It is a fact fully attested by travelers in the East that even at the present time no business can be transacted, or disputes settled without the intervention of a third person. Thus it was also when the Lord Jesus was here. Hence we find one appealing to Him and saying, “Speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance between us” (Luke 12:13). Earlier still, even in Job’s day, the same custom prevailed. He says, “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:32, 33). Job was not at ease in God’s presence, for he knew He could hold him guilty if He chose. He had also discovered that all his efforts at cleansing himself would not avail. For God was not a man as he was that they could meet on the ground of equality. Therefore his need of a “daysman,” or mediator, who could put his hand upon both. One, in a word, who was both God and man in one person. Such an one was really needed to work out the plan of man’s salvation.
Man, made in God’s image, after His likeness, made to rule the earth, became the object of Satan’s malice, who soon succeeded in ruining him. And so complete was the ruin, that man was separated so far from God that he could never return by any effort of his own. Neither could God have him again on the former conditions. Must then that being, in respect of whose creation the Trinity sat in solemn conclave, become the prey of God’s bitterest enemy without a remedy? Never. But man had by his disobedience forfeited life; for it is written, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” And this involved more than the mere death of the body. It entailed separation from God forever and ever. How then could man escape the penalty that his sin had incurred? Only by another dying in his stead, and paying off the score that was against him. But would that satisfy God’s righteous demands? Could the judgment be shifted to other shoulders? Yea, truly, provided the shoulders were strong enough to bear the load. Further, the one to stand in the breach between God and man must be capable of laying a hand upon both at the same time, thus bringing them together.
Now where is such a one to be found? Angels will not do; they are but created beings, and only a little higher in the scale of being than man. Could the archangel Michael fill this place? Could he, though perhaps the highest of created beings, go to God as on equal terms with himself? Or, on the other hand, could he come down to man’s estate? Surely not. He is but an angel and such he must remain.
Who then can change his position and assume another nature if he chooses? None but God. And will He Who is God the Son stand in the breach? Will He undertake the stupendous work of man’s redemption? Listen to His words.
In Psalms 40 the Lord Jesus is the speaker throughout. In the opening verses He anticipates His resurrection by God’s almighty power. He would not raise Himself, but wait upon God. And, as assuring His heart, He reminds Himself of God’s wonderful works and thoughts towards us. Then He shows His perfect obedience to God’s will and desire. His will was in perfect unison with God’s. “They went both of them together.”
In Him God found One Who entered into all His plans respecting man’s redemption, and would carry them out at all cost. In order to do this He laid aside His glory, or “emptied himself,” and descended from the highest to the lowest rung of that ladder of humiliation which reached from the glory to the death of the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). And there at the cross in obedience to God and in love to His own He took our sins upon Himself. And so perfectly did He become the sin-bearer that He is found at the end of the psalm confessing them as His own. As we sing, “Our sins, our guilt, in love divine, Confessed and borne by Thee.” Hence we read, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body,” etc. (1 Peter 2:24); again, God “made him sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21).
His substitution was perfect therefore, and His propitiation was complete. And the positive proof of it all is that God has raised Him from the dead, and set Him in the place of honor in the glory. Now the sinner has nothing to say to this but to believe it. Such then was the daysman Job needed in his time, and that we have now. “For there is one God, one mediator also of God and men, Christ Jesus, a man, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5, 6. New Trans.). W.T.H.