For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
God’s lofty holiness and our creaturely sinfulness require a mediator for personal and friendly relations between Him and us. His infinite transcendence and our earthly finitude are a constitutional chasm. His absolute righteousness and our moral turpitude are a relational chasm. The resulting spiritual separation makes vain any manmade attempts to bridge the gap. Besides, such attempts would be an insult to the Deity and an arrogant boast on our part. We would then act as if He is quite like us and that we can and may approach Him on our own.
The biblical gospel is a revelation that God has already given the one Mediator we need. Wherever He is known and trusted, sinners have entered God’s favor and enjoy His fellowship.
1 Timothy 2.5 follows exhortations that we Christians ought to pray for everyone, particularly governing authorities on earth, so that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty (vv. 1–2). It pleases God that we should pray His blessings upon such without distinction because of His gracious disposition toward our fallen race (vv. 3–4).
Next is this grand proclamation of the one Mediator which is simultaneously exclusive and inclusive. It is exclusive because all the other “mediators” relied on for salvation throughout the world are unworthy of the complete and implicit trust that properly belongs only to the one Mediator of the Christian message. It is inclusive because this reality implies that He is the very Mediator which the whole world needs, and by which, believing upon Him, any and all sinners may return to God.
The context of this verse also strongly implies that our prayers to God must be offered though this Mediator and Him alone. Note its three parts.
A Theological Explanation: One God
The Greek could be rendered literally, “For one God [is],” consisting of a word signaling an explanation, a word of numerical significance, and the word for the Deity.
The word signaling explanation indicates that this statement is related to what has just been stated in verses 3–4, that “God our Savior will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” Why this universal interest in the salvation of all men? Because only this God really exists and has relations with all men, and He is a gracious God.
A fierce debate still rages concerning the question of whether “all men” means all without exception or all without distinction. In the first case the statement would refer to God’s general benevolence, and in the second, to His particular saving purpose. Both sides ought to acknowledge the merits of the other. God created all human beings in His image and extends His fatherly care to them, and He shall finally save the human race as a whole. There is a biblical universalism which is not incompatible with the strictest notions of God’s sovereign grace. It is also true that God has chosen some people from eternity to shine everlastingly for the praise of His mercy, while, according to His sovereign decree, others will forever glorify His severe justice (Rom 9.22–24).
But the main point of this first phrase, “there is one God,” is to stress the doctrine of absolute monotheism and its universal relevance to humanity. Because there is only one God, the true and living God who is Creator and Redeemer, other gods being mere idols, we Christians should pray for all classes of people, from kings on down.
A Soteriological Revelation: One Mediator
The reality of God’s being is perfectly evident in the things He has made and in the heart of man (Rom 1.19–20), but the way of salvation requires special revelation (cf. 2LCF 1.1). This statement is an example: “There is one mediator between God and men.” Just as the pagans believed in many gods, so they relied on many “mediators,” a term common in Hellenism, Gnosticism, and the mystery cult of Mithras. Even the Jews thought of angels as “mediators.”1 The worship God appointed for the OT included many priests exercising a mediatorial role, but their legitimacy was only temporal and typical, finished when the antitype finally appeared.
Note well the forcefulness of this assertion about the absolute singularity of the Mediator between God and men. The parallel use of the word “one” powerfully suggests that the reality of one and only one Mediator is every bit as true and important for us to know as monotheism. Any idea of other mediators is just as heretical as the notion of other gods. We must pray and find salvation for ourselves and others through this Mediator alone.
A Christological Celebration: the Man Christ Jesus
Who is this absolutely unique Mediator? Who is it in whom the transcendent God and the creaturely man are found together? Who secures reconciliation between the holy God and the vile sinner, corrupted and condemned? It is “the man Christ Jesus!” He alone is God and man, the anointed Savior. Only He “gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (v. 6). We must pray through Christ alone or we cannot hope for God’s favor. Only this Christ who sympathizes with us in our weaknesses as a fellow human being is also God incarnate, omniscient (He knows us), omnipresent (He is with us), and omnipotent (He can save us).
How could we stand in need of any other mediator, even of the “lesser and subordinate mediators” of Roman Catholicism, including “the Blessed Virgin . . . as mediatrix par excellence”?2 We must not be deceived by any religionists who put obstacles in our way to Christ and imply that Christ is not sufficient as our Mediator with God. Dead saints can neither hear prayers nor grant them, but Christ “is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7.25). Ω
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1 Mounce, W. D. (2000). Pastoral Epistles (Vol. 46). Dallas: Word, Incorporated, in loc.
2 Hardon, John (1981), The Catholic Catechism, Broadway: Doubleday, p. 166.