Caleb Johnson | Christ the Mediator

Sunday Evening, February 8, 2026
Given by Caleb Johnson | Executive Assistant to the Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

Christ the Mediator

1 Timothy 2

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Transcript

Good evening. You can turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 2. I was delighted to see it in your bulletins, actually. So, you can either turn there in your copy of God's word, or you can just flip over your bulletin to 1 Timothy chapter 2. Two caveats to keep in mind as you turn there: this subject we're embarking on tonight is Christ the mediator. Christ the mediator is a very broad subject. It overlaps with a great deal of material that the catechism will deal with later, especially the offices of Christ. We'll get there. So, we're going to scratch the surface. I have four passages for you tonight. That's going to be kind of the guiding metric for us as we go forward, and they will help in answering each one of these questions, as well as calling on a few historical figures, which leads to the next caveat. We will be in multiple passages this evening and not exegeting just one, so be ready to flip. But to properly orient us, you can follow along in your Bibles or in your bulletin as I read from 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 5. Paul is writing to Timothy, giving advice, direction, and some things for the church. In verse 1, he calls him to prayer, thanksgiving, a quiet life. Then he gets to verse 3: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And what is the truth by which we are saved, Paul would say? Verse 5, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” 

Father, we come to you in need this evening. Lord, we ask that by your Spirit, Lord, you would give us ears to hear. Lord, you would be with me, your servant, that I would speak the truth. And Lord, would we better understand what it means that we have a mediator, that we have a prophet, priest, and king who stands and pleads for us. We give you thanks, and we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Last week Tom preached on Lord's Day 4 and 5, which brought us into the second main section of the catechism. Perhaps you remember that the Heidelberg Catechism is divided into three major parts – guilt, grace, and gratitude – the bulk of which is grace, and we will be in that grace section for the foreseeable future. I'm thankful for Nathan and Levi and others for bringing us through the guilt section. I wasn't particularly excited about preaching that section, but here we are in the grace section, and we're going to be in Lord's Day 6. 

So Lord's Day 4 and 5, which was last week's, are about God's justice and his mercy. Tom preached from Psalm 130, “If you were to mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness of sin.” But the million-dollar question that comes right after that, as it's so laid out in the catechism, is how does that play out? How can justice and mercy agree? How can God be merciful and yet by no means clear the guilty? Lord's Day 6 answers the question: in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So now, in your bulletin, let's read these catechism questions together. I'm going to read the questions, and you can all respond out loud together. Number 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. 

Q: Why must he also be a 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. 

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. 

Q: How do you come to know this? 

A: The holy gospel tells me. God himself began to reveal the gospel 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. 

Perhaps you remember the very first question of the catechism: what is your only comfort in life and in death? And the answer to that is that I am not my own, but that I belong to somebody. I belong to someone, my faithful savior Jesus Christ. And there are a lot of things that Christ has done on our behalf. In fact, in Lord's Day 1, in question and answer 1, he goes through a number of things, a number of ways the Lord has acted on our behalf. He has fully paid for our sins. He's delivered us from the tyranny of the devil. Watches over me. I belong to him. And by his Holy Spirit, he assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and able to serve him. In coming weeks, we will speak more about the work of Christ; 11 and 12 will be prophet, priest, and king; Christ's suffering and crucifixion in 15; 16, his death; we're going to go through his humiliation, his exaltation, all the things that he does for us. But Lord's Day 6 comes with the question that needs to be answered. Before we get to these things, who is “he”? Who is this person from Lord's Day 1 that we belong to, in whose hands we are held? The catechism would have us pause and think about the person of our salvation. The early church was very concerned with this. I'm willing to bet that most of us think more about the work of Christ than we do about the person of Christ. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. In fact, you ultimately cannot think about one without reference to the other. They go hand in hand. They mutually inform who he is. God's word would have us meditate not only on his work, though, but on his identity. Who is this man that the wind and the waves obey him? Who is he? Lord's Day 6 responds: he is God, and he is man. Lord's Day 6 is laid out quite simply – four questions. One, why man? Two, why God? Three, who is it? Four, how do you know? These are the questions from the catechism this Lord's Day, and this will also form the outline of the sermon going forward. 

