Perhaps the most famous line in either First or Second Timothy comes in 1 Timothy 2:5, “There is one God, and so there is one mediator between God and man, namely the man Jesus Christ.”
We can easily see the importance of this line, but when we consider it within the context of Paul’s letter to Timothy it can be hard to see how it fits in with the rest of the argument. Yes, Christ is our mediator with God. He has reconciled us to God. He has made peace between us and God. Important? Yes. But is it central?
Paul’s letters are his instruction to Timothy on how to handle human relationships within the church. Paul puts it bluntly in 1 Timothy 3:15 “[I am writing this to you] so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church.”
What does Christ as the one mediator between God and humanity have to do with how we conduct ourselves in church?
As it turns out, this little line is the heart of all of Paul’s instructions to Timothy. The key is to see that Christ’s mediation is not only vertical (me and God) but also horizontal (me and you).
Think of 1 John 4 says about the relationship of the “vertical” and “horizontal”: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). There is no vertical dimension of Christ’s mediation without the horizontal dimension.
T.F. Torrance was the first theologian to help me begin to think through what it means to say that Jesus is the one mediator between God and humanity. Torrance calls it “the double movement” of the incarnation: Jesus is (1) God to us and (2) us to God.
But it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who helped me think through the horizontal dimension of Christ’s mediation.
In Life Together he begins by contrasting two different kinds communities, or two different ways of relating to others. There is the Self-centered relationship/community (marked by what he calls “Human/Emotional Love”) and the Christ-Centered relationship/community (marked by “Spiritual Love”).
This is the passage from Life Together we discussed in class:
“Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ…We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
“Among human beings there is strife. ‘He is our peace’ (Eph. 2:14), says Paul of Jesus Christ. In him, broken and divided humanity has become one. Without Christ there is discord between God and humanity and between one human being and another. Christ has become the mediator who has made peace with God and peace among human beings. Without Christ we would not know God; we could neither call on God nor come to God. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way to them is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother one another. Now Christians can live with each other in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one. But they can continue to do so only through Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus Christ are we one; only through him are we bound together. He remains the one and only mediator throughout eternity.”
“In the self-centered community there exists a profound, elemental emotional desire for…immediate contact with other human souls…This desire of the human soul seeks the complete intimate fusion of I and You…in forcing the other into one’s own sphere of power and influence.”
“Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons. It loves them, not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself. It wants to do everything it can to win and conquer; it puts pressure on the other person. It desires to be irresistible, to dominate.”
“Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ; it serves him alone. It knows that it has no direct access to other persons. Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my emotional desires. All this may instead be hatred and the worst kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ…Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like.”
“Because Christ stands between me and an other, I must not long for unmediated community with that person. As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone. However, this means that I must release others from all my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love. In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepare eternal life…I must allow them the freedom to be Christ’s. They should encounter me only as the persons that they already are for Christ [or: I must meet the other only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes]. This is the meaning of the claim that we can encounter others only through the mediation of Christ. Self-centered love constructs its own image of other persons, about what they are and what they should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person as seen from the perspective of Jesus Christ. It is the image Jesus Christ has formed and wants to form in all people.”
“[Spiritual love] will not seek to agitate another by exerting all too personal, direct influence or by crudely interfering in one’s life…It will be willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them. It will respect the other as the boundary that Christ establishes between us; and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together. This spiritual love will thus speak to Christ about the other Christian more than to the other Christian about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ.”
The question for us is whether we will allow Christ to mediate our relationships—not only with our enemies, but also with those closest to us. Will we seek direct and unmediated contact with them or will we trust them to Jesus’ hands? Will we grow impatient with them or trust them to Jesus’ timing? Are we so invested in our ideas of what we want them to be that we cannot release them to Jesus and allow him to make them what he’s called them to be? Will we interrupt his work in their lives by crudely interfering or will we give Jesus the space to shape and form them?
Only when we allow Jesus to mediate our relationships with others will we ever really know them because he is their life
