Salvation History. Chapter 16: Christ as Mediator of a New Covenant.

Chapter 16: Christ as Mediator of a New Covenant.


As we have seen, mankind was created into a covenant relationship with God. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the Fall, mankind is now out of relationship with God. The covenant relationship has been broken. Mankind has “fallen” from the relationship originally planned for him by God.

As we have seen, there were a whole lot of flow-on effects from the Fall as the destructive power of sin worked in the universe. It is to these effects of the Fall and how Christ has reversed them we turn now.

The first thing Christ has done is made it possible for us to have a relationship with God again.

God still desired the relationship with man and so he acted to provide a new way for man to relate to him, a “New Covenant” relationship. This covenant relationship was brought into effect by Christ and is received by us as a gift.

Thus the fundamental thing Christ did in reversing the effects of the Fall was make a way for us to enter into covenant relationship with God again. It is to this we shall turn now. In later chapters we shall look at other things Christ did for us, but this is fundamental.


Note: What we are about to look at is central to the whole understanding of Christianity. There are a couple of points you may find a little difficult to understand at first – but grapple with them. It will be worth it in the end.

There are three key ideas that we need to grapple with if we are to understand the work of Christ and these will be the focus of the next three chapters:
1. Christ as Mediator of a New Covenant.
2. Christ our Substitute.
3. The Divine Exchange


BACKGROUND:

At the time of Christ there was a dominant way of thinking, a world-view, that had begun in Greece about 500 years before with the Philosophers. As part of that world-view, the Greeks had come to some fixed beliefs about God (largely as a result of the work of Aristotle).

1. God, i.e. the infinite absolute being, (if he exists) must be one. Monotheism was a philosophical necessity for the Greeks in the days of Christ. If there was an infinite absolute being there must be only one of them as it is a logical impossibility to have two infinite absolute beings. This was considered to be axiomatic.

2. Dualism: By Greek definition, Spirit is good; matter is evil.

3. God is perfect. Because God is spirit, he is perfect.
This had two corollaries:
(i) God could not come into contact with that which is imperfect in case he became contaminated, i.e. less than perfect, i.e. less than God – which is a logical impossibility. This physical world is imperfect, evil, so God could not come into contact with earth.
(ii) The idea of perfection they had was static. In their thinking, change meant moving either from a lesser to a greater perfection or from a greater degree of perfection to a lesser. Such a movement in a perfect God was unthinkable, so God was deemed to be “the Unmoved Mover”. God could not do anything, because if he did that would imply change. Change would mean that God had moved from some degree of imperfection to perfection, or from perfection to a degree of imperfection. This was thought to be impossible for God who, by definition, always was, is and always will be, perfect. By definition, then, God could not speak or act in any way. One wonders if he could even think!

These three ideas were axiomatic to the Greeks. It is relatively easy to see that the Gospel message would be "foolishness to the Greeks". The Gospel tells of a God who:
1. Acts, speaks, feels, thinks and
2. Who came to earth – not only coming to earth but became a man – a physical being thus corrupt and evil.
3. Created a material world that is fundamentally “good”, not evil.

To Greek thinking this was foolishness.

To counter the influence of Greek philosophy the Church had to do some hard thinking. The crux of the debate centred around the person of Christ because the Christian message meant that, in Christ, God (perfection) and matter (imperfection) came together. The events of the Gospel revealed Jesus as being both God and man – which was an impossible combination if one started from the assumptions of Greek thought. The whole future of the Christian message hinged on resolving the question of who was Jesus.

Many theories were put forward over a 400 year period about the exact nature of Christ. Basically all of the theories were trying to grapple with the concepts of Greek philosophy but many of them fell into one or other of two wrong solutions:
* Either the solution minimised the humanity of Christ in some way so that he was said to be “not really a man” but rather some form of divine being, or
* It minimised his divinity so that he was seen to be “only a man and not really God”.

These wrong solutions were the result of a wrong approach they started with Greek philosophy and tried to reconcile the Gospel to it. Greek philosophy simply did not allow God to come into contact with earth so the reality of one or the other had to be denied. Such an approach never works. When we try to adapt the Gospel to the prevailing world-view we will always go wrong. Instead the gospel must critique the prevailing worldview. This is what happened in the history of the Church.