So, first question, why man? Why must our mediator be fully man? The answer is simple. It's catechetical. The catechism seeks to go to the grammar of things, teach us the basics of theology. Why must he be a man? Because it's man who sinned. Man is the one chiefly corrupted by sin, bringing with it death. Man is the one who must right the wrong that he committed. Turn in your Bibles, here, to Romans chapter 5. I turn to Romans with much trepidation, knowing that I'm not the only person who's preaching from Romans, but I think you'll see why we're in Romans chapter 5 – the second half of Romans 5. The beginning of Romans 5 is quite well known. Paul's logic here might help us inform the discussion. So, he's done talking about the faith of Abraham and the wonderful implications of that faith of Abraham, and then he shifts to the object of our faith. So, Abraham fades to the background, and here comes this other figure: Adam. Paul shifts the focus from Abraham to Adam, from the nature of faith with Abraham to the object of our faith in Christ. Verse 12, Romans 5: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (that one man being Adam) and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” – all men being all of us, every man who's ever lived, who is descended from Adam by ordinary generation. 

Then, for the rest of the chapter, verses 12- 21, Paul is going to move back and forth. Perhaps you read this before or you remember this. He's going to go back and forth, giving a list of contrasting pairs between what it means to be from Adam and what it means to be in Christ. Verse 15, the trespass on the one hand versus the gift: “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God in the free gift by the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.” The trespass, the gift. Verse 16, the condemnation and then the justification. The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, speaking of Adam. Free gift following many trespasses: justification. Verse 17, the reign of death, the reign of life: “For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through the one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” In verse 19, it does it again: disobedience versus the obedience. “For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many were made righteous.” You can see that Paul is here oscillating back and forth between these two figures of our salvation. Yet, for all the differences between Adam and Christ that Paul lays out in Romans 5, notice the one thing that remains the same in almost all of these comparisons: man. Verse 15, the one man's trespass versus the free gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. Verse 16, death reigned through one man, the reign of life through one man. And it goes on and on. In fact, the word “man” or “men” in this small section is present 12 times. 

Could it be that Paul is trying to communicate something to us that we see here in Lord's Day 6? Why must he be true and righteous man? Because it is Adam who sinned, and in Adam we all sinned, and we need a man. We need a man to act for us on our behalf. A true and a righteous man. Now the fact that Jesus Christ is fully man may not – while that may seem obvious to us; it may be obvious to us. Maybe we've grown up hearing this. Maybe we know it really well. We've never really had a problem with the fact that Jesus is man. That has not always been the case. Our belief in Christ's full humanity goes directly against a kind of early Christian heresy called Docetism. That's right. We're talking about heresies. And it's not as though I think that any of you are maybe struggling with Docetism right now, but I bring it up because this historical error, as I think you'll see, will help us to understand what God's word does teach by putting it up next to something that it does not teach. You'll see what I mean. 

Docetism was a heresy in the early church. It claimed that the Son of God was truly divine, but he didn't really come in the flesh. He didn't come all the way down, shall we say. He only seemed to be man. In fact, that's where the heresy's name comes from: “to seem,” dokeo in Greek. He only seemed to be man. He wasn't really a man. After all, it's impossible that a divine natured – it's impossible that God would ever truly indwell an actual man. But he was not just some kind of optical illusion or physical manifestation, as though the body wasn't real. Jesus didn't just seem to be a man. He was, and he is a man. Why? Because God's justice requires that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for sin. So, what's wrong with the belief that Christ only seemed to be man? What's at the bottom of that that makes it heresy, that makes it a problem? Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 15:16-17. It's going to be our third passage. All these passages are in Paul. 1 Corinthians 15:16-17. Not three chapters – 15, 16 and 17 – but 15:16-17. And here's what Paul writes, “If the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” Now apply the logic of Docetism to this passage. If Christ only seemed to be a man and actually was not a man, then a true man did not die in the place of us, and therefore, obviously, wasn't even resurrected, because how can someone who is not truly a man truly die and truly be resurrected? It pulls the carpet out from the entire project. As one historical figure by the name of Gregory of Nazianzas says, “That which he has not assumed” – okay, this is a good guy writing against the errors of Docetism, Apollinaris actually – he writes, “That which is not assumed he has not healed, but that which is united to his godhead is also saved. He has assumed humanity, truly, and therefore it can be saved.” So why must the mediator be a true and righteous man? Because we need to be healed. Men and women need to be healed, because we have sinned. God's justice requires that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for sin. 

