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“Your Go-Between”
1 Timothy 2:3-6

 

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost—September 22, 2013

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Our text is from today’s Epistle Reading: “God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.”

We use the word “mediator” mostly in the sense of a “negotiator,” like the mediators who are often appointed to resolve disputes between labor and management.  The job of THAT kind of mediator is to help the two parties bargain with each other, to meet each other halfway and come to a compromise.

But THAT kind of mediation is impossible in the dispute between us and God, which is called sin.  For God is perfectly holy and he refuses to compromise.  He refuses to bargain, he refuses to meet us halfway.  He demands nothing less than absolute perfection.  The Lord declares in Leviticus, “You shall be holy, just I, the Lord your God, am holy.”  Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  The Apostle James expresses the absolute perfection that God requires of us this way: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”

It is not good enough just to sincerely try your best; it is not good enough just to do better than someone else you think is a worse sinner than you.  God requires nothing less than 100% perfection; not 50%; not 90%; not even 99.9%.  Absolute perfection, a standard none of us could ever attain, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

But that’s not the end of the story.  “God our Savior, who wants all men to be SAVED and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  God is not going to lower his standards, God is not going to compromise, but he does have a way out, he does have a plan to save you.  “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men.” 

God sent his own Son to be the Mediator with humankind.  But, our Mediator settled our dispute with God—our sin—not by negotiating, not by getting God to compromise or come halfway.  Our Mediator settled our dispute with God by himself fully satisfying God’s demands on our behalf, in our place.

I’ve only had one experience with a mediator.  After Jacob was born, we had a dispute with the Missouri Synod’s health plan.  For some strange reason they refused to pay for Jacob’s five days in neonatal intensive care, and you can imagine how much that amounted to.  After a year of going back and forth, the Synod appointed a mediator.  During a three-way conference call with the health plan and the mediator we were offered a 50% settlement, which we accepted very reluctantly, because that still left us with a big bill we’d have to pay.  But, then right after the conference call the mediator, a lay member of the Missouri Synod and wealthy businessman from Pennsylvania, himself CEO of an insurance company, called us back to tell us that he personally was going to make up the other 50%.  We protested, but he insisted, and the next week a check from him arrived in the mail.

I’ve told this true story to several people and they all say, “I’ve never heard of a mediator doing anything like that!  Paying for it himself?”  But, that is exactly what your Mediator with God has done for you, paying for your sins himself—and not just 50%, not just half the bill to earn your salvation, but 100%, the entire bill for all your sins.

That Good News is the main message of the New Testament, in Ephesians: “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as an offering and sacrifice to God . . .  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”  In 1st Peter: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross.”  In Hebrews: “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  And in today’s Epistle Reading: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.”

What does that last phrase mean, “the testimony given in its proper time”?  What does Christ’s death testify to?  Christ’s death testifies to the love of God for the world, as Paul says in Romans, “God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Christ’s death testifies that God our Savior does indeed want all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, as the Apostle John says, “He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  Christ’s death testifies that your sins are all forgiven, as Revelation says: “He loved us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.”  Christ’s death testifies that you are now right with God, on his account, as Paul says in Romans: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”  Christ’s death testifies that you shall have eternal life, as Jesus declares: “I am the resurrection and the life. Who believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live.”

“God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.”

Amen.

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