Completed Work

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus 1 Timothy 2:5

Jesus is our mediator between God and men. Lexicon :: Strong’s G3316 – mesitēs defines mediator as “one who intervenes between two, either in order to make or restore peace and friendship, or to form a compact, or for ratifying a covenant: a medium of communication, arbitrator. Christ is called mediator since he interposed by his death and restored the harmony between God and man which human sin had broken.”

I think my vision of Christ as mediator has been off. I have had a picture that He has to go to God often on my behalf. That view, negates the finality of what Jesus did on the cross. It is an Old Testament view of sin, that it has to be brought before God like the Israelites did each time bringing the sacrifice to the priest to cover them. Jesus completely restored the harmony between man and God. He completed the work on the cross. The veil that separated us from God was torn in two. The Spirit of God now lives inside of me. Jesus completed the job as mediator.

I was listening to a message regarding how we often pray from an Old Covenant mentality. We are begging God to do things that He has already completed and made available to us. Here is an example:

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. Isaiah 53:5

In the New Testament, the words change.

 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. 1 Peter 2:24

Since ‘are’ is in the present tense, it must be used to denote an action that is being done in the present. Its counterpart, ‘were’, is used when the subject of the sentence is plural, and the action or condition that is expressed has already been completed or the event happened in the past.

(from Differencebetween.net)

We are under the new covenant. Jesus does not need to go back to the cross again to provide healing. It happened at the cross. Christ declared “It is finished.” and it was. It is challenging to the way I usually pray.

Prayer – Lord, teach me to pray in accordance with Your will and the covenant that I am under.