Previously, we looked at Job chapter nine in which Job asked the question: “But how can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9:2b). At the end of the chapter, Job reaches this conclusion to his question:
“For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” (Job 9:32-33)
Job accurately concludes that God is not a man as we are. God declares of Himself in Isaiah 55,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Man is sinful, God is holy. We must never compare ourselves to God, nor make ourselves equal to Him who is infinitely greater than we are. Psalm 50: 16-18, 21b says,
“But to the wicked God says: ‘What right have you to recite my statues or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers […] You thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.’”
Job and the psalmist are declaring the same truth: if God who is holy lays a charge against man who is a sinner, who can refute Him? How can man reconcile himself to God? Who can come to our aid? Because the chasm between a holy God and sinful man is infinitely vast, there is no one to bridge the gap — “there is no arbiter” (Job 9:32a). There is no one to mediate.
A mediator is vitally import in a conflict between two parties, as their job is to bring about reconciliation. In order to perform this task, a mediator must have sympathy for both sides. He must be able to “lay his hand on us both” (Job 9:33b) without being partial to one side. The Levitical priesthood acted as mediators in the Old Testament, representing man before God. The priests would offer sacrifices before God on behalf of the people of Israel, and the high priest, once a year, would offer up the sin sacrifice on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16). Although these men were divinely appointed by God to this office, they did not function as adequate mediators.
First off, they themselves were sinful men who, like all of us, lack adequate sympathy for God’s holiness. In fact, on the day of atonement, before the high priest could offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people, he had to first offer a sacrifice for his own sins (Leviticus 16:6). The Levitical priests could only represent one side in the dispute because they themselves were also sinners before God. Secondly, the priest’s sacrifice was not sufficient for a complete atonement. We know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23a), and in the ceremony of the sin offering a bull or goat stood in the place of the people and took the penalty of death on their behalf. But it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Hebrews 10:4) because they are not humans. Animal sacrifice can only offer temporary atonement; only a sinless man sacrificing himself for the sins of his fellow man could offer true and full atonement.
This gives us quite the predicament: in order to atone for sin there needs to be a mediator who can be sympathetic to both sinful man and a holy God, so that they would truly satisfy God and fully atone for sin.
The writer of Hebrews declares to us this great and marvelous news:
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:14-15).
Jesus Christ is our great high priest, the perfect mediator who represents man before God. As Dr. Kevin Bauder explains:
“He [Jesus] is our great high priest. His work was to reconcile humans to God, propitiate God’s justice, expiate sins, and redeem sinners through the blood of His cross. There He offered Himself as a once-for-all sacrifice for sins.”[1]
Jesus solves both our problems. He is the perfect mediator because He is “the Son of God” (Hebrews 4:14). He can sympathize and identify with God’s holiness and justice. Jesus can also “sympathize with our weakness” (Hebrews 4:15) because He entered the world as a true human being. In order to be genuinely human, the second person of the Trinity would need to add a complete human nature to His deity. But how does God go about adding humanity to His deity? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer:
“[…] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:6-7)
This is the joy of Christmas: Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, added human nature to His deity in order to become the perfect mediator for man before God in order to atone for the sins of man.
Naturally we might ask ourselves, “how can God be ‘born in the likeness of men’”? For a human to be born, they must be conceived of a man and woman. The child will inherit traits from both parents. In the second chapter of the gospel of Luke the angel Gabriel explains to the virgin Mary how Jesus will be conceived:
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus […] the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God.” (Luke 2:31, 35b)
The Holy Spirit was involved in the conception of Jesus; therefore, He inherited the divine nature from God, and human nature from Mary. He was completely God and completely human (apart from sin). He was our perfect mediator, our perfect priest.
This truth is hard for anyone to understand. You’re telling me Jesus perfectly balanced being God and man? He never slipped up and favored his divinity in certain situations? He never gave into his human cravings to sin? No, not once! Perhaps a few quotes from Dr. Kevin Bauder can help us grasp this magnificent miracle:
“We fail to appreciate the utter humanity of Jesus Christ. True, during His humiliation Jesus never ceased to be God and never surrendered any divine attribute. The limitation that He accepted, however, was that He would not use His own divine power unless directed to do so by the Father. As Paul put it, He received the form of a slave (Phil 2:7). His faithfulness, therefore, was the faithfulness of a man, His labor was the labor of a man, and His weakness was the weakness of a man.”[2]
“Furthermore, because of His divine nature He did not and could not commit sins. The sacrifice that He offered was the only one ever offered that was utterly pure in itself, offered by a priest who was utterly pure in Himself. Because His sacrifice was backed by the infinite purity of His deity, it was the only sacrifice that could truly remove the infinite guilt of human sin and satisfy the infinite justice of a holy God. If Jesus were not truly God, then He could not be our savior.”[3]
Jesus was completely God, completely man, and completely without sin. He is therefore our perfect mediator who offered himself to God as the complete and perfect sacrifice for the redemption of sin. May we praise and glorify our perfect priest this Christmas.
[1] Kevin T. Bauder, Heart, Soul, Might: Meditations on Knowing and Loving God (Minneapolis: Central Seminary Press, 2012), 41
[2] Kevin T. Bauder, Heart, Soul, Might: Meditations on Knowing and Loving God (Minneapolis: Central Seminary Press, 2012), 43
[3] Ibid., p42