The whole debate came to a head in the 4th Century through a teaching originated by a man called Arius. Arius had adopted some ideas from Greek philosophy and mythology and grafted them on to the Gospel. Accepting the fundamental dualism of Greek thought, he argued that “Christ was homoiousios with the father” - the word “homoiousios” meaning “of like substance”. Thus his position was that Christ was not actually God in his essential being but was only in some way “like” God.

This amounted to a complete denial of Chrisitanity if followed through. It was axiomatic that “Only God can save” and if Christ was “not really God” then we are not saved by Christ. Christianity would therefore be just another religious myth - and as such could be discounted.

The definitive solution to the problem came at a Whole Church Council at Nicea in 325AD, primarily through the work of a man called Athanasius.

Athanasius recognised that the typical approach was never going to work so he began from a different starting point – not from the assumptions of Greek philosophy but beginning with the work of Christ.

For Athanasius the work of Christ and his person/nature were inseparable and he claimed we could only understand the Christ’s person/nature through an understanding of his work. As a result he arrived at some different conclusions and managed to resolve many of the fundamental theological and philosophical problems of Greek thinking which had eluded resolution for over 900 years.

Athanasius solution was accepted by the whole Church and was enshrined in the creed now known as the Nicene Creed – which is the only Creed which has been accepted by the whole Church, East and West.
This creed was the subject of debate over another 80 years but was finally ratified along with the understanding behind it at another Whole Church Council at Chalcedon in 451AD. By this time Athanasius was dead but three men known as the Cappadocian Fathers took up his position. They were Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, his Brother Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa and their friend Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus. Support came from the Western church through Pope Leo, Bishop of Rome.

The Creed summarises a position known as the Orthodox position as it was the definition of Orthodox doctrine for the whole church.

But we need to remember that there is a particular understanding of the work of Christ behind the words of the Creed.


THE THEOLOGY BEHIND THE CREED:

So where did Athanasius start from?

Over the 2000 years since Christ came, many attempts have been made to explain his work. The Bible itself has many pictures, or metaphors, drawn from daily life and nature, to attempt to shed some light on the meaning of this event.

The problem with this approach is that we tend to end up taking one illustration of the work of Christ as the whole explanation. The result is that other aspects of his work are neglected - we over-emphasise one picture to the detriment of others. As a result we miss out on seeing the real meaning of Christ's work. What we end up with is a perversion of truth through overemphasis.

The Western Church has traditionally taken this approach, and has concentrated on the legal picture of the work of Christ, i.e. justification. This is because the Western, or Latin, Church was influenced greatly by the interests of secular Roman thinkers – who were very interested in law. So the legal picture of Christ’s work, justification, became the dominant idea in the Western Church.

This has left the Western Church – both Catholic and Protestant - with a disturbing tendency to be legalistic at the very roots. This is hardly avoidable if the key concept one is working with is a legal one.

This is very subtle but very real and most of you will have encountered and reacted to this legalism without knowing exactly what you are reacting to - because it is so subtle. At the same time you will probably have fallen prey to the same legalism without realising it. I did, and do, repeatedly.

Because our whole Western society has roots in Roman law and Christian thinking affected by Roman law we tend to trying to solve problems through a legal approach. Most of the rest of the world tends to solve problems through a relational approach, following more of an Eastern Church model, which is covenant based.

The Eastern Church has taken quite a different approach and it is to this that many Western scholars are now returning, sometimes called the "Ontological" approach. This was the approach of Athanasius.

For Athanasius the only way to understand the person of Christ was through his work. The work of the gospel was the key to understanding who Christ was in his person.

Athanasius started from this fundamental point: The purpose of Christ coming to earth was to establish a New Covenant between God and man.

Everything else was part of the process of doing this or a result of doing this. All the other pictures of the work of Christ are explanations of part of this. But this idea, mediation, is the key idea. So the key idea to understand in the work of Christ is the idea of Mediator.

Key Texts:
Hebrews 8:6.
“But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises.”

Hebrews 9:15
“For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance- now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

Now here we need to jump out of our way of thinking into the Jewish mind for a moment to understand what the writer is saying.

When we Westerners hear the word “Mediator” these are the ideas that we come up with:
1. Two parties are in dispute (or, at war) and cannot get an agreement.
2. A Mediator is called in to arbitrate between them.
3. The Qualifications of the Mediator: He must be an independent, neutral, third party (So he has no bias).

