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One God and One Mediator


          For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles. (I Timothy 2:5-7)

          Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

          It doesn’t matter whether you’re conservative or liberal, you’ve gotta agree that…
          “The science is settled…”
          ______ is divisive. We need to come together.
          “We can’t all believe your way.”
          “All truth is relative.”
          I’ve heard the quotes and paraphrases above. Sometimes they’ve been said to me. Often, the people who have said them have come from one philosophical perspective, but not always. In one sense, they believe that their beliefs are irrefutable. That’s not unusual. It may even be wise. Would you really believe something you suspected wasn’t true?
          One problem is that two of the statements contradict the rest. Three statements assert a specific objective reality. Two reject any objective reality. If we can’t all believe a specific way, then it does matter what philosophy we espouse, and we don’t have to agree that… If we can’t all believe “your” way, then we cannot come together because we will be divided in the matters where we can’t believe the same things. If the science is settled, all truth can’t be relative, and if all truth is relative, science can’t be settled.
          Another problem with these statements is that they are unidirectional. What we’ve “gotta agree,” and the matters on which science is settled, and the means of our coming together are always the positions held by the world. The things we can’t all believe “your” way about, and the truth that is all relative – the reality that is rejected is the reality that the Bible teaches.
         Today’s passage includes one of those rejected ideas. There is one God and one mediator between God and man. Now, people like to say that all religions are the same and all roads lead to God. But they aren’t and they don’t, but all do not treat Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man. At the moment, I can’t think of any other religion in which there is a mediator between God and man. Oh, there are prophets like Mohammed or Buddha, but they don’t mediate. When you come before God for judgment, you’re on your own.
We’re told that we can’t all believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and we can’t all believe His teachings. There’s a problem with this claim. If Jesus is the Son of God, and if He is the mediator that this verse claims, He is. It’s not a matter of opinion or belief, but of reality. If He is the way, and the truth, and the life, then He’s the definite article, not just one of the crowd. If He is not the way, and the truth, and the life, then He’s either crazy or a liar and should be disregarded. This is C.S. Lewis’ trilemma. Some folks try to find a way around the trilemma by saying that it wasn’t Jesus that lied, it was Constantine and his bunch – but the same problem holds true. Either Jesus is, or He is not the mediator, and if He is not then we are lost. Either way, one must be true and the other false. It doesn’t matter whether we “can” believe this way or that. What matters is what is objectively true. I don’t care whether  you’re Christian or not. I don’t care whether you’re conservative or liberal… you’ve gotta agree that it matters whether or not there is one God, and whether or not Jesus is the Mediator between God and man. We do need to come together around what is really real, but we won’t, because truth takes things out of our control.

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