Scripture Introduction

October 12, 2008 Sola Christos 1 Timothy 2:5-6

[Scripture Introduction] Author of The Time Machine and The War of the World was British writer H.G. Wells. (1866-1946)

He said this about Jesus Christ: "I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."

This morning we are going to examine the doctrine of Sola Christos. The verse I want to direct your attention to is: 1Timothy 2:5-7. The context of this verse is prayer. Paul tells Timothy to be in prayer for all things all the time. The reason we can pray to God is because we have a mediator.

[Scripture Reading] Listen now to the words of Holy Scripture found in 1Timothy 2:5-7

[Prayer for illumination] Let’s pray.

[Sermon Introduction] They were neighbors, friends that felt like family for fifteen years. Suddenly, a rift divided them, cutting off all communication and leaving feelings of anger, criticism, sadness, and vulnerability. At the heart of the matter were a troubled fifteen year old and his friend who agreed to burglarize his neighbor’s home. Sylvia Yoder recalls the story. “His parents were devastated. When I first met the fifteen year old and his parents he told me details of the incident with his mother filling in. The two of them struggled to say what they wanted in different ways, some-what frustrated with each other's attempts. What was important for one was not for the other. The mother clearly wanted me to understand the situation and especially that these neighbors, the victims, had been their friends for a long time. When I first met the victim family, parents of two young sons, they talked about the long friendship. They were angry about the incident, felt betrayed, violated, and wondered why it had happened. Feelings of guilt for calling the police were tempered by a need for justice and retribution. Thoughts of "I feel sorry for him" gave way to frustrated anger and threats of lawsuits. A lawyer was consulted. Five months of total breakdown in communication resulted. Police suggestions to the offender not to talk to the victims and victim vulnerability seemed to place a brick wall between the two homes. I was privileged to observe healing and reconciliation between the two families after weeks of on/off attempts to bring a joint meeting together. The meeting lasted one and a half hours with intense sharing of feelings and mingling of tears. I attribute the healing of these families to their desire to restore peace between them. Their efforts and attempts to understand each other yielded fruits of satisfaction and forgiveness, a springboard of good will toward each other evidenced in genuine hugs voiced with "It's been a long time.”

Sylvia Yoder was a mediator. Her job is to re-establish communication between two parties so that healing can take place.

The role of a mediator is to rebuild the relationship between two parties.

MW defines the verb mediate as “to interpose between parties to reconcile them.” Is this not the heart of salvation- that we are reconciled to God? Paul tells Timothy that there is one mediator, Jesus Christ and only He can reconcile us to God. This is the sum of the doctrine Sola Christus. Sola Christus does not mean, “All I have to do is believe in Jesus to be saved!” Nor does it mean “I have to trust in Jesus alone.” Both of those things are true. We do have to believe in Jesus, and we do have to trust in Jesus Christ alone in order to be saved. But that is not what this doctrine is about. Those things are true because this doctrine is true.

Sola Christus is a doctrine not about what we have to do, but it is a doctrine about what Christ has done! That is why this was such an important doctrine during the reformation. The Roman Catholic Church somewhere in its history assumed the right to dispense grace. The Roman Catholic Church believed they held the keys to the treasury of merit. The idea being that the church was like a giant bank where the extra merit earned by the saints was kept. And if you were sinful and in need of grace to cover over your sinfulness, well the church could dispense some of this 'grace' to you! This is in part the theology behind the sale of indulgences.

Therefore, if you needed grace, you went to confession. You went to one of the priests and asked them to intercede for you. You asked the priest to dispense some of the grace that other saints had merited to you. And the reformers said, “Whoa, that’s wrong. We’re not saved by our merit or the merit of the saints, but by the work of Christ alone.” The reformers preached that only Christ is the mediator between God and man, not the pope and not the church.

But why is this doctrine important for us today especially living in a culture where the church has little to no influence in the community? During the reformation, the church was a powerful force to be reckoned with. But that is not the case today. So why are we going back to this doctrine of Sola Christus?

The answer is because human nature hasn’t changed. We still need a mediator and that is what this doctrine of Sola Christus is about. We need a mediator to stand between us and God. Rom 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Isaiah 64:6 “All our righteousness is like filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:7 “There is no one who calls upon your name.” Psalm 14:1 “There is none who does good.” Isaiah 53:6 “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

Do you get the picture? When we stand before God, without a mediator, what he sees is a despicable criminal foolishly intent on worshipping and serving ourselves. James 4:4 and Rom 5:10 both indicate that without a mediator we are enemies of God and are therefore objects of His wrath.