So when we hear the phrase “Christ is mediator” what we typically hear, in our heads, is “Christ came as an independent and neutral third party to bring God and Man together”.

It is right here that the Hebrew idea of mediation and ours’ are completely different – right at this point of being an “independent neutral third party”. That is exactly not the idea of Hebrew mediation. And if we don’t see the difference then we totally misunderstand the whole Christian doctrine of the person and work of Christ.

The Bible, or Hebrew, concept of mediation is different from ours’ in that it does not envisage an independent third party bringing two warring parties together rather it sees the mediator as being one who embodies in himself the two parties at war. He is thus not a third party but is, in himself, both parties.

(It is for this reason that no European or American will ever be able to mediate peace between Jews and Arabs. To be able to do so requires the mediator to embody both Jew and Arab. Peace will only come to the Middle East when Jesus returns, because he is the true son of Abraham. As such he embodies all that is Jewish and all that is Arab and so will be able to negotiate peace between them.)

This understanding of Mediation is the starting point of Athanasius’ doctrine and the foundation of the Doctrine behind the Nicene Creed.

The first mediator in the Bible perfectly illustrates this. Adam was created to be priest and king in creation. As priest he partook of the nature of the physical realm – he had a physical body, but he also had breathed into him the Divine Spirit so that he was able to partake of the spiritual realm. In himself he embodied both the physical and the spiritual and so was able to be priest of Creation for God, to be God’s image. As mediator, fully understanding both the physical and spiritual realms, he was appointed king of the earth. He was thus a king-priest.

Since Adam fell there had never been a true mediator, a true priest, until Christ came. This is the message of the book of Hebrews: the Aaronic priesthood, though appointed by God, was actually not up to the real task of Priesthood so God planned to replace them with the true priesthood, of which Christ is High Priest.

For this reason Paul calls Jesus by two significant titles in 1 Corinthians 15:45-47 – the “last Adam” and the “second man”. The title “second man” is now understandable – only Christ and Adam have been men in the true, full sense: uniting as priests, as mediators, in their own person the physical and the spiritual realms in the fullest possible way and hence being able to rule as king. The rest of us are less than men: fallen and spiritually dead. It is only as we receive Christ we become again, “Priests unto God.”

Christ is mediator of a New Covenant between God and man, and through man of all creation. One aspect of his work of mediation was justification, another was reconciliation, another was redemption and so on, but Athanasius saw that the overriding idea that summed up all the other pictures of Christ’s work was that of Mediator. So instead of following the Western Church and seeing what was only a partial picture as the whole and thus missing the point Athanasius made a better, more comprehensive starting point.

So Christ is a mediator, not in the modern, Western sense of a third party drawing two warring parties together, but in the sense that he, in Himself, embodies the two parties of the New Covenant. He is both God and Man; thus he effects the reconciliation within his own being. He is only able to do the work of mediation because he is, in himself, already the mediator, uniting God and man in the one person.

This is the key idea – he can only be mediator because in himself he already embodies both parties. If he did not embody both parties he would be an “independent third party” and thus could not be mediator at all. Do you see the total difference between our idea and God’s idea of mediation?

He came to be mediator between God and man. This purpose governs who he had to be in his person: He had to be both God and man in one person.

This was the conclusion Athanasias came to and it was enshrined in the Nicene Creed and accepted by the whole Church as being the Orthodox and correct way to understand Christ.


CHRIST IS THE POSSESSOR OF TWO NATURES - DIVINE AND HUMAN.


The whole Christian claim rests on the belief that, although Jesus was a man in history, he was also fully God in his essential nature and so was able to perfectly reveal the person and nature of God and to do the works of God necessary for man’s salvation.

Some key Bible texts teaching this understanding of Christ’s nature:

John 1:1-2,14.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning…
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

“The Word”:
* Was “in the beginning”, i.e. before creation. Thus the Word is not created or made but is an eternal reality.
* Is a person – pronouns “he” and “him” are used of the Word to show this.
* “Was with God”, i.e. living in relationship with God for all eternity. This implies that there is a distinction between God and the “Word”. Something cannot be “With” something else if it is the same thing. The Word is somehow different from God.
* “Was God”, i.e. in some way there is an identity between “the Word” and God so that they are the same.
* “Became flesh” i.e. became a man. But “became” implies he existed as a distinct personality before he “became” man.
* “And dwelt amongst us”, i.e. this miracle of God becoming man was observed by other people who lived alongside Jesus in his earthly life, including John himself. These people are witnesses to the fact that it is true.

