Jesus, the Reconciler
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 8 December 2013
Selected Scriptures
Well, Christmas is near, do we all understand what it means that Jesus is the Messiah? It was John the Baptist who declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, was the Messiah. It is a term used in the Old and New Testament, to describe the coming of the Redeemer and the Savior. At His trial before He was killed, the High Priest confronted Jesus and he said to Him, “Tell us whether You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
The word “Messiah” in Hebrew is the equivalent of the word Christ in the Greek; it’s the same concept. But the Hebrew word “Messiah” means to smear oil on and it spoke of someone who is officially anointed. Who was anointed? Well, it was an official ceremony by which someone fulfilled a special mediating role for God in the theocratic kingdom of Israel. Kings, Priests and prophets were anointed.
To mediate means to act as a middle man between man and God. The king ruled for God among men. The prophets spoke for God to men and the priests provided the necessary sacrifices to bring man to God. They therefore all were mediators but all of them were limited in their mediation. All of them were sinful. And the promise of the Old Testament is that there would come the perfect King, the perfect Prophet and the perfect Priest.
He would be the anointed One, the Mediator. As a prophet, He would speak for God. As a king He would rule for God. And as a priest, He would redeem for God. That is why we call these mediating offices because they stand between men and God. So that’s the office of Messiah. And now the question is who does it all. Who is this person?
Well, the Jews asked that throughout their history, as the prophecies of the Messiah unfolded and are recorded in the Old Testament. They ask the same question, “Who is it of whom the prophets speak?” In 1 Peter 1:10-11 it says that the prophets looked into what they wrote to see what person and what time was meant when they were writing as they waited for the coming Messiah.
What kind of person can be the perfect Mediator between God and man? That person must be fully God to represent God, and fully man to represent man. The Old Testament described the details of this person, even telling us something about the lineage and the event by which the person would arrive. The Messiah will be a son of Abraham in regard to lineage and a son of David which gives Him the royal right to rule.
How would we know when the right son of David who was also David’s Lord arrived? In Isaiah 7:14 we read that prophetic promise of God, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign, you will know.” How? “A virgin will be with child and bear a Son and she will call His name Immanuel.”
We know who that is because in Matthew 1:21-23 it says, “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22 So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
That has never happened in human history before, the birth of Christ, and has never happened since the birth of Christ. And when He was born He is the Son of David but He is David’s Lord. He is the Son of Mary, but He is Mary’s Lord and Savior. He is the Son of Abraham, but He said in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He is Immanuel, God with us. This is the Lord Jesus Christ.
What did He do to mediate? The angel says that His name was to be Jesus, “Jehovah saves,” for He will save His people from their sins. He comes to redeem His people. He is the anointed, mediating Redeemer. He will offer the sacrifice that redeems and He will gather into His eternal kingdom all those who belong to Him. But what does He do to reconcile sinners?
Jesus came to bring the Word of God and to rule as God. But He cannot rule over them unless they are reconciled. So His primary task is the ministry of reconciliation. Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” His ministry is a saving ministry. Those He reconciles to God will receive the full understanding of His revelation.
So while He is the perfect king and prophet, His mission has to be priestly, He must make to God an acceptable sacrifice for sin. None of the animals that were sacrificed throughout all of the history, going all the way back to Genesis 4, could provide salvation or atonement. None of them could reconcile a sinner to God. They only pointed to the one who would offer a full and final sacrifice.
What priests did in the Temple was to bring the sacrifices of the people before God and ask God for forgiveness for the people who were truly penitent. But none of those sacrifices took away their sin. They only symbolized the one, true and final sacrifice that could and did forgive their sins.
Jesus is not only the priest who offers the sacrifice, but He is the sacrifice as well. He will save His people from their sins by offering Himself to God as a sacrifice. The Old Testament clearly expected this. In Genesis 22 we have Abraham taking Isaac up to the mountain and God tells him, “Take Isaac up to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering.”
Everything that Abraham is promised lies in the life of Isaac and yet God tells Abraham to kill Isaac. But as an obedient Abraham goes there believing that if he has to sacrifice Isaac, the Lord provides for him in Genesis 22:13, “a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up in the place of his son.” Here is the first substitutionary atonement in clear and graphic terms.
Listen to Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” Atonement is in the blood, in the death of an animal as a substitute. But the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away sin, that’s what the New Testament says. In fact, God condemns sacrifices if your heart is not right.
The Old Testament anticipates that salvation will come through a substitutionary sacrifice offered to God as an atonement. Isaiah 53: 4-10 says, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
“7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief when You make His soul an offering for sin,” Reconciliation then comes through a substitutionary, vicarious atonement of an acceptable, final sacrifice. And that is why John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God. Everybody brought their lamb and God also had a Lamb, the lambs that the people chose couldn’t take away sin, but only God’s Lamb could.
