He left everything to follow God's command. He, who had such close communion with God that he could ask for proof that God would do as he had said and be heeded. Yet, when it came to trusting God through a famine he lied. Knowing God is a God of truth, he had less regard for the truth than for the preservation of his own life. God demonstrated the falsehood of that anxiety by requiring the death of his promised seed, and then providing an alternative in Isaac's place. The Bible records sin in the lives of the patriarchs - Isaac and Jacob - as well so we might see sin even affected the way they represented God to their own children.

Moses, the great deliverer of the people of God, brought them out of the land of bondage and should have led them into the Promised Land. He was the mediator of the Covenant made at Sinai which formed the people into a nation. When it came to providing water for them according to God's command however, he allowed his frustration to so overcome him that he sinned by striking the rock. For that he was denied the right to lead the people into the Land of Promise (even though he was allowed to see it from afar off).

David, the next great type of Jesus, was a man after God's own heart. He established the Law of God and governed the people in righteousness. He was prepared to trust God even in the face of the rebellion of his own son. He counted his throne as something he had from God and was willing to have God take it from him or restore it to him. Yet, he used that same power to destroy a faithful man in order to have his wife as his own.

Time would fail if we were to speak of others, leaders of the people, who walked close to God and yet fell into sin. They represented the people to God and him to the people and, as mediators, could have been expected to be faithful in obedience. In every case their obedience fell short of that which should have been expected in a mediator.

Then came the final mediator. God intervened because man had failed to obey. God became man in order to fulfill the Law of God and save the world. Christ's perfect obedience stands in complete contrast to the obedience of any mediator before him. He was tested directly by Satan himself, then indirectly by his agents and even by those of his intimate circle of followers yet never fell into sin. This perfect obedience qualified him to act also as the propitiation for our sins and establish the new people of God.

One major difference between the Old Covenant and that of the New is our obedience rests on his perfect obedience. If Noah, Abraham and the others had been able to mediate without sin their followers would still have had to obey the Law perfectly as well. Their mediator's obedience could not take away the tendency to sin. Nor, since the mediators were sinners, could they lay up a treasure from which thier followers' sins could be paid (as, for example, the Catholic Church claims has been done by the obedience of the saints). When we, as those in Christ, sin we have an advocate who pleads our case for us and pays (rather has paid) the penalty so we can be set free. In his complete, sinless, obedience Christ's mediatorship is vastly superior to all who have gone before him.

For the article which sparked this thinking read J Gresham Machen's talks on the Atonement.