Jesus The Mediator

The name "Mediator" is used only 4 times in the New Testament and never in the Gospels.  These four passages are Hebrews 8:6; 9:5; 12:24; and 1 Timothy 2:4.  In Hebrews the word is not used in connection with His redeeming work, but describes Him as the founder of the new covenant.  The only passage which speaks of His atoning ministry is 1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, who gave himself a ransom for all." 

As the word mediator only finds its way into the Christian vocabulary later in the two writings it can be assumed that even though this concept was present the appropriate word was lacking.  Previously the other titles of "The High Priest" and "The Lamb" were preferred.  "Mediator" takes up into itself much that was already familiar to primitive Christianity, but in the New Testament begins its career as a theological word only in 1 Timothy 2:5.

From the beginning the title "The Mediator" has had a great and notable history which has persisted to the present day.  In the conception of the "One Mediator" between God and men, himself man" the Biblical foundation was laid upon which the subsequently "the two nature doctrine" was built.  As "The Mediator" Christ is representative Man and has that divine dignity and status which makes Him the sole Daysman between God and men.

Jesus The Mediator of the New Covenant

"The Mediator of the Better Covenant, established upon better promises . . . The Mediator of the New Covenant. . . Ye are come to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant." --HEB. viii. 6, ix. 15, xii. 24.

WE have here four titles given to our Lord Jesus in connection with the New Covenant. He is Himself called a Covenant. The union between God and man, which the Covenant aims at, was wrought out in Him personally; in Him the reconciliation between the human and Divine was perfectly effected; in Him His people find the Covenant with all its blessings; He is all that God has to give, and is the assurance that it is given. . . He is called the Messenger of the Covenant, because He came to establish and to proclaim it. . . He is the Surety of the Covenant, not only because He paid our debt, but as He is Surety to us for God, that God will fulfill His part; and Surety for us with God, that we will fulfill our part. . . And He is Mediator of the Covenant, because as the Covenant was established in His atoning blood, is administered and applied by Him, is entered upon alone by faith in Him, so it is experimentally known only through the power of His resurrection life, and His never-ceasing intercession. All these names point to the one truth, that in the New Covenant Christ is all in all.

The subject is so large that it would be impossible to enter upon all the various aspects of this precious truth. Christ's work in atonement and intercession, in His bestowal of pardon and the Holy Spirit, in His daily communication of grace and strength, are truths which lie at the very foundation of the faith of Christians. We need not speak of them here. What specially needs to be made clear to many is how, by faith in Christ as the Mediator of the New Covenant, we actually have access to and enter into the enjoyment of all its promised blessings.

We see, in studying the New Covenant, how all these blessings culminate in the one thing-- that the heart of man is to be put right, as the only possible way of his living in the favor of God, and God's love finding its satisfaction in him. That he is to receive a heart to fear God, to love God with all his strength, to obey God, and to keep all His statutes. All that Christ did and does has this for its aim; all the higher blessings of peace and fellowship flow from this. In this God's saving power and love find the highest proof of their triumph over sin. Nothing so reveals the grace of God, the power of Jesus Christ, the reality of salvation, the blessedness of the New Covenant, as the heart of a believer, where sin once abounded, with grace now abounding more exceedingly within it.

I do not know how I can better set forth the glory of our Blessed Lord Jesus as He accomplishes this, the real object of His redeeming work, and as He takes entire possession of the heart He has bought and won and cleansed as a dwelling for His Father, than by pointing out the place He takes, and the work He does, in the case of a soul who is being led out of the Old Covenant bondage with its failure, into the real experience of the promise and power of the New Covenant.  In thus studying the work of the Mediator in an individual, we may get a truer conception of the real glory and greatness of the work He actually accomplishes, than when we only think of the work He has done for all. It is in the application of the redemption here in the life of earth, where sin abounded, that its power is seen.

-except taken from Chapter 10 of THE TWO COVENANTS by Andrew Murray, pg 86-87

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