The Mediator of Justification

Isaiah 53. Please turn to Isaiah 53.

Continuing our study in the doctrine of justification by faith, we come and dwell on the language and the implications of a text found in Isaiah 53 this evening, as we will look at the subject of the mediator. Talking about a mediator, you’re talking about one who stands between parties, is able to represent and offer that mediation that’s necessary between parties—usually that are at odds is the scenario. Of course, the sinner is at odds with God, and we are justly condemned, and the Lord Jesus then stands as the mediator between God and men.

While many verses may have been used to draw your attention to one particular verse, we’re going to read the entirety of this powerful chapter. Isaiah 53, reading from verse 1:

“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Amen. I trust the Lord will bless the public reading of His Word. What you have heard is the Word of the eternal God. This is the Word of the living God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray. Lord, we ask for help. Anytime we come to the Word of God, we realize that we are utterly dependent upon the God of heaven revealing to us what we are—just mere creatures. How are we ever going to understand the mind of God unless it is revealed to us? And so we pray that it might please Thee to condescend to our need here, and every single person has need. And I pray for the Holy Spirit—O Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us. O Spirit of the living God, see the need of every heart, and move in such hearts. And while our sins may grieve Thee, we beseech Thee that we might find mercy, and that through the blood of Christ we might be forgiven, and that the Spirit of God—O blessed Spirit—Thou wilt come and commune with us, and show us Christ. O show us Christ. To go away with the sight of Him is our prayer. So save the lost, and give assurance to those who struggle with such. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I want you to imagine just for a moment a man appearing before a judge for arraignment, which, of course, it is the responsibility to give what his answer is, whether he sees himself as guilty or not guilty. And when he’s asked, first of all, by the judge looking at him, he sees that he stands without legal representation. The inquiry is made: Where is your legal representation? And the man says in response to the judge, “I don’t need legal representation because I don’t feel that I am guilty.”

If you can imagine that scene just for a moment, what the judge might be thinking when a man stands before him and says, “I don’t feel that I’m guilty”—that very scene is similar to how most people feel before God today. That in the presence of God, they don’t feel guilty, and they are prepared to go into eternity, stand in judgment before the living God who sees all, knows all, and stand before Him without representation and plead, “I don’t feel guilty. I don’t believe myself guilty enough to be condemned to hell forever.” That’s how most people are going to die. Most of the people you know, that you work with, that you live near—the average American, so to speak—is living in such a position. “I don’t think I’m that bad. I don’t feel myself to be that guilty. I don’t need representation.” And it’s folly. It’s utter folly.

Just as we know it’s important to have representation in a legal context, even if you’re assured that you’re not guilty, so it is in this context—only you are guilty. You are guilty. God sees everything. God knows all. God has your record, an impeccable record of your life. If there’s any breaking of His law at all—James 2:10, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all”—you’re guilty, and God will find you guilty, and condemned you will be. Whether we feel guilty or not is not the question. The question is why we stand before God. And it’s vital then that we understand ourselves to be in need of representation.

Now, we’ve already established in this series the fact that man is guilty, that his righteousness is as filthy rags in the presence of God. And so we come to the question then: Who is it that accomplishes a work that allows God to justify the guilty? And we’re going to be considering one who stands to represent the sinner so that God is not unjust in letting us go, even though we ourselves are guilty. God is not unjust to let us go free and to be blessed with eternal life and to be in His presence forever. He’s not unjust to do so, because we have representation in a mediator who stands on our behalf and pleads our cause.

In dealing with this subject, in coming to this subject tonight, it’s interesting that the Roman Catholic Church just published, a little under two weeks ago, just published a document seeking to clarify how the faithful—to use terminology that they may use—how the faithful are to view Mary, because often she is represented as co-redemptrix and as mediatrix. And she is viewed or given titles in terms of being like a kind of a mediator for the Christian.

Well, in that document it details the fact that co-redemptrix really isn’t an actual title that is within the real documents of the Roman Catholic Church, and starts to sort of clarify that it has a—it can communicate something that’s unintended, to speak of Mary as co-redemptrix. But then goes on to deal with her as mediatrix, and that is a more foundational term in terms of their document.

And I’m not going to read things to you. I scanned over it, I went through it, and I thought, ultimately it’s still saying the same thing. You’re asking for those in the Roman Catholic Church to go to Mary, to pray to Mary, to see the graces that are stored in Mary and that can be bestowed upon through her position as we endeavor to find favor with God.

I do want to quote, however, John Calvin. In his Institutes, book three, chapter 20, and paragraph 21, he says this—this is what he says about whether it be Mary or any of the saints. He says, “In regard to the saints who, having died in the body, live in Christ, we attribute prayer to them. If we attribute prayer to them, let us not imagine that they have any other way of supplicating God than through Christ, who alone is the way, or that their prayers are accepted by God in any other name.”

