Skip to main content

Christ Our Mediator

"Christ above me, Christ beside me, Christ within me ever guiding, Christ behind me, Christ before, Christ my love, my life, my Lord." - Hymn by John Chisum

What does it mean that Christ is our mediator? We often talk about how because of what Christ has done for us we now have direct access to the Father, but that isn't what the Bible says. We have access to the Father as his children in the Spirit through Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, after all.

We know that Christ is our mediator. The Bible does say that plainly, such as in 1 Timothy 2:5, but this is an aspect of who Christ is and what he does that I think we neglect in our theology and lives. We don't like having to go through someone else for anything, especially the most important things. We Americans prefer to do it ourselves.

The very concept of mediation is something we aren't a fan of. Couples struggling with their relationship are often resistant to see a marriage counselor or therapist, aka a mediator. We often prefer to settle things on our own instead of resorting to the courts (at least some of us do). We often treat people who try to mediate our problems with others as sticking their nose where it doesn't belong and getting into our personal business.

That's exactly right though. A mediator gets in the middle of the mess and sorts things out. In order to properly mediate a dispute the mediator needs to know the full extent of what is going on. Otherwise they won't be able to effectively solve the crisis.

Jesus is our mediator. He entered into our mess in order to resolve the conflict we had with God and he demands nothing less than all of us, personal business included. In this particular dispute there is only one guilty party, us. The Father is who has always been and shall always be: perfect, holy, all-loving, and good. He never turned his back on us and never wronged us.

We need Jesus to mediate our lives, every ounce of it. As Christians we are baptized into Christ, effectively becoming surrounded by him. We shouldn't be able to look at God, each other, or the world without having our actions, thoughts, and words shaped by Jesus our mediator. 

Christians are likewise called to be mediators in the world. The primary way we do that is through prayer. We pray for the world that they may know God. We pray for our leaders that they may rule wisely. We, the people of God in Christ, stand at the intersection of the world and the Kingdom of God, and as participants in Christ we are called to mediate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...
3 comments
Read more

What is Theology?

Greetings all! For the first true post I have decided to cover what will be one of the defining aspects of this blog; theology. I know that when I was growing up theology wasn't a word that was used in the churches I attended. In fact I don't recall ever hearing the word until I was in high school, and even then it was used negatively like theology was a bad thing. Theology is inseparable from Bible study, Christian living, and being a disciple of Jesus in general. It is an indispensable part of being a Christian. The thing is we haven't always treated it that way. We have allowed our theology to fall by the wayside, believing it to be useless or not appropriate. So what is theology exactly, and why is it so important? What is Theology? The word theology simply means "the study of God." The goal of theology is to reveal who God is, and when we know God we also come to know ourselves, sin, the world, and so on. What we've done in the past (and this may ju...
1 comment
Read more

The Name of God

In the book of Exodus we are introduced to many important elements that appear throughout the rest of the Bible. This is where we meet Moses, the first prophet sent to the nation of Israel. It is in Exodus that we first learn of the tabernacle and God's intention of living among his people. It is in Exodus that we witness the first Passover, which is the type of what is to come in Jesus. There are several other events that we could look to in Exodus, but there is one in particular that is very important that we have largely ignored; God revealing his name. We typically only refer to God by his titles. We call him Lord, Father, Judge, King, and God (yes, God is technically a title). I would like to emphasize now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. In fact I would say that it is right for us recognize the power and authority of God in what we call him. What today's post is about is the fact that we have forgotten or even ignored the fact that God reveals his n...
1 comment
Read more