That’s why we need a mediator. That’s why we need someone to stand between us and God. 1Timothy 2:5 tells us that there is only one mediator between God and man and He is Jesus Christ.

There are lots of people in this world who don’t want to hear this. One, they don’t think they need a mediator. They think that for some reason concocted in their own sinful, fallible minds that God will let them slide because they are “not that bad” or they are “not as bad as other people.”

I’ve got news for you, sinfulness is not relative. It is an objective reality of all mankind. Ain’t no-one perfect. But even if people will admit that, they still don’t want to hear about needing Jesus as a mediator.

Because if they admit that Jesus is the only mediator, then they have to say that the Bible is right and all other religions are wrong, and everybody who practices other religions is therefore going to hell.

So I can avoid sending everyone to hell if I just deny Jesus as the only mediator. People don’t want to hear that they need a mediator, but if they do admit it, then they don’t one there to be just one. The problem with that argument is that there is only one person who is qualified to be a mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ. And why is He qualified.

1) Jesus is qualified because He is perfect. He is sinless. Hebrews 4:15, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Jesus never sinned. But if He had, he would have needed a mediator too and therefore couldn’t serve as our mediator. Jesus was perfect, so He didn’t owe God the Father anything.

2) The second reason only Jesus is qualified is because He is the God-Man. He is the Incarnate Deity. That is, Jesus is fully God and fully man.

In Job 9:30-33 Job is lamenting the fact that even if he were to wash himself with snow and cleanse his hands with lye, he would still be a sinner and God would plunge him into the pit. Why, because as Job says, “He is not a man, as I am a man, that I might answer Him, that we should come to trial together.” Job says there is a gulf between us that I can’t cross.

Then Job says in verse 33, “There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.”

That is what a mediator does. He lays a hand on the shoulder of both sides and enables conversation between the two.

This means that the mediator must be able to connect with each side. This is what only Jesus can do because only Jesus is both God and man. There is ample evidence in the scripture to prove that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. I don’t need to spend the time this morning proving that. But that is why Jesus alone is qualified to be our mediator. This is what the doctrine of Sola Christus teaches us: 1) We need a mediator. 2) Only Christ is qualified to be that mediator.

I don’t know how many of you picked up on this, but earlier I made the comment that the reformers taught we’re not saved by our merit or the merit of the saints, but by the work of Christ alone. Our salvation was accomplished by Jesus.

As the mediator, Christ had to do something if anyone was to be saved. So what did Christ do? What was his mediatorial work?

Traditionally, Christ’s work has been understood or explained in terms of three offices.

They are the Prophetic office, the Priestly office, and the Kingly office.

Louis Berkhof says this, “As a prophet, He represents God with man; as a Priest He represents man in the presence of God; and as King He exercises dominion and restores the original dominion of man.” That is the work of Christ as a mediator. If you deny any one of those offices you end up with heresy and a Jesus who can’t save.

[MP1] Prophetic office. So what was the work that Jesus accomplished as the highest prophetic official? The office of prophet meant that a person functioned as God’s mouthpiece. A prophet was God’s spokesman. This is why we read in John 1 that Jesus is the Word made flesh. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father except through me.”

Jesus reveals the truth about everything. And He alone reveals the truth about God and man. We live in a relativistic society. A postmodern society where people say truth is relative. Philosophers and pseudo-intellectuals claim there is no absolute truth. To which I want to respond, are you absolutely sure? The questions raised by people today regarding the existence of absolute truth are nothing new. When Pilate interviewed Jesus, Jesus made the statement, “I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

And Pilate responds, “what is truth?” Pilate was a postmodern and didn’t know it. But he also needed someone to tell him the truth, just like we do. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately sick; who can understand it.”

We need a mediator. We need someone who can tell us the truth about who we are and who God is. If we don’t have a mediator- if we don’t have a prophet- we will make up all sorts of crazy stuff.

And because Jesus is perfect and without sin, and because Jesus is fully God and fully man, only He is capable of revealing what is true and what is not.