So you’re coming to the saints, and we’re going to—you shouldn’t have this assumption that any of their prayers are not being offered in, if you’re going to come that way or think that way. If prayer is being offered, it must be through the name of Christ, right? So he’s kind of putting the position if we are to allow this and attribute prayer to them and so on.

He then goes on to say, “Wherefore, since the Scripture calls us away from all others to Christ alone, since our heavenly Father is pleased to gather together all things in Him”—that’s in Christ—”it were the extreme of stupidity, not to say madness, to attempt to obtain access by means of others, so as to be drawn away from him without whom access cannot be obtained.” End quote.

His point there is it doesn’t make any sense. It makes no sense at all. If prayer’s to be offered in the name of Christ, if all of Scripture leads us to Christ and any other direction is seen as a threat from taking us away, why then would we ever go to anyone else or offer prayer in the name of anyone else or through anyone else than Jesus Christ?

And that’s why the Reformers took the stand that they did, in part because the whole encompass of the Catholic Church, in large part, aside from the particular issues, it fundamentally would lead people or distract people from the focus that is solely to be given to Jesus Christ.

It was all of John the Baptist’s message, wasn’t it? “Behold the Lamb of God.” Don’t look to His mother. “Behold the Lamb of God.” He is the one who takes away the sin of the world. Go directly to Him.

So as we think about the mediator of justification, think of it simply here tonight. First of all, considering the purpose of the mediator—the purpose. What is the purpose? A mediator is one who intervenes between two parties in order to reconcile them. The very existence and reality of justification by grace implies a mediator, because we as sinners, which we’ve established already, cannot reconcile ourselves to God. It’s impossible. We’re sinners before God. That is our condition. And there’s a chasm. Your sin creates a chasm between you and God, a chasm you cannot cross. Your sins, to use Isaiah elsewhere, he says, your sins have separated between you and your God. And since you cause that separation through sin, you cannot then cross that gulf or bridge that gap. And so a mediator and the necessity of a mediator arises—and arises from a twofold reality. First, God’s righteous wrath and man’s utter helplessness.

God will pour out wrath upon sin. That’s what judges do. They exact judgment. And we’re helpless. We have no power to change His mind. We have no power to fix the problem. We need a mediator. So in recognizing then the purpose of the mediator, we’re seeing these two things. First, the necessity of dealing with divine wrath. A mediator is necessary. He has purpose because of the necessity of dealing with divine wrath.

I’m going to quote a number of men through this sermon to help sort of pull together the emphasis of these points. First, quoting here Octavius Winslow—he has a document on the doctrine of justification. And Winslow said this: “God is under a most free necessity”—listen to this—”God is under a most free necessity to maintain the dignity of His throne, the holiness of His nature, and the righteousness of His law. If He would justify the sinner upon the ground of mere mercy, apart from a full satisfaction to the divine government, what would become of His justice and His holiness?” End quote.

Establishing there the necessity of God preserving—He must—the dignity of His throne, the holiness of His nature, and the righteousness of His law. And so He can’t just overlook, He can’t just bypass the problem. He must address the issue.

Anthony Burgess said the following on the same subject. He said that God is an angry enemy and a professed adversary unto every man abiding in his natural condition, and that therefore it belongs to His justice not to bear or suffer the contempt of His majesty, but to be avenged on all unless there be a way of satisfaction found out. There must be a way of satisfaction found out. There must be a way of satisfying this aspect that flows from the very nature of God in which He must preserve the dignity of His own throne, of His own law, of His own character.

The problem of sin is not some mere legal technicality. The fact is that we have offended God. I know this is not popular. I’m well aware that people don’t generally walk around thinking of themselves to be one who lives as an offense toward God. You don’t think, “I’m offending God.” You don’t live out your days thinking, “I offend God.” I didn’t. Nineteen years of my life, and one of the things that I realized looking back was I knew I would do wrong, like I had a conscience, an awareness of wrong, but the night of my conversion, there was a shift in my thinking in which for the first time ever, I realized it wasn’t just that I do wrong, but I do this wrong against God. I’m a sinner before God. Before that time, I have no recollection of ever thinking of myself as one who was sinning against God. Just pangs of conscience made me recognize I don’t think this is the right thing to do or I feel guilty because of whatever the thing might have been.

This problem of sin, then, is something we universally are facing. And we stand condemned before God. We are in this inescapable position. God tells us about His wrath. Our Lord Jesus, for all of His loving messages and communication of grace and care towards those before Him, He’s the one who tells us in John 3 that the wrath of God abides on men. The wrath of—could there be a more descriptive way to show the problem that men live under? The wrath of God abides. It’s settled. It’s resting. It hangs over men.

The wrath of God. God is of purer eyes, the prophet tells us, than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity. And so the very idea of being reconciled requires us to consider: How are we going to be reconciled? How do we deal with this offense? How is it removed? How is this wrath quenched, if you like?

