Reasons for This Universality of Prayer in the Relation of All Went to God and Christ
1 Timothy 2:5-7
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;


For there is one God, one Mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus. The salvation of men cannot, therefore, be to us a matter of selfish indifference.

I. THE RELATION OF ALL MEN TO GOD. The unity of God is consistent with all differences of dispensation. "There is one providence belonging to the one God." The apostle tells the Romans that, "as God is one," he is the God of the Gentiles as well as the Jews (Romans 3:30). There is, indeed, "one God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:4, 5). The apostle also says, "The mediator" (Moses) "is not of one" - one seed, i.e. including Jew and Gentile, for Moses had nothing, to do with the Gentile - but God is one, in relation to Jew and Gentile (Galatians 3:20). In these passages the apostle sets forth the universality of the gospel offer. But in the text he infers the universality of the Divine good will from the provisions made for man's salvation.

II. THE RELATION OF ALL MEN TO THE MEDIATOR. "One Mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus."

1. There is but one Mediator. The Gnostic mediation of angels is, therefore, excluded (Colossians 2:15, 18). Likewise the mediation of saints and angels, as held by the Church of Rome. This idea is dishonoring to the only Mediator. There is no Scripture for the distinction made between a mediator of redemption (Christ) and mediators of intercession (saints and angels).

2. The Mediator was man as well as God.

(1) He was truly man, in opposition to the Docetic notion that he did not possess a real human nature.

(2) He was God as well as man in his Mediatorship, in opposition to the Roman Catholic theory that he only mediated in his human nature. The design of this error is to make way for human mediators. It is said to be absurd to conceive of Christ as God mediating between sinners and himself.

(a) We answer that the Divine nature operated in Christ's priestly work as well as the human, for "he through the eternal Spirit" (his own Spirit) "offered himself to God" (Hebrews 9:14).

(b) If he did not mediate in his Divine nature as well as his human nature, he could not have been in any sense Mediator of the Old Testament saints, because their redemption was completed before he came in the flesh. The human nature is naturally emphasized because of the work of suffering and death which is here ascribed to him.

3. The passage does not imply that Christ was not God. He is elsewhere frequently called God and true God, but here there is a necessary reference to the catholic doctrine of a subordination of office.

4. The reference to the mediatorship brings up the idea of a covenant between God and man. Christ is the Head of humanity, the new Man, the Lord from heaven, able to restore the lost relationship between God and man.

5. The mediatory agency is wrought through Christ's sufferings and death. "Who gave himself a Ransom for all."

(1) This proves that all the blessings of redemption come from the death of Christ, not merely from his incarnation.

(2) He voluntarily gave himself as the Victim, yet he is "God's unspeakable Gift."

(3) His death was strictly substitutionary. The words of the apostle resemble those of our Lord himself - "he gave himself a Ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). He was thus the Substitute contemplated by the apostle as the Messiah who had obtained from the Father the heritage of all families and nations of the earth, not Jews alone, but Gentiles.

III. THE TRUE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE. "The testimony to be borne in its own times."

1. Thus the death of Christ is the great message to be carried to all the world. It is not his birth, or his example, or his truth, but, above all, what is the completion of them all - his death on Calvary.

2. It is to be preached in all times till the second coming of the Lord.

3. The apostle's own relation to this testimony. "Whereunto I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I speak the truth, I lie not); a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth." Thus the universality of the remedial scheme is represented by the very mission of the apostle himself. He was "a herald" to proclaim the glad tidings here; "an apostle" - let men say what they will, he is an apostle, therefore the surpassing importance of his message - and "a teacher of the Gentiles" - to mark the world-embracing character of his gospel - "in filth and truth," to signalize respectively the subjective and the objective elements in which his apostleship was to find its appropriate sphere. - T.C.



Parallel Verses
KJV: For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

WEB: For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,




Only One Mediator
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