Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Three
THE MEDIATOR
Scripture Reading: verses 25, 26
WHOM GOD BOTH SET FORTH TO BE A PROPITIATION THROUGH FAITH IN HIS BLOOD, TO DECLARE HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS THAT ARE PAST, THROUGH THE FORBEARANCE OF GOD; TO DECLARE, I SAY, AT THIS TIME HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS: THAT HE MIGHT BE JUST, AND THE JUSTIFIER OF HIM WHICH BELIEVETH IN JESUS.
Here the sinner is on trial. He has been proven guilty and God is setting forth a means by which the sinner may be justified and yet the righteousness of the court upheld.
These thoughts are brought to a climax in these two verses. Justification means clearance from guilt – in a word, “Charges dismissed.” Justification is presented by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Here is the attitude: sin has separated the criminal from God, who is on the judge’s throne. The distance of the separation is a moral chasm; a great spiritual gulf separating the sinner from God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who is righteously set forth as a meeting place, One who can bridge the gap and bring together an offended God and offending sinner. It is the problem presented to the mind of Job, when he asked the challenging question, “How can a man be just with God?” Job prayed that he might have “a daysman,” a mediator, an intermediary who “might lay his hand upon us both.” Paul tells us in the First Epistle to Timothy:
There is one God, and one mediator [daysman or intermediary] between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
This is the crux of the situation here in Romans 3. The great gulf fixed between the sinner and God is bridged by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation or the meeting place, whereby the sinner and the Judge are brought together righteously. It is an intricate but very interesting problem solved.
The Lord Jesus is the One who can lay His hand on both. He can reach up and lay His hand on the Godhead, because He is Himself God. In his Gospel account, John sets this forth in unequivocal terms: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” Then he goes on, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The Lord Jesus Christ is God. He is a Person of the Godhead, as truly Deity as the Father or Holy Spirit. Therefore, He can lay His hand on the Godhead without doing violence to the majesty of the Divine Throne. But the Lord Jesus is more than that; He is also the Man, Christ Jesus. Therefore, being Man He can lay His hand on man without destroying him, and this He has done at the Cross of Calvary, where He took man's place – that He might become the sinner’s Shelter. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ is righteously the Mediator or meeting place between God and man.
Some think that the Lord Jesus is that One who, merely by way of example, reconciled the sinner to God. However, the Lord Jesus is not simply a Person who, by His sinless life, shows us the way back into the presence of God. Rather, by His sinless life He shows us how impossible it is to ever get back into God’s presence by our own sinful efforts. Observing the Lord Jesus as a Man here on earth, displaying those unspeakably precious attributes of holiness, loving-kindness, and purity, instead of finding Him as a leader to take us back to God, we see that by contrast His very life condemns us, showing how impossible it is for us to follow in His steps by our own efforts. The Lord Jesus is not a Mediator by His sinless life; He is a Mediator between God and men by His death on the Cross. In this verse we have the propitiation, not through faith in His life, but through faith in His blood. We are brought nigh to God through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; we are made nigh by His blood. When the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, He took our place and there He bore the penalty of our sins. He shed His blood on the Cross as a token, a proof of the fact that He died in our stead. Now that He has borne the penalty, and is risen from the dead, He can conduct us back into the presence of God by virtue of what He has done on the Cross. That is what we have in this verse:
Whom God hath set forth, a meeting place, through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God.
There we see the vast ocean of mankind’s iniquity down through the ages, from Adam all the way to the Cross of Calvary, and we see how God by His forbearance could tolerate man as a rebel before Him. The reason? He was looking forward to the Cross, when full atonement would be made so He could righteously forbear those sinners, offering them forgiveness on the ground of sacrifice. That is why Abel brought a sacrifice to God, and why God’s people down through the centuries were forgiven by the sacrifices of bulls and goats brought to Jehovah. It was not that there was virtue in those sacrifices, but they were symbolic of the great sacrifice of Christ at Calvary, and God accepted them on that basis.
But it is not only that God forbore past sins. Paul here says,
To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
In other words, a righteous foundation has now been laid before the august throne of Almighty God, whereby as sinners we may stand on the ground of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ – cleared from all guilt because Jesus the Lord took our place on Calvary’s Cross.
On a hot summer day a weary traveler was trudging across the great prairies in central Canada. He suddenly saw on the horizon a great wall of fire rolling toward him, driven before a relentless wind. It was burning everything in its path, and there seemed no way of escape; it was impossible for him to run before it. Then he suddenly remembered he had a match in his pocket. He took it out, struck it, and applied it to the dry grass at his feet. Immediately it caught fire and it too began to roll forward until it also became a great conflagration driven before the wind, leaving behind blackened and burned out stubble. The wayfarer marched forward on the burned ground. He was safe because he was walking where the fire had been. So it is with the true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian walks where the fire of God’s judgment has already passed over. This happens because we abide in Christ – the One who bore the stroke of that judgment on Calvary’s tree. Therefore, God is just and the Justifier of true believers in Jesus Christ.
