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"It is good for me," said the Psalmist, "to draw near to God." It is the idea of all true religion that it can be nothing but good to get near to God — the nearer the better; that he who gets near Him finds peace, blessing, satisfaction of all wants; that away from Him is darkness and unrest. But why have a Mediator at all? Why have any one standing between you and God, instead of going direct to Him, and dealing with Him, without any Mediator? Just because our nature needs the Mediator. We cannot understand the mysteries of God, which pass our understanding. Out of the limits of our capacity, and out of the infinitude of God, springs that need of One who shall stand between Him and us, revealing the Infinite to the finite, the Divine to the human. And He who does this is called here emphatically "the man Christ Jesus"; "for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?" And thus, in order that the life and character of God should be understood by us, they must be revealed to us by a man; by one in human form, and living under human conditions. It is only thus you can come to a real knowledge of any person. You must learn his character. Is it hard or tender; generous or narrow; wise or foolish? And so your only true knowledge of the living God must be a knowledge of His character, of His life, of His ways. And as these, the life, the character, the ways of the infinite and eternal God are far above, out of human sight, they must be brought near enough for us to see, revealed to us by a Mediator who is Himself a man, the man Christ Jesus. A God thus revealed we can know, can understand. This is the idea of the mediation of Christ; the revealing of what otherwise would be unknown and unknowable in God; so that we, seeing His face and understanding His character, may lose the ignorance that is full of darkness, and the fear that is full of torment, and may draw nigh to Him with true hearts, and in the full assurance of faith. The end was spiritual perfectness; the Church was but the means, and only useful as it served the end, and subject to such changes as might make it serve the end better. But the belief, in which many people seem to find the essential nutriment of their spiritual life, is altogether different from this. To them the Church is all in all, while Christ recedes into the distance; and where the Church is not He is not and cannot be. They do not deny that He is the original source of Christian life and all its blessings; but to this truth they add the error, that these blessings can reach the individual soul only through one channel of sacraments and ministries. They thus interpose between God and man a certain mediation of the Church's, apart from which they do not recognize any reality of Christian life at all, thus drawing across the Holy of Holies a veil as thick as that which was rent in twain on the day of the crucifixion. Be on your guard lest you should ever learn to regard any system, or creature, as possessing a right to come between you and your own Lord and master; or as having the power to add to or to take from what He has done, and is doing, for you as the one Mediator between you and God. Now, you may see another example of the tendency. I speak of — to substitute a lower mediation for the mediation of Christ, in the idea which many have (especially persons in whom feeling is stronger than reason) as to the relations which should exist between them and those who occupy the position of their spiritual guides and instructors, and whose duty it is, as such, to guide and instruct them. There is a strong desire in all minds, and particularly in minds of that class, for sympathy where feeling is deeply stirred, for counsel where the highest interests are involved; and there is, too, a strong inclination to depend on and defer to those, with whom that sympathy and that counsel are found. Sympathy is good; but it is dangerous, when in order to evoke or to secure it, you. unbare the secrets of the soul, and have to relate, even to the friendliest and justest ear, the trials and difficulties which you find besetting your inner life. A human director or guide or counsellor is safe, not because he fills a certain office and is ordained to a certain ministry; but when his character is such, that you know by the instinct of the spirit that there is in him the mind of Christ, and that communion with him is communion with one who is near the Master, and who will help to bring you near. Unless he is this, he can do nothing for you; he cannot bring you nearer to Christ, he can only stand between Christ and you. Now, in these instances (and more might be mentioned) we see the one tendency, to push Christ away, and set something of our own, a church, a system, a sacrament, a priest, a teacher, in the Mediator's place; so that the truth becomes obscured to us that the life of every human soul is wrapped up in its direct communion with its God, through faith in God as Christ revealed Him, and service of God after the pattern of the Divine life of Christ.

(R. H. Storey, D. D.)

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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,