If a man had never any just conviction of sin, he does not feel the need of mediation. No one who has for himself felt what sin and grace are, can hesitate a moment as to the value of it. Let the reader consult Job 9 and he may see the working of a true yet vexed soul under God's hand. It is all well talking of awe, reverence, love, &c., as do religious or semi-religious people of this world; but the denial of the need of a mediator is the denial of a holy Judge, and of our sense of God being so. But it is important to have a clear apprehension of the nature and work of the mediator.
Our sense of the need of a mediator arises from the effect of our being brought into the presence of God; or what is morally the same thing, so true an estimate of what God is as makes us feel the impossibility of our standing before Him. In the passage referred to in Job, this is evidently seen, whatever temper he met it in. He could not answer God “one of a thousand.” If he called himself “perfect,” his own mouth would condemn him. If he could leave off his heaviness and comfort himself, God would not hold him innocent. If he should wash himself with snow-water, and make his hands never so clean, God would plunge him in the ditch. And he adds, “neither is there any daysman betwixt us, who should lay his hand upon us both.” Now, I am not commenting here upon the spirit in which Job takes the matter up, for it was a very wrong one; I adduce it to show that the sense of the need of a mediator arises from the conviction of sin, and does not hinder it.
This doctrine is sometimes used in a way calculated to give a false idea of God-not precisely as to the effect of the presence of God upon the conscience, but as hiding divine love. The effect of that presence is to present God as simply a Judge, and Christ is then looked at as one in whose love we can confide. But scripture is not answerable for this. God is a Judge, but Christ is never presented as an intercessor with a judge. The spiritual doctrine of a mediator is quite different from this. It not only leaves the full effect of God as light upon the soul, but brings it down close to the moral eye; and does it in the way of love, that we should be able to walk in the light. Christ is God manifest in the flesh. But while He is the light itself, this manifestation is love. See how John puts this point: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” (1 John 1:1, 2, 5, 61That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 2(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) (1 John 1:1‑2)
5This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: (1 John 1:5‑6).) Here we have no hindering the full discovery of God to the soul; it is that discovery. “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” “The life was the light of men.” “That was the true light which lighteth [shineth upon] every man,” And it did tell upon men's conscience, the presence of that living Word; and if sin was confessed, it attracted in grace; if sin was sought to be hidden, it vexed, irritated, and alarmed, humble and unassuming as was the garb in which grace, for love's sake towards men, had clothed the light. So the truth; it is indeed grace in testimony, but it reaches the conscience, and judges all men by the revelation of God himself.
What could have brought light and love, (and that is, morally speaking, God,) so near to man as the incarnation? It was in the way of reconciling, not imputing trespasses; but this was to engage man away from sin, if that had been possible, by coming in grace and goodness towards himself. Mediation is, in this respect, the revelation of God Himself close to us, bearing directly on the conscience and heart of man; and so is the word of the gospel now.
But there is yet more in Christianity, that we might be fully brought into the presence of God. Christ has suffered in our place, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God—not merely God to us down here. Looking at God. as righteousness, as having “purer eyes than to behold iniquity;” the just sense of sin would make us feel that we could not come into His presence, nor appear defiled before His holy majesty. There is no just sense of sin, no real effect of His presence on the conscience till this is felt—no proper jealousy of right and wrong till we estimate it thus, and bring God and ourselves together in thought, so as to produce it—ourselves who owe everything to Him, But we could not. He ought not in justice to allow such in His presence. Christ gives Himself for these sins; and putting them away, appears in the presence of God in the efficacy and in virtue of that work. I go into the presence of God with this full character maintained in holiness and love. He is more glorified in what has been done by Jesus about sin than if there had been none; and it is Jesus' glory in every way to have done it. I now appear in virtue (yea, being) this divine righteousness, in God's own presence, through infinite love and righteousness, which I thus know, and never should have known else; for it is not mere human righteousness. God is known as He is in glory, which Christ alone could meet in face, so to speak; and I am there in the full light of it upon me without fear, because in virtue of the redemption in which that glory has been morally displayed and satisfied, and that as to and about sin itself, now put away for me, and I appearing as made the righteousness of God in Him My being there is that righteousness, the fruit of the travail of Christ's soul; and what that is, He alone can tell who knows what wrath is to Him who dwelt in the unity of love—what sin is to one who was in the unity of the divine holiness. There I am in a righteousness adequate for this glory; and so I judge sin now; a righteousness, as wrought out in Christ, competent to take its seat at the right hand of the majesty on high; for, God being glorified in it, God's glory was its just reward, and this in the fullest sense connected with the person of Him who accomplished it. Now I find my place in God's presence, in virtue of this. I sit down in heavenly places—not where the personal accomplishment sets Him who accomplished it, as a just reward—but morally, as fully in the presence of God.
Yet, in fact, I am a poor erring creature, rising above sin in a heavenly way in mind, through the Spirit; but, alas! by virtue even of that which I see, seeing the wretched inadequacy of all my steps down here. There is always feebleness, often failure. Here mediation comes in again—not to obtain righteousness, but to maintain a feeble, failing creature in the enjoyment of the place where our being made righteousness in Him places us. It is the reconciling the state in which I actually am with the position in which that has set me. It is the only thing which can maintain a poor, feeble creature experimentally up to the height of that divine presence. To pretend to be there in the condition in which we actually are, would be mere madness, and prove we had never known it. We should, even as men, rather fall at His feet as dead. Yet if we are not there, we must lose the full power of that presence to judge evil and good by, to know love by, to estimate the glorious counsels of God by. But Christ appears in the presence of God for us. His blood is on the mercy-seat. He is there in virtue of this blood-shedding which places us there. I can abide there in peace to learn it all.
Am I to ignore, then, my feebleness and failing? No, I judge what I am by what I see of this glory which is mine; and nay feebleness and failure become the occasion of the exercise of grace, winch does not lower God to the level of my failures, but which meets the wants they prove in the way of mercy and lifting me out of them. We have a high priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin; so that we come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hence, in this also, mediation maintains for us the full display of God to ourselves, and alone can do so, and in the way of faith and grace, so as to be morally elevating while judging all inconsistent with itself. Divine righteousness sets me in the presence of God's majesty according to God: constant mediation obtains all the grace I need in the actual state I am in, and maintains me, not hiding my actual worthlessness from myself, in the full enjoyment of divine favor, as known there; it restores me, if need be, and keeps up a just, holy, practical intercourse with that glory. He who has not this has none. Hence it is said, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, that never alters, and he is the propitiation for our sins.”
The first part of Christ's mediation is the revelation of God to man here, so that He might be directly in His presence. The second part is, when righteousness has given man a place in God's presence in glory; and made him know it, and placed him in it, through redemption, maintaining the intercourse of a feeble, failing creature with God in love, in the place where righteousness has set him; that is, in the presence of God fully revealed, as Christ the righteous Son is there. It keeps us, on the one hand, in the sense of that glory unobscured, and on the other, in the true and sweet sense of a weakness which is the occasion of constant and unfailing mercy, which is working in it to bring us up to the actual enjoyment of such glory as that righteousness is entitled to. Such are God's wondrous, perfect, and gracious ways with us which alone reconcile divine perfection and human weakness, and find in the latter, and even in its sin, the occasion of the display of the former in its highest glory. Such are His ways in Jesus, Emmanuel, to whom—Lamb of God who takes away sin—belongs all glory forever and ever, the joy and crown of those who trust in Him, the everlasting delight of God the Father.