Rev A W MacColl1
1The subject of last month’s section of this paper was Christ taking the office of Mediator. This section completes the paper.
Christ’s Activity in His Humiliation and Exaltation. In this section we will consider how Christ the Mediator acts as Prophet, Priest and King – both before and after His advent and both “in His estate of humiliation and exaltation”. Christ was constituted Mediator of the covenant, the Surety of sinners, the King and Head of His Church in the purpose of God in a beginning-less eternity before the foundation of the world. He began His activity as Mediator of the everlasting covenant, however, immediately upon the entrance of sin into the world.
In His humiliation, He came to preach glad tidings of good things concerning the salvation of sinners as the great prophet predicted by Moses in Deuteronomy 18. As the Lamb of God, He was bearing our sorrows and carrying our griefs throughout His sojourn among men, His priestly work of atonement culminating in His once offering up Himself a sacrifice to satisfy God’s incensed justice on Calvary. Louis Berkhof makes the important point that God had to be reconciled to His people before His people could be reconciled to Him. This could only be effected by the priestly sacrifice of the Mediator of the new covenant, who rendered perfect obedience to God’s law and suffered the penalty due to sin in the same nature which had sinned. Yet we must remember that during His humiliation, even when He was taken from prison and from judgement, Christ the King of Glory was still ruling the universe. His hand was as firm in upholding all things then as it was previously to His coming into the world. He could say to Pilate, “Thou couldest have no power against Me except it were given thee from above” (Jn 19:11).
In His state of exaltation, Christ executes His prophetic function through the agency of His Holy Spirit poured out on the Church, and working through the inspired Scriptures. He is also a priest upon the throne of glory, having entered into heaven with His own blood, “having obtained eternal redemption” for His people. He “ever liveth to make intercession” and, if John 17 is an indication of the nature of Christ’s requests for His people, then what a glorious matter His interceding for their every need must truly be!
As Alexander Stewart of Cromarty says, “Enumerate and combine everything that you can conceive to stand in the way of man’s salvation, and, if you can, yet add another, it will be but another proof of Christ’s ability to save; for He can overcome it. The guilt of sin, the justice of God, the power and the ceaseless and merciless wiles and accusations of Satan, the power of man to hurt or seduce – all these He can meet. The curse, with all its benumbing, blinding, perverting effects, the love of backsliding, His power can deal with. How gloriously does the everlasting love of the ever-living Saviour, in the covenant, well ‘ordered in all things and sure’, and which has been satisfied by His own blood, triumphantly overcome every difficulty!”2
2Stewart, The Tree of Promise, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1999 reprint, pp 106-7.
He is the King of kings and, for the sake of what He accomplished as Mediator in His humiliation, a glorious reward is not only His present enjoyment now but there is a greater display of glory and honour yet before Him. Paul refers to this present and future exaltation of Christ in Philippians 2: “Wherefore God . . . hath highly exalted Him . . . that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”.
Related to this is the fact that Christ is an all-conquering Mediator. The effectual application of redemption is an absolutely essential part of His mediation. He administers the covenant of grace among sinners of mankind generally through the gospel but, in doing so, He confers the saving benefits of His purchase infallibly and powerfully to all those for whom He died, “For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will” (Jn 5:21).
As The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, He doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same” (8:8). Christ not only made salvation possible but effectively and certainly saves His covenant seed, “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). And this certainty of Christ’s purchase, and the certainty of its application, is remarkably helpful to souls seeking the Saviour and to believers seeking greater assurance of salvation. For, if Christ is a Saviour who certainly saves His people, then this can give sinners every confidence that, if they believe in Christ, they will assuredly be saved. This truth helps to furnish the gospel call with power and encouragement when it is received by faith.
Communication of Attributes. We will refer to two important aspects of the subject before concluding this study. The first is what theologians refer to as the “communication of attributes”. This profound and glorious truth is expressed by the Westminster divines in this way: “Christ in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself: yet, by reason of the unity of the Person, that which is proper to the one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the Person denominated by the other nature”.3
3Westminster Confession of Faith 8:7.
Hence Paul refers to God purchasing the Church with His own blood, and hence the Son of man is the One who not only came down from heaven but who “is in heaven”, even while holding converse with Nicodemus by night on earth (Jn 3:13). Here we observe the importance of holding to the unity of Christ’s person to understand fully how He functions as Mediator. The whole value of His work is founded on the measureless dignity of His divine person. Hence all that He suffered in body and soul, for example, receives its infinite worth and efficacy by virtue of the union subsisting between the humanity and divinity in the one Person of Christ, the hypostatic union.
The Church of Rome teaches that Christ only acts as Mediator in the human nature, and furthermore that His sufferings were largely in the body and not of a spiritual nature. This, of course, helps Romanists to intrude human mediators into the work of salvation. Furthermore, Lutherans hold distinctive and erroneous views on this subject of the communication of attributes. They assert that the human nature of Christ was exalted to receive divine properties and attributes. This is taught in order to maintain that Christ’s humanity is present under the elements of bread and wine everywhere the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is observed. But the Reformed view is that Christ acts according to both natures as Mediator with each nature doing what is proper to itself and yet that each mediatorial action can be attributed to the whole Person of the Mediator.
The Larger Catechism comprehensively explains the point: “It was requisite that the Mediator should be God that He might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to His sufferings, obedience, and intercession; and to satisfy God’s justice, procure His favour, purchase a peculiar people, give His Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation” (Ans 37).
“It was requisite that the Mediator should be man, that He might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling for our infirmities, that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace” (Ans 38).
“It was requisite that the Mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should Himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person” (Ans 39).
The Future of the Mediatorial Kingdom. The final point is the teaching of 1 Corinthians 15:24-8 on the offering up of the Mediatorial Kingdom by Christ to the Father at the Great Day. Broadly speaking, there are two different emphases in interpreting this very difficult passage. One view is that Christ will not exercise the functions of the Mediator in eternity. John Owen, for example, held that, when His work of mediation between God and sinners is perfectly fulfilled and ended, “then shall all the mediatory actings of Christ cease for evermore. For God will then have completely finished the whole design of His wisdom and grace [in redemption]. Then will God be ‘all in all’.”4 This position was also broadly advocated by Witsius, Dick, Shedd and Kuyper.
4Taken from chapter 19 of Owen on The Person of Christ and quoted in Shedd, Doctrinal Theology, p 689, with interpolations by Shedd, Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003 edn.
On the other hand, R L Dabney, following Turretin, asserts a continuation of Christ’s mediation after the resurrection, albeit a strikingly-altered mediation as a result of the completion of the work of redemption. Berkhof agrees with this, positing the eternal nature of the order of Melchizedek as proof that the mediatorial office is of eternal duration. He argues that 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 “evidently does not refer to Christ’s spiritual kingship, but to His kingship over the universe”.5
5R L Dabney, Lectures in Systematic Theology, Zondervan 1975 edn, pp 551-3; L Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Banner of Truth, 2000, p 410.
In securing the blessings of His atoning death and revealing the mind of God to His people in glory, we fully agree with Fisher’s Catechism that Christ will act as King to His people for ever: “In the relation in which He stands to the members of His body: He will continue for ever to be the King, Head and Husband of the Church triumphant, the fountain of all blessing, and happiness to them, and the bond of their perpetual fellowship and communion with God (Ps 48:14; Hos 2:19; Rev 7:17)”.6
6James Fisher, The Assembly’s Shorter Catechism Explained, (Berith Publications, 1998 edn), p 156.