How Do We Know Jesus Is Our Mediator? BY William Boekestein for Core Christianity
(16) Q. Why must the mediator be a true and righteous man?
A. Because God’s justice requires that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for its sin; but a sinner could never pay for others.(17) Q. Why must he also be true God?
A. So that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear in his humanity the weight of God’s wrath, and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.(18) Q. Then who is this mediator—true God and at the same time a true and righteous man?
A. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given to us for our complete deliverance and righteousness.(19) Q. How do you come to know this?
A. The holy gospel tells me. God himself began to reveal the gospel already in Paradise; later, he proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and finally he fulfilled it through his own beloved Son.
The Bible is a like a mystery book. Paul uses the word mystery over a dozen times to describe how the gospel reveals Jesus. Here is the enigma: A just and merciful God made people to glorify and enjoy him. But they chose to rebel and make themselves and their posterity eternally miserable. God is just so he can’t dismiss sin. How then can we be saved?
That “mystery” has been “kept secret for long ages.” But it has “now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations” (Rom. 16:25). The solving of the mystery is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). But salvation is no less mysterious than the problem it solves. “Great indeed is the mystery of godliness: [God] was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). The gospel is the answer to the seemingly unsolvable human problem. In his beloved Son God has provided a mediator, one who stands in our place to receive the penalty we deserve. But how can we be certain that this is so?
How Do We Know Jesus Is Our Mediator?
Simple answer: the gospel! The gospel counters the law’s condemnation. “How do you come to know your misery? The law of God tells me” (QA 3). The law says, “Do this and you will live.” And that requirement has always been reasonable. God made humanity able to do what he required. But that way of life has become a way of death for us because we don’t obey God.
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The gospel’s message of hope about a mediator who will “earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life” has been unfolding since the fall. It is the theme of good news running through the whole Bible.