Next question. On the other end of the spectrum, why must he also be God, the catechism asks. He must also be God 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. In this question, the catechism assumes something that we all know. None of us, no fallen man, can stand in the presence of God, let alone to do it for another person. Our salvation hangs on Christ, not only being true man, but true God. This brings in another historical figure. I'm going to phone another friend by the name of Athanasius, who stood against this heresy called Arianism. Arianism was another controversy in the early church which asked does Christ really need to be fully God in order for us to be saved? Arianism claimed that the Son of God was begotten in time – that is, there was a time when the Son was not. The problem with this is that it moves the Son from the category of creator to creature. It tries to dethrone him, remove what is rightfully his. This is why it is a sin to call the eternal Son of God a creature, even the highest creature. This also means that there was a time when God the Father was not a father, if this is taken to its logical end, which is a problem. 

Athanasius was a defender of orthodoxy during this time, and he wrote against the Arian controversy in the fourth century. He authored a popular book called On The Incarnation. I would recommend it to you. It's in the book nook, I can say for a fact. So, Athanasius lived most of his adult life in exile. He was not a very popular man, especially not to emperors. He was exiled five times. He lived most of his adult life in the desert with desert monks, writing books and fighting Arianism. So, he is known as Athanasius Contra Mundum which means “Athanasius against the world.” Not a popular guy. So what was his argument? What was Athanasius's argument against Arius? Well, the Son of God is very God of very God. He is one substance with the Father. He gives many arguments for the necessity of Jesus Christ being fully man and fully God. In his book On The Incarnation, he leaned heavily on John chapter 1: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Being a giver of life is something that belongs to God, and this was one thing that animated Athanasius when he wrote. Here's one excerpt from On the Incarnation that I think is worth our time. Here's what he writes: “It was not for another to turn what is corruptible to incorruptibility, except the Savior himself, who in the beginning created the universe from nothing. And it was not for another to recreate again, the ‘in the image’ for human beings except the image of the Father.” Do you see the logic there? It was not for another person to come and indwell us and to save us, but Christ – someone who was the creator. The recreator must be also the creator. And it was not for another to raise up the mortal to be immortal, except the Lord Jesus Christ, who is life itself. Elsewhere, Athanasius writes that far from being a mere creature, Christ, the creator, the one by whom all things were made, was so full of life that when he wished to die, he had to borrow death from others. As the catechism says, it is by the power of his divinity that he might offer and restore to us righteousness and life. Only God gives life. Only God has life in himself to give, and only God is able to bear in his humanity the wrath of God for us. 