John is saying here that Jesus is the Word of God is, or the way God reveals himself, or makes himself known. This "Word" is himself actually God, but in some way is different from God and lived with God in eternity but at a particular point in time became a man in Jesus Christ. The “Word” is a Person in his own right; He is a “He”. Thus Jesus Christ is essentially “in himself” God and so is a perfect revelation of the person and nature of God.

John 1:1-2,14 told us that Jesus “was God” and he “became flesh”, i.e. a man. From this we understand that Jesus had two natures – he was fully God and he was fully man. He was not “less than God” because he was a man, nor was he “less of a man” because he was God. Rather both natures were preserved intact in his person.

Philippians 2:5-8.
“(Jesus) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross!”

A. Christ is God.

* "being" – Greek: hyparchon: A stronger form of the verb "to be'.
It means, "Being originally".
It speaks of what was and is unchangeably his – he is God.
* "in very nature" – Greek: morphe: Means "Permanent form, essential nature". His essential nature was that of God. This is a plain assertion of Christ's divinity. It implies that when he became man he did not stop being fully God, divine.

This is how Jesus is the same as God – he is God in his essential nature.

B. Christ became a Man.

“made himself” – the process we are about to read was not something that happened to him outside of his own will and decision. “Made himself” tells us that he actually worked this whole process himself. This implies he existed before the process began, i.e. before he was conceived as a man.
“taking” – implies he existed before he took on human form and that this act of “taking” was a conscious act of free will on his part.
"form/nature of a servant" – Greek: morphe: essential nature - this was not a piece of play acting, but reality - Jesus became truly man in his essential nature. From then on he never ceased to be man. Jesus is still a man today. The incarnation of Christ resulted in a permanent change in the nature and structure of the Godhead (the Trinity).
"Made" - part of Greek verb gignesthai: The idea here is that of "becoming", it describes a changing phase that is completely real but is not part of the original essence of the person. It suggests that humanity was not part of Christ's essence originally, but he assumed it. It does not imply the state is impermanent once it has occurred.
"likeness" - The Greek means "It is exactly the same stuff". It does not mean the English sense of "like but not really the same". Jesus was, and is, a real man in every way.
"appearance" – Greek: skema: The word applies to the outward appearance that can change. Paul is saying here: though Christ's outward appearance changed he remained essentially what he always was - God.

The clear meaning is that:
God, in Christ, became man without ceasing to be God. Christ is now permanently and essentially both God and man.

This understanding that Christ is both God and man was based firmly on the experience of Salvation that the NT writers and early Church Fathers had.
Their logic went something like this:

1. Jesus was and is clearly a man. (This is a simple fact of history.)
2. Only God can save us, i.e. forgive sin (This is an axiom that is beyond debate).
3. But in our experience Jesus saves us from our sins (This was the undisputed fact of their experience).
4. Therefore Jesus is God (The Logical conclusion).
5. Hence Jesus has two natures – he is both God and man.

T.F.Torrance, The Incarnation.
“If, in fact, Jesus is not God then Jesus was acting merely on his own like any other creature. Then there is no salvation in Christ. But Jesus is presented in the Bible as acting out of an unbroken oneness with God, which is the very ground of his significance. He and the Father are one. That is why Jesus’ acts are saving acts: they are divine acts…

“If Christ is not God then he is a mere man on the cross, and God is wholly alone in his deity. We could not believe in such a God who, with the finest man of the human race, did not lift a finger to help. To leave Jesus as only a man on the cross would leave us in darkness and despair with a horrible God. But make Jesus God himself and the whole picture is transformed - then Jesus is the Word and Hand of God stretched out to save us...

“If there was no unity of God and Christ it would mean for mankind there is no real bridge in being or nature between man and God. It would mean that Jesus and all he stands for is irrelevant for the ultimate destiny of man and that the ultimate issues belong to God alone - whose love fell short of identifying himself with us. God may well turn out to be different to what we thought. There would be a dark God behind Jesus we cannot see - a god of fear…

“But Jesus insists that he and the Father are one - the work of Jesus is the work of God, there is no dark hidden God behind Jesus, but Jesus is the open heart of God.”