In Hebrews 9:11-12 it says, “When Christ appeared as a high priest,” so He is the ultimate, anointed priest “of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is not of this creation. 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood He entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption.”
That is absolutely necessary. The following verses 13-14 say, “If the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ who, through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
Hebrews 9:15, “And for this reason Jesus is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” In other words, the death of Christ is the sacrifice that saved the people who lived before Christ, as well as those after Christ, salvation is based solely and only on His sacrifice.
Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Even though it was so clear that God required a sacrifice, why didn’t the Jews get it? Because sinners want to believe that they have within themselves the goodness that can satisfy God. And so every system of religion in the world believes in human works except Christianity and the Gospel.
The Law is holy, just and good, as represented in the Mosaic prescriptions that were given to Moses in Exodus 20. It is the Law of God. It is a reflection of God’s nature. It is holy, just and good. But no one can be saved by following the Law. Why ? Let’s look at Galatians 3:10, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse.”
Deuteronomy 27 says, if you don’t keep the Law perfectly, it curses you. The Jews believed they could, as every other religion does. But the Law mandates perfect performance. And the Law refuses to accept good intentions and noble motives. The Law refuses to accept a good try. The law is also unrelenting. There are no days off, none. You have to live perfectly every moment every day without change.
And the Law demands the severest penalty. You are cursed, headed for death, both physical, spiritual and eternal. And the Law has no power to help you. The Law gives no second chances. The Law doesn’t balance the good against the bad. The Law therefore holds out no hope of forgiveness, no hope of reconciliation. In fact, the Law stirs up sin. Galatians 3:13, one of the great verses in all of Scripture says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law.” How did He do it, “By becoming a curse for us.” That’s vicarious, substitutionary atonement. He took our place. He’s not only the priest that makes the offering, and He is the offering as well.
A man is justified, Romans 3: 28 says, by faith in Christ. That becomes the theme of the New Testament gospel. That’s the mission of Messiah. Any understanding of Christ other than that will not save, cannot save. We have to understand that we have been redeemed. 1 Peter 1:18-19 says, “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
2 Corinthians 5:18-21, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
What should we do in the world? We tell people they can be reconciled to God. That’s our message. So we have a ministry in the world and that ministry is really fulfilled when we preach the message about reconciliation. God reconciles sinners to Himself through Christ, verse 18, through His Messiah. How, by not counting their trespasses.
How can God not count trespasses against sinners who are guilty? Every sin that’s ever been committed in the history of the world will be punished, every single one. Divine justice demands it. How then can God punish every single sin committed by every single person and still save people? He has to punish someone else for their sin. And that’s what He did when He punished Christ as His Lamb.
The way to understand that is on the cross God treats Jesus as a sinner so He can treat you as a saint. On the cross, God treats Jesus as if He lived your life so He can treat you as if you lived Jesus life. And He had to live a perfect life as well as die a substitutionary death. If He hadn’t lived a perfect life, He could not have died as God’s unblemished lamb.
God justly regarded Adam’s sin to apply to the whole human race because the whole human race was represented in Adam. And so He justly imputes or regards Christ’s obedience to apply to all who believe in Him. Adam’s disobedience was not confined only to Adam; it spread to all who were in Adam. And so Christ’s obedience was not confined to Christ; it spreads to all who are in Christ.
How did God affirm the perfection of Christ? By raising Him from the dead. Romans 1:4 says, “He is declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus, Messiah, our Lord.” The resurrection affirms Messiah’s identity, His atonement, His exaltation, His authority and His intercession for us in heaven all affirm the perfection of His substitutionary death, which was the capstone on a perfectly righteous life.
So let us check all that the Old Testament says specifically about the Messiah. Was He Jewish? Was He a direct descendant of David? Whose public ministry began about 483 years after the Babylonian captivity of the Jews? Was He born in Bethlehem? Was He born of a virgin? Did He claim to be the Son of God? Was His coming preceded by a powerful messenger preaching repentance? Was He renowned for His wisdom, His teaching, His power, His righteousness? Did He perform miracles? Who entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey being proclaimed king? Who was scourged, beaten, spit on, hated, despised, tortured and killed? Who was pierced, crucified? Was He numbered with the criminals? Did He die in the place of sinners? Who was buried in a rich man’s tomb? Whose clothing was distributed by the casting of lots? Who rose from the dead and became salvation to the world?
In John 10:24, the Jews gathered around Jesus and were saying to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me.” Jesus is God and proved it again and again and the proof is still here today. Let us pray.