Next question in the catechism: who is this mediator? Who, then, is this mediator? True God, and at the same time a true and righteous man. What is a mediator? Before answering the question of what is our mediator, when you think about “mediator,” lowercase m, what comes to mind? I think we can say with confidence that, on the most basic level, a mediator is someone who stands in the middle, bridging the gap between two parties with an aim to unite. So, when is the last time you benefited from having a good mediator, just generally speaking in life, shall we say? Was it a job that you had no business getting, but you had a friend that you could that could vouch for you? All of a sudden, you had an in, and you had favor? Was it a friend rescuing you from an embarrassing conversation? Maybe you were accepted into a college or a program that, were it not for this glowing recommendation that you got, you never would have gotten into this program. Or think back to when you were a student, perhaps in middle school or something, and most of the class missed a question on the test. Maybe it wasn't even in the study guide or in the lessons. Now, in that moment, we all know – you've all been there – that if the class clown is the one who raises their hand and tries to plead on behalf of the rest of the class, it's not going to work out for the whole class. The teacher will probably not listen. It will not win a hearing. But if the smartest kid in the class raises her hand and tries to appeal to the teacher, say, "I'm not sure that that question was in the notes," there's a fighting chance that you might actually get a curve. More advice for middle schoolers. We got some this morning. There's your tidbit tonight. Now, these are not one-to-one analogies. They're not meant to be one-to-one analogies for the manner in which Christ mediates to us. They all break down pretty quickly. But the point is to say that at its very bottom, a mediator is someone who stands in between and has enough of me and enough of the other party to be able to unite them, to bring them together. The Lord Jesus Christ, being one person, two natures – God and man – is our mediator to answer this question. One who, as Job says, an arbitrator – an arbiter, sorry – between us, who might lay his hands on both. This is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our mediator. 

It's difficult to talk about the subject of mediators in a sermon without referencing the book of Hebrews. So, there's four times that the Greek word for “mediator” is used in the New Testament. Two of those times are in the book of Hebrews. Now, the book of Hebrews is – there's a lot about the high priestliness of Christ, the high priestly office. That will come up later on, so we won't spend too much time there, but think about, for a moment, Moses. Not the high priest, but think about Moses. His job was to represent God to the people and to dictate to the people the will of God for them. Moses went up on the mountain, and he came back down with the Ten Commandments for them. Hebrews says that Moses was faithful in God's house as a servant, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a Son. Think now about Aaron, the great high priest, or the previous high priest, then all the other priests that succeeded Aaron. They, too, were appointed a representative by God to be God to the people and the people to God. As we know from the Old Testament, these high priests were flawed in many ways, in more ways than one. They were human and finite, but they were also wicked at times and had a lot of vices – displayed these vices in horrible ways. Hebrews reminds us that they had to offer sacrifices repeatedly. Not only were they flawed in themselves, but they had to go into the Holy of Holies every year and make a sacrifice. Christ did it once, and not with the blood of another, but with his own blood. You might think that the excellence of this mediator would make him completely out of reach. Is it really this good? God, man – one person. But as Hebrews also says, in chapter 2, "Since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might be a merciful and a faithful high priest in the service of God." 

Last question of the Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 6: how do you know this? How do you come to know this? I love the way that this Lord's Day ends – Lord's Day 6. It ends by saying, "The Bible told me so." Right? The Bible told me so. That's how I know it. God's word gives these things to me. It tells me that I have a mediator in the Lord Jesus Christ. It tells me that he is fully God, that he is fully man. And because it tells me that, it is enough. I need no other argument or plea. It's important that God's word be the thing that tells us what “mediator” means and what it means that we have a mediator, because even our Christology is prone to wander. Most of us don't need to be convinced that we have a knack for trying to make idols out of many different things. Calvin famously said that the heart is an idol factory. In Colossians 3:5, Paul names covetousness as idolatry. So yes, we can still commit idolatry today. It's not just an Old Testament sin that can be committed. We still do it today. We still commit idolatry by covetousness in other ways by trying to make other things bear the worship that only God deserves in our lives. So, most of us don't need to be convinced of the fact that we can be prone to idolatry. 