Christ must be God – otherwise:
1. He does not reveal God. He is just another prophet like the OT prophets. He would thus reveal things about God but God himself would not be revealed. But the Bible claims that God is revealed in Christ.
2. He cannot save – for only God can save. Only God can forgive sin. If Christ was not God then he could not save us from our sins. But the Bible tells us that he saves us from our sins.


It is clear from these verses that Jesus had, in himself, perfectly preserved both the nature of God and the nature of man.

Thus the Bible and the Creeds state clearly that:
Christ is the possessor of two natures - divine and human. He is both God and man


Question: How much of a man did Christ Become?

The Fathers of the Church debated this also. Their response, affirmed at the Church Councils, is clear:

Christ became a real man, fully identifying with the Adamic race in every way

The key word used at Nicea by Athanasius was the Greek word, “Homoousios” which means “of the same substance”. Thus the Orthodox position was that Christ is “of the same substance as the Father”, i.e. he is in his essential nature exactly the same as God.

But Athanasius’ view was that Christ is not only homoousios with God – he is also homoousios with mankind, i.e. he is, in his human nature, authentically human.

Torrance:
"The king pin idea of the Creed was the homoousion - the affirmation of:
(1) The oneness-in-being of the Father and the Son.
(2) The oneness-in-being of the Son with mankind.
Thus the Son as mediator fully participates in both Godhead and Humanity."

Athanasias developed this understanding from the idea of mediation – the mediator has to embody in himself both parties requiring mediation.

Side Note:
The historical debate was thus between two positions:
(i) That of Arius who said Christ was “homoiousious” with the Father.
(ii) That of Athanasius who said Christ was “homoousious” with the Father.

As you can see the difference in Greek is very small – but of profound importance.
The letter “i” in Greek is written simply as a dot, and its name is “iota”. This has led to proverbial sayings such as:
“There is only a dot between them”, or,
“There is only an iota between them”.
These sayings originated from this historical debate at Nicea and generally mean that the difference between two positions is very slight, almost negligible, not worth arguing over. Indeed this was the position the Roman Emperor took several times and as a result Athanasius was banished five times into exile because the emperor though he was just being difficult.
But Athanasius considered that dot to be of fundamental importance – the difference between truth and error. If Arius was right then Christianity was just a myth, but if Athanasius was right then Christ is the power of God to save men from their sins. Eventually the whole Church came to agree that Athanasius was right.


CHRIST TOOK ON (“ASSUMED”) OUR SIN NATURE:

The mediator has to embody in himself both parties requiring mediation.

This leads inevitably to the next question: Who are the two parties that need mediation?
The answer is clear:
(i) God in his perfect holiness and,
(ii) Man in his sin.
It is these two parties that the mediator has to mediate for, thus he has to embrace in his essential nature these two parties: the perfect God and the sinful man.

For this reason Christ took on himself fallen humanity – so that he could reconcile it to God.
St. Athanasius put it this way: “Whatever is not assumed is not healed”.
By this he meant that if Christ had not assumed our fallenness then we could not be healed from it. But we can – and will be – healed from it.

So not only did God become a man; he assumed fallen humanity – he became a “fallen” man. This is totally unacceptable to Greek thinking –God, in Christ, didn’t just take on matter – an idea which would be bad enough – he took on “evil matter”, the fallen, sinful nature of mankind.

About this the Church, since Athanasius, has always agreed.

It is affirmed in Scripture.
2 Corinthians 5:21
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

There is general agreement that this here is not the idea of Christ simply taking the punishment for our sins, i.e. our acts of wrongdoing. It rather indicates he took on the very fallen nature of sin that we need redemption from.


While the Church has agreed Christ took on our fallenness, there has been debate about when he actually assumed the fallenness of humanity.
(I repeat: It is not disputed that he assumed our fallenness. That he took on our fallenness has always been the view of the Church. The only question is this: “When did he assume our fallenness?”)

To this question two answers have been given:
1. The answer of Athanasius and the Fathers at the two Church Councils was that he took our fallenness on himself in the incarnation, i.e. at conception. This is still the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church today. This implies that in his human nature from conception, and right through his life, he (like us) struggled with a fallen human nature.

