ONE GOD AND ONE MEDIATOR.

ONE GOD AND ONE MEDIATOR.
The great truth stamped upon the opening verses of 1 Timothy 2:1-15 is that God is every man's sincere well-wisher. He desires all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth. It is a lie of Satan that some persons come into the world marked out beforehand for eternal ruin. If this were true, every Gospel overture in Holy Scripture would be but a mockery and a sham. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11).
Christians are responsible to take their character from God Himself. This is why the apostle urges that prayer be made for all men, and for rulers in particular. If God wishes well to all, Christians must seek the blessing of all in like manner. In this connection, two weighty truths are affirmed. "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus." It is humiliating indeed that God should need to insist upon the reality and the uniqueness of His being with the creatures of His own hand. But ever since the deluge men have been guilty of devising gods of their own, to their folly and ruin. The nation of Israel was called out into a position of separation from all others to bear testimony to the unity of the God-head. In Deuteronomy 6:4 we have Moses saying to them: "Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." But Israel miserably failed as a witness for God, copying the ways of the Gentiles, and becoming as idolatrous as they. This has resulted in the severest discipline for that unfaithful people.
The unity of the God-head was thus the distinguishing testimony of the Mosaic age; to this is added, now that Christ has come, the unity of the Mediator. It is not enough for sinful men to know that there is one God; the heart yearns to understand how that God may be reached and known. Job in his distress said: "He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgement. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both" (Job 9:32-33). Realising that man cannot bridge the gulf that sin has made between himself and God, Job felt the need of a mediator. Christ alone meets this need. From God-head glory He stooped to manhood in His ineffable grace. This enables Him to "lay His hand upon us both." But His incarnation could not of itself remove one single sin. "The extension of the benefits of Christ's incarnation," of which men of the Ritualistic sort speak so sagely, is nothing but meaningless jargon. Remission is impossible apart from blood. Accordingly the apostle adds: "Who gave Himself a ransom for all." The manger was a necessary step to the cross, where the foundation of all blessing for the guilty children of men was by Him well and securely laid. He is now risen and exalted. "Christ Jesus" is His resurrection title. His resurrection is the public proof before all the universe that every claim of the throne of God has been met by His atoning sacrifice. When Moses, the mediator of the old covenant, went up to God after the affair of the golden calf, he said to the people: "You have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin" (Exodus 32:30). No such language of uncertainty could rest for one moment upon the lips of the Lord Jesus. The cross of Calvary admits of no "peradventure." In this world He made atonement, full, ample and perfect; and then, in the power of it, He went up to God on behalf of all His people.
The Mediator is one. No other dare we profanely put alongside Him, be it Mary, saints, or apostles. This would be to His public dishonour, and to the injury of our own souls. Christendom has been as grossly unfaithful in relation to the truth of the unity of the Mediator as ever Israel was in relation to the truth of the unity of the God-head. This sin God will not fail to judge when His present long-suffering is exhausted. Meanwhile, Christ may be universally proclaimed. He is Mediator, not between God and Israel, as Moses in the past, but between God and men. He gave Himself a ransom, not for a single nation, but for all. For this reason, Paul the apostle, once the most conservative of Jews, loved to describe himself "a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth."