Stuck in the Middle FOR You

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1Tim 2:5).

Have you ever worked hard to get something but suddenly realize you’re talking to somebody who didn’t have the power or authority to give it to you? Maybe it was a job. Maybe it was money. Maybe it was tickets. Maybe it was getting you OUT of a ticket! Somehow, someway you came to believe they held the keys and could give you what you want. At the moment of truth, they can’t deliver the goods.

Here in his first letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul tells his spiritual son that only God can deliver salvation and there’s only one Man who can deliver your request. “For there is one god, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (v5). Don’t make the mistake of hoping anyone or anything else can come to the rescue. Don’t make the mistake of asking anyone or anything else to make it happen. Only God saves. Only Christ is in the position to help. Jesus is the God-Man in the middle.

This is a big deal because Paul has just instructed Pastor Tim to have the Ephesian megachurch pray for everyone they know using every kind of prayer imaginable (1Tim 2:1). Specifically, lift up all of the governmental leaders to the Lord (1Tim 2:2). Remember, we’re talking about praying for a ruthless dictator named Nero! So I don’t want to hear any complaints from Democrats about praying for Republicans and vice versa. There’s a two-pronged goal for these prayers. One, so we can be free to be good citizens. Two, so the Lord might save our leaders. God “desires all people to be saved” (1Tim 2:4). Amazingly, that includes politicians!

When it comes to salvation, there’s only One who can pull it off. God. Take a quick look around. Who do you see? How many of them can save you from your sin and yourself? None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. God and only God. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Dt 6:4). When it comes to creating, running, ruling, reigning, sustaining, and saving, there’s only One qualified. The list is short. God. Party of One. 

The authors of Scripture don’t want us to miss the fact that “there is one God” (v5). Don’t be fooled my imitators. Don’t fall for fakes or phonies. “The LORD is God; there is no other besides Him” (Dt 4:35). He’s the only One worthy of our worship. He wired us to worship Him. But the problem is we end up putting other stuff on the throne instead of God. For some of us, it’s a substance, a chemical, or a destructive habit. While incredibly hard to kick, it’s pretty obvious shooting black tar heroin is not exactly worshiping God. You do realize that, don’t you? Whew. 

Too often, it’s not the blatant sin that takes us down. We repeatedly make the mistake of turning the good things God gives us and making them objects of worship. Our spouse. Our kids. Our job. Our income. Our home. This is all good stuff that comes from our very good God. It’s been said that anytime we take a good thing and make it a god thing that’s a bad thing. That’s a simple explanation of idolatry. That’s why God put this in the pole position of His Top Ten. “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex 20:3; Dt 5:7). 

He’s the only One qualified to receive our worship. He’s the only One powerful enough to come to our rescue. God uses the prophet Isaiah to drive the point home. “I, I am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior” (Is 43:11). “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is 46:22). “And there is no other god besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is 45:21-22). Nobody else can save you or me. Period.

There’s only one way access our one and only God. “There is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (v5). Paul uses a Greek word here (Gr. mesites) describing an intermediary, someone who intervenes to restore peace, a friendship, or ratify a covenant. This is a communicator between two parties who are communicating. An arbitrator. A peacemaker. The term literally means someone in the middle. Someone in between. He’s the God-Man in the middle. To paraphrase Stealer’s Wheel, Jesus is stuck in the middle FOR you.

Jesus mediates our relationship by living the perfect life God demanded which we failed to live. He steps in to die the death we deserve which we should have died. He rises to a new life for us which we don’t deserve. He does for us what we could never dream of doing for ourselves. We desperately need someone to step into our situation. And that’s Jesus. He’s the God-Man in the middle.

The writer of Hebrews throws this word around as he explains the connection between the Old and New Testaments. Jesus oversees the new ministry which is WAY better “than the old as the covenant He mediates (Gr. mesites) is better, since it is enacted on better promises” (Heb 8:6). Christ is our arbitrator and “the mediator (Gr. mesites) of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15; 12:25). Jesus Himself left no doubt when He said He’s the only route to God. “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn 14:6). If you’re keeping score at home, absolutely nobody finds God the Father without going through God the Son. Goose egg.

But the radical Rabbi/Carpenter wasn’t done mediating once He headed home to heaven. At this very moment, He’s doing what He does best. Reconciling. Mediating. Paul gives a peak inside the heavenly throne room where Christ is sitting right next to His Heavenly Dad “interceding for us” (Rom 8:34). There He is again. Smack dab between you and Yahweh. Stuck in the middle FOR you.

Paul leaves no doubt about the identity of our Middle Man. “The Man Christ Jesus” (v5). As a baseball fan, it reminds me of Stan the Man Musial. But the apostle isn’t sitting in the bleachers pulling for his favorite ballplayer. Curiously, there’s no article “the” before “Man” in the original language. So a good way to read this is probably “Christ Jesus, Himself a man.” 

The big idea is to remind us that Jesus is still fully man even after His ascension. He didn’t drop off His humanity at the coat check table just before lifting off. He’s 100% God while at the same 100% man. That adds up to 100% Savior. No 50-50, but 100-100. Bad math but GREAT theology! To help wrap their heads around it, smart dudes call this the Hypostatic Union. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

By taking on humanity, the Son of God became the perfect Savior. The perfect Mediator. The perfect High Priest. According the the author of Hebrews, the God-Man in the Middle is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He resisted every kind of temptation you and I would ever face. Unlike you and me, Jesus never stumbled, never slipped, never sinned (Heb 4:15). Because of that we confidently “draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16). All because Jesus was stuck in the middle FOR you. 