T.F. Torrance, though a Western Christian, is representative of an Eastern view:
“Since, in Jesus, God has come into our human being and united our human nature with his own, divine nature, then atoning reconciliation takes place within the personal Being of the Mediator. His person and work are one. What he does is not separate from his personal being. I.e. the work of Christ does not take place outside of Christ but within him, within the incarnate constitution of his person as Mediator. Redemption is thus linked with the incarnation...
“In Jesus Christ, the Son of God became incarnate within our fallen, guilt-laden humanity. Through his own atoning self-sacrifice and self-consecration, he did away with our evil and healed and sanctified our human nature from within and thus presents us to the Father as those redeemed and consecrated in himself.”

2. The Western Church, some time after the Councils, moved to a view that said he assumed our fallenness only while he was on the Cross. This would imply that during his life on earth he did not have a fallen human nature. Rather he assumed our fallenness only when he was on the Cross as part of his final Passion. This is the generally held view of both Catholic and Protestant Churches.

Derek Prince, “The Atonement” is representative of a Western View:
“At the Cross an exchange took place, divinely ordained and predicted. All the evil due, by Justice, to come to us came on Jesus so that all the good due to Jesus earned by his sinless obedience, might be made available to us.”


I have not studied when the change in the West came or exactly why. However I suspect the influence of Greek philosophy on Western theologians. The ideas of God held by the philosophers (as listed above) would tend to produce such a shift. One of the facts about the Nicene Creed was that it was – at every point – a contradiction of some tenet of Greek Philosophy. This contradiction centred on Christ: In Christ, the perfect, sinless God took on sinful humanity. Thus Christ is the absolute contradiction of Greek philosophy which said God, being perfect, could not come into contact with corruption. The Fathers at Nicea clearly understood this but Greek philosophy later again infiltrated the Church at several points and this appears to have been one of them. Secular Rome at the time was in the grip of Greek philosophical ideas and they seem to have crept back into the Church at this point.

My own suspicion is that the change in the Western Church came with Augustine, but I have not done enough research to confirm this. Augustine, though a great theologian, was a student of Greek philosophy before he came to Christ. He was a Neo-Platonist. As a Christian theologian his avowed intent was to bring a reconciliation between Christian theology and Platonic thought. The doctrine of Athanasius on the Incarnation would be at odds with Augustine’s Platonic Philosophy and so he would have looked for another solution. The idea that the Son of God would have taken on himself sinful humanity in the incarnation would have been too much for Augustine.

A verse that is relevant to this discussion is:

Romans 8:3
“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ….”

* It is clear here that the issue is our “sinful nature” and that Christ took on himself. This is not talking about sins, i.e. acts of wrongdoing, but about the nature of sin.
* The word “likeness” does not mean the English sense of “like but not the same as”. Rather the Greek means, “It is like, that is, exactly the same as…” So the meaning is that “God …sending his own Son as a sinful man…”
* The language used, “sending”, sounds more like a reference to the incarnation, his birth, his coming to earth, than to the Cross.

It is the view of this author that the Orthodox view (of St Athanasius) is correct, that Christ took on himself our fallen humanity in the incarnation.

If you are in the least interested in this debate the following are some points in favour of this view worth your consideration. But if you are not interested you can skip through them:

(1) Reiteration of a point made in the last chapter.

(i) Jesus, through the miracle of the virgin birth, did not inherit the legal curse of the sin of Adam.

Here is where we need to understand some Jewish background. Two things are important.

* Under Jewish understanding the spiritual inheritance of the child is derived from the mother, but the legal inheritance, of property, comes from the father. Thus a person is considered a Jew, i.e. a child of the covenant, if the child’s mother is a Jew, even if the Father is a Gentile, but if the mother is a Gentile the child is a Gentile, even if the Father is a Jew. This is still true today and is the criteria used for automatic citizenship in the nation of Israel of international Jews.
* Covenants are legal contracts to do with inheritance. Biblically speaking legal inheritances are ALWAYS passed down from the FATHER the SON. The legal responsibilities, privileges and costs come from the FATHER'S family, not from the mother's. Daughters received a dowry, sons received the inheritance.

