The offices of Christ

Christ Our Mediator

Jesus Christ is our Mediator because he stands between God and humanity to bring the two together and make peace. A mediator is a go-between who reconciles parties that are estranged. Because Jesus is at once truly God and truly man, he alone can lay his hand on both and join them. There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;1 Timothy 2:5 (KJV)

What it means to call Christ our Mediator

A mediator stands in the middle. When two parties are at odds and cannot come together, a mediator goes between them to make peace, representing each to the other and reconciling them. Scripture tells us that sin has put God and humanity at odds, that our iniquities have separated between us and our God, and that we cannot cross that distance on our own. We need someone to stand in the gap.

To confess Jesus as Mediator is to say that he is that someone, the one and only bridge between heaven and earth. Paul states it plainly: There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Not many mediators but one, for there is only one who can do the work. He does not merely arrange a meeting between two strangers; he brings God and man together in his own person and reconciles them by what he has done.

The mediating office gathers up the other three. As Prophet Jesus brings God's word down to us, as Priest he carries our need up to God, and as King he rules the covenant of peace he has made. The Mediator is Prophet, Priest, and King doing the one work of reconciliation, standing between the holy God and sinful humanity to make the two one.

The Old Testament need for a go-between

From the beginning the Scriptures show both the distance between God and sinners and the longing for someone to bridge it. When God came down on Mount Sinai in fire and cloud, the people were terrified and begged that God would not speak to them directly, and Moses stood between them and God as a go-between, carrying God's word to the people and the people's fear back to God. Moses became a picture of the Mediator to come.

The whole law was given through such go-betweens. Moses mediated the covenant; the priests mediated the sacrifices; the high priest alone could enter the Most Holy Place, and only with blood, and only once a year. A thick veil hung in the temple to keep sinners out of the immediate presence of God. Every part of this arrangement declared a hard truth: a holy God and an unholy people cannot simply come together, and a mediator is needed.

Yet the mediators of the old covenant were themselves sinners and could not finally close the gap. Job cried out for a daysman, an umpire, who could lay his hand upon both God and man and bring them together, and confessed he had none. The people needed a mediator who belonged fully to both sides, who could represent God to man because he was God, and man to God because he was man. No mere prophet or priest or king could be that. They were all waiting for one who had not yet come.

How Jesus mediates perfectly between God and man

Jesus is the Mediator the old covenant could only foreshadow, and he is able to reconcile God and man because he is himself both God and man. As the eternal Son he is fully God, of one being with the Father. In the incarnation he became fully man, the man Christ Jesus, taking our nature to himself without ceasing to be God. In his one person heaven and earth are already joined, and so he can lay his hand on both and bring them together.

He mediates not by words alone but by sacrifice. Paul says he gave himself a ransom for all. A ransom is the price paid to set a captive free, and Jesus paid it with his own life, standing between the justice of God and the guilt of sinners and bearing that guilt himself. When he died, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom, God's own hand opening the way that sin had closed. The distance is crossed; the estrangement is ended.

And his mediation continues forever. Because he ever lives, he is the Mediator of a better covenant, always present before God on our behalf, always securing the peace he made. He is not a go-between we call upon now and then, but the abiding meeting place of God and man, in whom we have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Through him, and through him alone, we come to God.

His mediation reaches in both directions at once. To us he brings all that God is, his truth, his forgiveness, his very life, coming down as God to man. To God he brings all that we are, our need, our worship, our prayers, rising up as man to God. In him the traffic between heaven and earth, so long broken off, is opened again and flows freely. He is the ladder set up on the earth whose top reaches to heaven, on which the angels of God ascend and descend, the one living way between the world and its Maker, and he never ceases to hold the two together in himself.

What Christ our Mediator means for us

Because Jesus is our Mediator, the way to God stands open. We do not have to find our own way up to a holy God, nor do we need any other go-between, any further priest or saint or ritual, to reach him. The one Mediator has done the work, and in him we may come to the Father freely. To add another mediator beside him is to miss the wonder that there is one, and that one is enough.

This gives boldness to our prayers. We pray in Jesus' name not as a formula but because he is the Mediator through whom our prayers are heard, carried by him into the presence of God and answered for his sake. However weak or unworthy we feel, we are welcome, because we do not come in our own name but in his. The Mediator has made us accepted in the Beloved.

And it steadies us in every trouble of conscience. When we sin, we are not cast off, for we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who pleads his finished work on our behalf. The peace between us and God does not rest on our performance but on our Mediator, who stands forever between us and every accusation. Because there is one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus, we may live and die at peace with God.

This also frees us from the loneliness of trying to reach God on our own. We do not have to wonder whether we have prayed well enough, or feared enough, or done enough to be heard. Our access does not depend on our worthiness but on our Mediator, who is always worthy and always welcome in the presence of God. In him the humblest believer draws as near to the Father as the greatest saint, for both come by the same one Mediator and neither comes by any other. Whatever our weakness, we are received in the Beloved, and that welcome can never be taken away.

A note for all traditions: the threefold office of Christ, Prophet, Priest, and King, is a historic and non-denominational way of understanding Jesus, shared across the Christian church. Every verse above is quoted from the King James Version and can be read in its own context. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and the invitation of this page is simply to know him.

Related: Christ Our Priest · Christ Our Savior · The threefold office together · The offices of Christ