Oh, the Humanity!

“And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

“Oh, the humanity!” Herbert Morrison shouted these words into his radio microphone as the Hindenburg crashed and burned on May 6, 1937. He struggled to find the words to describe the disaster which killed 37 people in Elmhurst, NY. From his prison cell in Rome, Paul uses his pent to paint a picture of the earthly life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The Rabbi/Carpenter from Galilee sure looked like every other person. Yet there was something VERY different about Him. He was incredibly humble. He was obedient to His Father. And He paid the price for that obedience with the most humiliating form of execution the world has ever known. Oh, the humanity!

The Apostle Paul is writing to his friends in Philippi. Despite being behind bars, you can’t wipe the smile off his face. He’s stoked about what God is doing in and through the goofy little church he planted back in Macedonia. He has incredible joy in the joint! In the middle of his excitement, Paul breaks out into song. Yeah, you read that right. A song. A boatload of really smart folks believe Philippians 2:6-11 are the lyrics to a popular worship song in the early church. It’s a modern day preacher quoting a line from “The Stand” in his message. Since Hillsong United wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye, the apostle drops these lyrics to make his point. 

In the previous verses, Paul pulls back the curtains of heaven and gives us a picture of what folks call the preincarnate Christ (Phil 2:6-7). We learn that the Second Person of the Trinity has been around forever. The Son of God is seriously old school. Before anyone on earth ever laid eyes on Him, He was in heaven, just as much God as His Dad and the Spirit. But there was a crisis in God’s Creation. We rebelled. We broke His perfection. Something had to be done. Somebody had to come to the rescue. That Someone is our Savior Jesus. He dropped all the rights and privileges of being Almighty God and came to serve and save us. That’s what happened in eternity before Christ jumped into the river of time in a place called Palestine.

Here Paul uses one line of lyrics to sum up Jesus’ earthly life. “And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (v8). One sentence to sum up a sinless, selfless life of sacrifice. If you squint really hard, you can see teenage girl named Mary and her husband Joe the Carpenter giving birth to their first Child in a cave behind the Motel 6. He would grow up to be known as Jesus. Humble. Obedient to His heavenly Dad. But eventually crucified as criminal. If you’re looking for a thumbnail summary of Christ’s life on earth, you’ve found it here in verse 8. Oh, the humanity!

The first thing we see about the Son of God is He was “found in human form” (v8). Paul uses a Greek word (Gr. schema) that means outward appearance. The ESV translators have already talked about Jesus in the “form of God” (Phil 2:8) and “taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). But this is a different term that describes what can be known about a person by just looking at them. At first glance, you’d think Joe’s Son is just like every other young Jewish man in Israel at the time. Can we stuff a sock in the picture of Jesus as with blonde hair and blue eyes in the middle of a brown world? There’s absolutely no basis to believe He looked any different than any other Jewish guy at the time. He was “found in human form” (v8). That would be Middle Eastern form. Jewish form. Oh, the humanity!

Jesus may have looked like every other man but He was so much more. “He humbled Himself” (v8). The original language (Gr. tapeino’o) describes how the Second Person of the Trinity readily and willingly got low. Nobody forced Him. Nobody tricked Him. He didn’t draw the short straw. He WANTED the assignment to come to our rescue. Paul’s point is that the One who is 100% God has done something miraculous. He’s now become 100% Man at the same time. The math makes my head hurt. The truth makes my heart soft. Picture the one and only Son of God leaving the heavenly palace and making a swan dive into the dumpster fire of our sin and rebellion here on Earth. It’s almost impossible to wrap our minds around what He left to where He went. Christ willingly left a perfect paradise to walk with us here in our broken world. To save us, He became one of us. “He humbled Himself” (v8). Oh, the humanity!

Jesus added humanity to His divinity in order to live for you and me. The apostle talks about how our Savior was “obedient” (v8). The Greek word here is hupekoos, which means to listen for and respond to a command when called. Picture a butler waiting for the knock at the door. The Son is happily obedient to His Father. As a result, He lives the life of obedience and sinless perfection that you and I couldn’t. Jesus is turning around all the crap that started in Eden when Adam bought the lie of a satanic snake. “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one Man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). But His obedience didn’t stop there. Jesus was “obedient to the point of death” (v8). He died the death for our sin that we should have died. In the hours before His own murder, the Lord pleaded with His Dad. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Mt 26:39). If there’s no other way, He’s ready and willing. There was one and only one way. And that road ran right to Skull Hill. Oh, the humanity!

Jesus added humanity to His divinity in order to die for you and me. The radical Rabbi/Carpenter died the most humiliating death our planet has ever seen, “death on a cross” (v8). The Romans didn’t invent crucifixion but they certainly perfected it. It was horribly painful. It’s where we get our word “excruciating.” It was hours if not days of torture. Bloody. Suffocating. If that’s not bad enough, it was meant to embarrass and shame the victim. Romans saved this form of execution for the worst of the worst. Rebels. Revolutionaries. Terrorists. It was a very public deterrent to anyone who got the bright idea of trying to overthrow the empire. One look at the dead Messiah from Galilee would certainly send a chill up the spine. 

But the Bible doesn’t stop after Philippians 2:8. Sunday’s coming. Something crazy is about to happen. Somebody is about to come walking out of the graveyard. Oh, the humanity!