Jesus, through the virgin birth, had no human father. God was his Father. He was conceived by a creative act of the Holy Spirit. Thus he was not of Adam’s seed, he was indeed “the seed of the Woman”.

Thus there are two effects of the virgin birth, these seem contradictory to us but are not so in God’s economy:
* Jesus inherited his Father's legal rights and position, not his mother's; thus he inherited God’s standing as far as the Law was concerned. The legal inheritance of the broken covenant of Adam was bypassed and Christ was not liable to death under the Law of God. He was guiltless, holy, righteous.
* However Jesus inherited the spiritual inheritance of his mother, a fallen, corrupt human nature in need of redemption.

2. It is hard to imagine how Christ would have taken on our sin nature at the Cross.
For this to have happened it would have had to be by Divine Declaration, i.e. declaration by God the Father that it was so. This seems to be the view of Derek Prince (quoted above).
But the problem with this is that “declaration” is a legal term defining a legal state. Law deals with guilt and innocence, i.e. with actions, but not with essential nature. A legal declaration can never change the essential nature of something. The best a legal declaration can do is proclaim guilt or innocence, i.e. theologically all a declaration about sin could effect is justification or condemnation.
So we are left with the essential nature of Christ remaining unchanged on the Cross – only the guilt of sin is removed. A declaration can never change essence.
But here the words of Athanasius are important, “Whatever is not assumed is not healed.”
I.e. if Christ did not assume, take on our sinful nature then we cannot be set free from it. All declaration does is deal with guilt, so this scenario would leave us with the frustration of never being able to be free from the power of sin.

3. However it is easy to see how if it happened at the incarnation - Jesus would have inherited it from Mary.
Jewish belief is that we inherit our spirituality from our mother, not our father, so this would make sense.
The Catholic Church recognises this difficulty and so has put forward the doctrine of “The Immaculate Conception of Mary”. This is not a doctrine about the conception of Christ, but rather about the conception of Mary. Catholic Theologians have recognised that if she was "fallen" then her children would be also, including Christ. Thus to overcome this they suggest Mary herself was “unfallen” because she was “Immaculately conceived.” The problem with this is that it just pushes the problem one step further back. How was it that she was immaculately conceived? Was her mother sinless? And so the problem reappears.

4. Looking at the question from the viewpoint of Mediation:
It would be no good if Christ embodied God and “non-sinful” man – because:
* No such men exist and if they did they would not be in rebellion against God so would not need reconciling.
* The reconciliation of such “non sinful” men to God would not help sinful men who are lost in their sin and rebellion.
Such a mediation would achieve absolutely nothing in restoring sinful man to relationship with God.

Many Western scholars are coming back to the Eastern/ Orthodox view because it really makes more sense.

The primary objection made by Western scholars to the Eastern view (at least it seems to be to be the case) is that if Christ assumed fallen human nature he also would need to be saved, so how could he be saviour?

Athanasius starts from a different point and says: The Mediator has to embody both parties requiring mediation. This is a necessity of Mediation. It follows from this that if he did not embody sinful man, one party in the needed mediation, then he could not be mediator so he could not save us. So Athanasius would immediately come to a different conclusion from the Western view.

As I have argued above in point 1, there is a difference between the inherited nature of sin and personal acts of sin. It seems to me that the Western argument here is confusing the consequences of personal acts of sin, i.e. guilt and separation from God, with the consequences of inherited fallenness, i.e. personal corruption.

In the final analysis two All Church Councils agreed with Athanasius' position and decreed it to be "Orthodox Doctrine". Opposing viewpoints were deemed to be "heretical". One would have to conclude from this that the Western view is heretical.

The arguments become convoluted and difficult either way. If the question bothers you, you may need to study up on it. My feeling is that the Eastern Orthodox view is correct and so I will proceed with that assumption. As we shall see in later chapters it delivers great depth and beauty to our salvation.


THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR:


Athanasius starting point was the fact of the Gospel – Christ saves us from our sins – this the fact of Christian experience. But he argued from there. He combines the idea of mediation together with the facts of the gospel.

1. Only God can save.

This is axiomatic – only God can save. But Christ saves us from our sins. Therefore he must be God. If Jesus is not God then we are not saved, for only God can save.

T.F.Torrance:
“If Christ were not one with the Father, all he did would have no ultimate significance for us, and God himself would be utterly indifferent to the suffering of mankind.”

2. Only man can be saved.

As Mediator of Salvation then Christ had to take on full human nature. It was the nature of the man who needed to be saved that he has to take on if he was to save him.

The Gospel says:

3. Only God can save, but he saves as a man.

T.F.Torrance:
“We are to understand the incarnation as God becoming man, acting as man for our sake. Not God IN man, but God AS man.”

In Christ, God is not just inside a man (as the Holy Spirit is in us) motivating and directing him. Rather, in Christ, God has become man.

4. Christ became fully man, perfectly identified with us in our humanity, in order to save us.

Christ came to bring into being a New Covenant between God and Man - to re-establish the relationship broken through the Fall of Adam. Being already God he had to take on human nature in order to effectively be the mediator.

5 Christ mediated a New Covenant between man and God, thus making it possible for us to relate to God again.

Here again we have to see the final difference between our view of mediation and the Hebrew/Bible view.

We tend to think of a Mediator as one working with the two warring parties bringing them to an agreement on things that each one of them should do in the pursuit of peace and reconciliation. In this scenario the two parties do the things required to make reconciliation, the mediator himself does nothing. He is only a broker of words.

This is as far removed from the Bible concept of mediation as you can be.

In the Bible the Mediator actually completely fulfils all of the requirements for reconciliation for both parties himself. He does the work for them. In actual fact the warring parties do nothing to create the reconciliation – they simply receive it as a gift from the mediator. It is for this reason that he has to embody in himself the two warring parties. Only such a mediator can fully understand the point of view of both parties in such a way as to make proper allowances.

Hebrews 4:15.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without sin.”

He was already God so he fully understood the “God side” of the equation.
He became fallen man so that he might understand our side of the equation.

Things were required of man – but look at God’s grace:
Covenants have two parties and both parties have things they must do to make the covenant operational. God could do the things necessary from his end, but man was incapable of doing the things required of him from his end. Thus God himself became man to do the things required of man to fulfill the covenant terms and conditions.

T.F.Torrance:
“For Athanasius, the mediating action of Christ was twofold - God to man and man to God, and that both divine and human activity must be regarded as issuing from one person. In order that there be perfect mediation it requires that both sides in the mediation be fully reconciled and fulfil all that is required of them. Because man is already fallen, God took on himself fallen humanity in order that he might fulfil our part of the mediation, thus providing a perfect salvation for us.”

Athanasius:
“As Mediator, Jesus ministered the things of God to man and the things of man to God. Christ fulfilled both the divine and human sides of the covenant.”

Now we understand this to be true: the New Covenant was completed by Christ. It is completed, sealed - Christ has fulfilled all of the requirements of the Covenant both from the divine side and the human side. The New Covenant was established by Christ 2000 years ago – it is fully operational. He did it all. It required absolutely nothing from any other man to make it fully operational. It requires nothing from me – or you - to make it operational for us.
The Covenant is already sealed. It was sealed by Christ acting as God for God and acting as man for man. The human responsibility for completing the covenant was undertaken by him. He was our representative. He acted for us.

Jesus thus fulfilled the covenant from both sides - he is “our God”, and he is “God's people.”
We shall look at some of the things each party had to do in later chapters but here we will close with an astounding implication of this:

The Covenant is complete, sealed, all that was required of both parties, God and man, to make the covenant fully operational s done by Christ as Mediator.
This means for us to enter into this covenant relationship with God there is nothing more that we need to do – in fact there is nothing we can do – to make this relationship work. All the work of reconciliation has been done.
This means that for us to enter into this covenant relationship we can only receive it as a gift.
And to maintain the relationship all we can do is receive it as a gift. This is faith – to receive from God, through Christ, a relationship with him that we have not had to do anything to obtain.

This is Athanasius’ position and it was accepted by the whole Church as being the correct doctrine.



(T.F.Torrance has written several books on this subject including “Trinitarian Faith”, “The Mediation of Christ” and “The Incarnation”. For the life of me, I can’t remember where these particular quotes came from. However I warmly recommend his books.
“The Mediation of Christ” and “The Incarnation” are quite readable.
“Trinitarian Faith” is quite heavy going, but well worth the effort.
Amazon usually stocks them.)