A God Go-Between

3 "This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." 1 Timothy 2:3-6

For those that attempt to walk with God on a daily basis and experience intimacy in their relationship with God, there is a consistent reality of your own inadequacy and need. Sin is clearly evident, shortcomings are magnified, and repentance is a daily practice.

And, through Jesus, I have help.

Paul describes one of the functions of Jesus as that of a go-between, a mediator.  In the Old Testament, priests functioned as a mediator for the people by offering sacrifices to God (Ex. 29).  However, in the New Testament, Jesus is named the mediator because he functions as the high priest and through His sacrifice makes relationship with God possible (Heb. 8:6, 9:15, 12:24).

This means that through Jesus, one can have relationship with God, sit at His feet, and enjoy a renewed and right relationship with God.

Amazing.  Shocking. Exactly what I need. 

However, in the church, we are often guilty of replacing Jesus with the church as the mediator of our relationship with God. 

As a pastor, I am troubled by how quickly we shift from Jesus being the mediator to the church being the mediator. In so doing, we look to the church to do things that it is not designed to do.  We show up on Sunday expecting the church to make up for our lack of intimacy with God throughout the week.  We speak of the church as if it is what brings us to God – that song, that sermon, that video.  We glorify pastors and church leaders as the ones who usher us into God’s presence.  

Here is what I typically see and hear from church attenders in the South: 

Me    →  Church   ⇒      Jesus

In this model, the church is the mediator bringing you closer to Jesus and it is the church and not Jesus that fulfills the priestly function.  Here we have glorified Catholicism and not Biblical Christianity.

Rather, the Biblical model is more like:

Me  →      Jesus   ⇒        God

Here, Jesus is in His rightful place functioning as a mediator to bring me into right relationship with God through His sacrificial death.  He then is the Savior, the one I need to enter into God’s presence. 

Is the church then superfluous?  Not at all.  Rather, the role of the church is then to point me to Jesus, encourage me to love Him, seek Him, and experience intimacy with Him, which in turn allows me to experience a right relationship with God.

Rather than what church do you attend on Sunday, maybe a better question is whose feet do you sit at on Monday.  This, more than anything else, reveals who you look to as your mediator.