The next question is, is it possible that when we make God after our own image, mediator necessarily follows? Isn't it true that when we shift from the one true God to serve an idol, we are in danger of shifting the mediator right there along with it? We see this in our world today, don't we? So, whenever the truth about God is exchanged – let's just say Christianity is cast aside in a generation – rarely will they abandon the name of Christ. No, Jesus still has a seat at the table, but he conveniently becomes a mediator for whatever means they're trying to accomplish. He doesn't stop mediating in their book, but he ceases to be originally what he was meant to mediate for. He just mediates whatever has become the new god of the day. So, we see this in culture. We see this in friends, perhaps family. They say things like, "My Jesus wouldn't do that. My Jesus cares about X. My Jesus cares about this and not that." Again, the problem is this goes against the truth. As the truth about God goes, so goes the truth about the mediator. That's why God's word needs to be the thing that tells us what it is when we say that Christ is our mediator. It's going to tell us what it is that he is mediating. God and man. You might say, "Well, doesn't Christ as mediator reconcile to himself all things?" Turn with me to Colossians 1. It's true. All things are reconciled through him. Verse 19, Colossians chapter 1: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” We might say, well, doesn't Colossians say that he means to reconcile all things to himself? Not just man, but heaven, earth, and everything in between? Won't all things be fixed by Christ in that day? He absolutely means that he will right every wrong, but we should be careful because look at the very next verses. He describes what it means that he is a mediator in fuller color: “And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” Yes, Christ comes to unite and make peace on earth. But before we can be reconciled to one another, we must be reconciled to God. So, if you will, let the person of Christ – the one person, two natures – let that teach us what he intends to mediate. He intends to mediate not our own agendas, but he intends to take us from our sin and misery and bring us to God. So, Christian, how do you know who your mediator is? The Holy Gospel tells me. The Bible informs what it means that he is our mediator. 

In conclusion, I like to go back to where we began. What does having a mediator like this have to do with our comfort? Another way of saying it, what does Lord's Day 6 have to do with Lord's Day 1? The catechism has a way of cutting right to the chase, doesn't it? Like, why does any of this matter? Heidelberg Q&A 1 says, "What is your only comfort in life and in death?" Some may call this overly dramatic, a kind of approach that's morbid, maybe a little bit intense. What is your only comfort in life and in death? Are we really going there? Are we talking about death? But I think the better way to understand the Heidelberg’s approach is not dramatic, but it's foundational. Besides, why would the Dutch be dramatic? It's a valid argument. It gets to the bottom of things. The Heidelberg Catechism cuts straight to the heart. What is your only comfort in life and in death? Not dramatic. It just cuts straight. Maybe you've been with someone who is dying before, or maybe someone who is struggling with the death of another loved one. And if you've been with that person, walking them through that or talking to them about what they're going through, you'll notice the discourse is often very basic, if there's any at all. There's a lot of silence. At the very least, it's not very complex. You're not talking about the intricacies of some other philosophical quirk. You talk about the basic things when you face death, simple truths that are the most important. The time is not spent in quirks or curiosities, but on the things that matter – the basic, foundational things that matter. 

Tom alluded last week to this: John Newton's final recorded words before his death were very simple words: “Although my memory is fading, I remember two things clearly. I'm a great sinner. Christ is a great savior.” John Knox, Scottish reformer, asked his wife to read him John 17 on repeat when he was on his deathbed. This is the high priestly prayer. This is Christ praying for him as he was dying. Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity, a number of interns here as well, to preach in one of the nearby assisted living homes. And when you preach in assisted living homes, you figure out a few things pretty quickly. Number one, you speak loudly. Number two, you speak slowly. Three, you preach Christ simply and clearly, sticking to the basics. Now, why is that? Why is that? It's not necessarily because they are all hard of hearing, though that's often the case. Or sometimes they have difficulty understanding, though that's also true. Not for all of them – oftentimes very sharp. It's because that when we are confronted by our mortality, saints need to be reminded of not something new, but something old, something ancient, the good, ancient truths of the faith. I need to be reminded of whose hands I am in. So, what is our only comfort in life and in death? The answer is that I am not my own, question 1 says, but I belong, body and soul, to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. And Christian, who is he? He is God, and he is man, and we are in good hands. Let's pray. 

Heavenly Father, we give you praise that we have a mediator, that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who came down from heaven that he might bring us to you. We give you all the praise, all the honor, and all the glory. It's in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.