But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24, NKJV).
The Biblical definition of mediator is "one who intervenes between two, either in order to make or restore peace and friendship, or form a compact, or for ratifying a covenant." The Lord Christ aligns with this definition perfectly.
He is the Intercessor, the Divine Representative of man to God and God to man. As High Priest, as He who always lives to make intercession for us, He fulfills, and is the epitome of, that ancient priestly role, established by God before the foundation of the world for precisely that purpose.
And He intervenes in the affairs of men and demons, redeeming the first from the influence and captivity of the second.
And He is the sacrificial barrier between the righteous wrath of a holy God, and the inexorable sinfulness of fallen mankind utterly deserving of that wrath.
On the Cross, He reconciled God to humanity, paying the eternal price of sin in propitiation to an eternal God, restoring the broken fellowship between creature and Creator, making peace, and confirming the new contract between God and His creation - the New Covenant based on faith instead of unattainable performance.
And it is to this selfless Mediator that the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to come, not as criminals (though we surely are), not as penitents (for the price has been paid), but boldly, as beloved children, as siblings and coheirs.
Without His finished work on the Cross, we would be forever hopeless. Thus, coming to Him in faith is the only means of escape from a destiny befitting our intrinsic evil, yet simultaneously beyond comprehension.
The unbelieving world hates Him. It must, for everything about Him convicts the world of sin, and unequivocally demonstrates the existence of a holy God to whom we are accountable; a God who so loved the world that He sacrificed His Son so that we might escape the wrath He himself will pour out on a rebellious world populated by incorrigibly rebellious subjects.
Our Mediator made possible the abrogation of the old contract between mankind and God, filled with impossible clauses of performance-based life and earned blessing, and in its place, ratified that New Covenant, based solely on faith.
Without that we are all doomed forever to an unthinkable place of punishment that never ends. Without that it would be infinitely better never to have been born.
This truth is utterly repugnant to those who reject Christ. The doctrine of Hell is deemed primitive, unhealthy, depressing, and a deletorious remnant of a less-enlightened archetypal history.
But if it is true, and it must be for God to be who He has revealed Himself to be, then faith in Jesus is the only way of escape.
Jesus is the only hope for an existence filled with banal and senseless evil. His coming again is the only thing that will make right all that is, and has been, so terribly, terribly wrong.
He is the only way of salvation. He is the only one that gives meaning and purpose to the horrors of this life, and provides each one of us with the means to attain beauty from ashes, to make our valley of tears an eternally life-giving spring.
Look around. Look into the past. If mankind is your only hope, then in order to experience any joy at all you must either bury your head deeply in the sands of denial, or cast aside all reason and rationality, and trust that we ourselves have the power to make this world a better place - to so transform the hearts and behavior of our fellow citizens that all propensity for evil is eradicated, or at least, prevented.
History, and the likely course of future events, argues against that hope.
But if the Lord Jesus Christ is your hope, the One who demonstrated His love toward us by taking upon Himself the penalty we so richly deserve, even while we were yet sinners, then despite the sometimes impenetrable darkness of earthly existence, there is joy inexpressible and hope unquenchable.
Not because of us, but because of Him.