So Jesus was the perfect prophet.

[MP2] Priestly office. When people think of Christ as a mediator this is what most frequently comes to their mind. Jesus was and is the ultimate High Priest.

The reason for that is obvious to people who have been in conservative churches. Because we are sinners, we need someone who could pay the penalty for our sins.

Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. This is what drove the sacrificial system of the OT. Sin causes death. In the Garden of Eden, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree or they would die. Death is the penalty for sin. The role of the OT priests was to make a sacrifice, or kill an animal as a substitute for the sinner.

Thus Christ came to offer a sacrifice as a substitute for the sinner. We could go to any number of passages to make this point, but Hebrews 10:11-14 is one of the best.

“Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

Very clearly, Christ is a priest who offered a sacrifice that saved His people from their sins. But, Christ did more than make the sacrifice. He was the sacrifice.

The reason the blood of bulls and goats didn’t atone for the sins of the people is because they were not an adequate substitute. For someone or something to be an adequate substitute, there were several requirements, one of which was that the substitute had to volunteer. They had to be a willing substitute and the bulls and goats certainly didn’t volunteer willingly. Then there was another requirement. The substitute had to have the same nature as the offender.

There are 4 reasons why Christ was the perfect and only substitute. 1) Christ willingly laid down his life. “They don’t take it from me, I lay it down.” 2) Christ had a human nature. 3) Christ was perfect so he didn’t owe a debt himself. 4) He was God, and therefore was capable of bearing the infinite wrath of God.

This is why Christ and not the animals could be an effective substitute.

So Christ executed the office of priest perfectly as only the God-Man could do. [MP3] Kingly office. Jesus executes the office of King.

Again let me quote Berkhof, “In general we may define the mediatorial kingship of Christ as His official power to rule all things in heaven and on earth, for the glory of God, and for the execution of God’s purpose of Salvation.

When God created Adam and Eve, He placed them in the Garden of Eden with the instructions to fill the earth and subdue it. Humanity was to rule over creation as God’s representatives. However, when Adam and Eve sinned, humanity stopped governing creation as God’s representatives and began ruling the earth as usurpers, and we claimed the throne for ourselves. We lost the ability to rule righteously.

Therefore, Christ, as a king, is at the same time ruling over creation, and restoring his people in such a way that we can rule just as we were originally designed.

1 Corinthians 15:22-27 picks up on this very thing.

In Matthew 28:18, which we know as the Great Commission, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Jesus is the king and he is sending out His people to expand his kingdom on earth. And in Matthew 16:18 he told his disciples that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His kingdom.

And because He is the God-Man, his kingdom shall have no end. Jesus was king at creation, He was king during the fall, He was king during his incarnation, and He will be king for all eternity. And as King, He is restoring His people to their place as representative kings who will rule righteously over creation.

This is the threefold office of Christ: Prophet-bringer of truth, Priest-bringer of salvation/eternal life, King-bringer of purpose. All three things were corrupted and lost at the fall. Only someone who had a hand on the shoulder of God and the shoulder of Man could reconcile Man to God. Only a mediator between God and Man could restore the relationship between God and Man.

[Conclusion] This doctrine of Sola Christus is still vital for us today. Christ hasn’t ceased being the perfect Prophet, Priest and King. He is still proclaiming the truth through the operations of the Holy Spirit. He is still our defender, our attorney before God when Satan brings accusations against us. He is still ruling over creation and making sure the world doesn’t fall apart.

Jesus Christ is still the only mediator between us and God. Only Jesus can reconcile us to God.

He is still working. He is still holding the office of Prophet, Priest and King.

[Explain how Jesus is still all three]

As I have concluded the previous two sermons, I will end this one. Do you practice sola Christus?

Do you treat Jesus as the only mediator between you and God? Do you go to Him for the truth? Do you go to Him to confess your sins? Do you go to Him when you are in dire need?

You will act upon what you truly believe. If you believe Sola Christus, you will live it out. You will trust in Jesus alone to be your arbiter before God. You will cry out to Him. As Paul says, pray without ceasing. You will trust that He is the King and that He is controlling all things both good and bad. You will accept as true Romans 8:32 which says “All things work together for the good of those who love Him.”

Are you practicing Sola Christus?

This sermon delivered by Rev. Brent Bergman October 12, 2008, 10:45 am service