A sentence like: ‘Bill loved Jill so much that Ted died for her’ wouldn’t make a lot of sense. However, is Romans 5:8 not nonsense because Christ is God as well as our kinsman-redeemer?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘God’s Power for Salvation’ (2005).
Yes, I would say it hits the nail on the head very well. It is the fact that Christ is not a third party. He is our representative. But, secondly, Christ is the Son of God. We shall not understand the cross of Christ and what was happening there if we fail to get our Christology right. That is, Jesus is God incarnate. And therefore what transpired there was transpiring between members of the Godhead. 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son' (John 3:16). It certainly isn't a question of God, in that sense, punishing a third party. On neither count is that true. Becoming a man, a representative man therefore—he is the second man; and for all those that are 'in him' his death counts as our death because he is the head of the new race. Secondly, on God's side, this was happening between the members of the Godhead. So, 'Yes,' is my answer.
Scripture says 'there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus' (1 Timothy 2:5). How would you bring that into the answer just given?
Well, yes, that is right. And I would bring in what you've said in a roundabout way. First, I would appeal to Galatians 3.
What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise has been made; and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one. (Galatians 3:19–20)
So the first half of verse 20 is making your point precisely. A mediator implies two parties, and someone going between them. A mediator is not 'of one'; he is a mediator between two parties. And if you go back to Exodus and Moses, when the law was ordained, Moses acted as the intermediary. That is, God gave him the conditions; he gave him the law—the basis of the covenant. Moses wrote the conditions down in a book. He not only rehearsed the conditions to the people, but he read the conditions out of the book so that all might see it was written down. (They couldn't afterwards say, 'Oh, but we didn't think it meant that!') And then he put these to the people. He acted as the mediator. It was not God who took the blood of the animals and put it in a basin. It was Moses that sprinkled both the people and the book. He acted as an intermediary between God and the people. And that makes your point then: you have two parties.
Why does that not apply to our Lord when in Hebrews 8 he is the 'mediator'?
But now has he obtained a ministry the more excellent, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted upon better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)
He is a mediator, so why does this idea of a third-party not apply? It is for two very good reasons, among others. Reason one is that the new covenant is not a two-party covenant. And what I mean is this. A two-party covenant is when you get two parties, and they both have something to fulfil. The mediator negotiates, and when the covenant is made both parties bind themselves to do certain things, to fulfil certain conditions. Both parties do it: 'You do this; I will do this'. It is a two-party covenant.
Suppose you are going to get yourself a new house built. So you ask the builder to build it; you specify the quality and the quantities of the stuff and so on. He agrees to do that. He will build it to your specifications. He, on the other hand, lays down certain conditions, notably that it will cost you £500,000! And if you sign this agreement you are both responsible. If you fulfil your part but he doesn't, that breaks the covenant. If he fulfils his part and you don't fulfil yours, that breaks the covenant. That is a two-party covenant.
The law was a two-party covenant. God put down his conditions upon which he would bless them and they would be his people. The people responded, 'And we will keep all those conditions'. On that principle it was a two-party agreement, with a mediator between. The new covenant is not that. The new covenant is more like a will, a 'Last Will and Testament'. In fact, Hebrews 9 uses the term. The word for covenant that the Bible uses in the New Testament is diatheke. And diatheke, strictly speaking, isn't 'covenant', though it is used sometimes in that connotation. It is a testament; it is a disposition. If your Uncle Sam in America loves you, and he goes and dies, and then in his will he leaves you all his bonds, securities and preferential shares, two or three summer houses and his ranch, and all that stuff, and he has it signed, sealed, settled and witnessed, but lays down no conditions—you don't have to do anything for it. It is, in that sense, a covenant—a diatheke. It doesn't need a mediator. It is just yours, if you would like to have it. You've got to believe it, of course, and take it.
The new covenant is a one-party covenant. If you look at its terms, it doesn't require you to do anything. It says what God will do. It is a one-sided covenant. Now, Christ is the mediator in the sense that, through his death, he signed, sealed and settled it. The blood had to be shed, and so the proposition that the Godhead made, that we should be forgiven, he had to enact it and fulfil it, and for our sakes he died for us. Yes, but he is not mediating in the sense that he is getting us and God, and he mediates between us, and we both have conditions to fulfil. In that sense, it is a different kind of a covenant. It is 'of one', for Christ is acting as the Son of God, putting the covenant into effect.
In that sense, 1 Timothy 2:5 says that the man Christ Jesus is a mediator between God and men. That is true again: he comes between us to bring us together, but it is the conditions upon which he does it that is the point. He is the one who, being God, became man that he might bring both together, but not in the sense of mediating between the two of us so that we eventually arrive at conditions: we on our side, and God on his side.
If that is enough to satisfy you on your question, then let me add that, when it comes to the new covenant, our Lord is not only the mediator of it; he is the guarantor of it. And that is said in Hebrews 7:22—'By so much also has Jesus become the guarantor of a better covenant.' How can you be a mediator if you are a guarantor? Well, because the covenant is a one-sided covenant, a one-party covenant. Secondly, our Lord is the guarantor that all its conditions shall be fulfilled. He is the surety.