Even the Old Testament believers understood this challenge. Job spoke of longing for a daysman. That’s old language just, again, looking for the same idea—someone who would represent, someone who could lay their hand, as it were, both on the offended party, God, and the offending party, man, and bring them together. If it’s not—if it doesn’t happen, if there isn’t a reconciliation, if there isn’t this one who can bring the parties together, then you will die condemned and be lost forever. That’s what’s at stake.

So there’s a necessity of dealing with divine wrath, and there’s also a recognition that this is not new. What I mean by that is the whole of Scripture is communicating this message to us. It’s not just a New Testament message. The Old Testament saints understood the need for one who would mediate. The whole system—you think of all the sacrifices and try to place yourself in that Old Testament context in which they would bring sacrifices and offer them on an altar. You read about Abraham building altars and offering sacrifices. And those who followed him, the patriarchs, and then of course the Levitical system that is set up in this elaborate expression of offering sacrifices with various meanings and so on. The whole point is to show that there needs to be a dealing with the problem.

The testimony of Scripture shows this problem needs to be addressed. And perhaps the most wonderful representation is of course the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16, in which we have described there one day in the year in which there is a very vivid representation of a mediator who stands between the people and God. And when you come to the New Testament, this is what the glorious message we’ve been considering in Hebrews is. Those sacrifices that were done every year—right, every year the priest would go in, every year he would take the animals and shed the blood and sprinkle the blood and so on, every year he would go through this process.

And in one sense, you can see some of the maturing children, maybe they’re ten years of age, and they start asking Dad, “You know, Dad, didn’t we do this last year? I mean, did the priest not go in and shed blood and do all of this last year for the sins of the nation? How come we’re doing it again this year?” You can imagine what the answer might be. But if one was attuned to Scripture, if one was aware of the whole tenor of even the Old Testament Scriptures, they would be conscious of the fact that the repetition of the sacrifice is in part because it actually doesn’t address the problem. It represents the expectation of Israel, the expectation of one who will come and actually shed His blood and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And this, as I say in Hebrews, is what we’ve considered. When we see this once-for-all sacrifice for sin, He puts away sin forever. The blood of those animals could never put away sin, but this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, and He sits down, the work is done.

All those Old Testament types and shadows, all the killing of those animals, all of that stipulated system of sacrifice was showing: There’s a problem. One needs to represent, one needs to stand between the guilty and the judge. And this is our Lord Jesus.

The hope of the gospel is in seeing in Jesus Christ the fulfillment of everything. And so as Peter tells Timothy, there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

The promise of the mediator. The promise of the mediator. Not just the purpose, but the promise. Isaiah 53 gives this expectation of one who is going to come. He’s going to address the issue. He’s going to see man in their plight and take the responsibility. There’s so much language in this chapter that shows or communicates Him standing in a substitutionary place, representing us, dying for us, carrying away our sorrows and sins and so on.

But in verse 11, which is our focus for tonight, in verse 11, I want you to note what is said in verse 11: “By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.”

Now, there’s debate over the language there—”by his knowledge.” What does that mean? By the knowledge of Him. It can be read in a certain way in which the grammar would allow you to read it, “by the knowledge of Him,” which some then have understood that it’s relating to our knowledge—if I can use that language—the sinner’s knowledge of Him. And so they come to a saving knowledge of Him, and by that they are justified. You can see the flow of that argument. By a knowledge of Him shall they experience this blessing of justification.

But the focus of the chapter, here’s the thing, the focus of the chapter is not upon—the centrality of it is upon the mediator Himself, upon the servant of Jehovah. And it’s His work, and so it’s His knowledge. I think the language, or the way it’s translated, I think in most cases, “by his knowledge”—His being His knowledge. The knowledge of the mediator, the knowledge of the one who is the servant of Jehovah—shall people come into this position. We’ll look at that more in just a moment.

But it’s recognizing that there’s this one who is going to justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. So there’s a couple of things here in this promise. First, He’s promised as a vicarious substitute. He’s promised as a vicarious substitute. He is going to justify many. How? Because He will bear their iniquities. This is the doctrine of substitution. This is the doctrine in which we recognize that in order for that guilt that we have before God to no longer be a problem in the sense that it no longer will cause God, by default, to condemn us forever—that guilt and that shame is laid on the substitute. The substitute takes the guilt. And so he shall—it says, “for he shall bear their iniquities”—iniquities that have separated them from God. He takes the sins of the people onto Himself. He suffers in their place. This is foundational. The mediator in reconciling the parties actually takes the responsibility to take on Him the guilt of those that He is representing.

So you have all this language: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities,” verse 5. Again, it’s language of substitution. He’s standing in our place. He is bearing the full weight, the full weight of guilt, all the punishment, all the wrongdoing. He becomes the sin-bearer. He has made—He is made a curse for us. The demands of a broken law are laid on Him. He justifies many by this fact. He shall bear their iniquities.

James Buchanan has a book on justification which, if you want a thorough and excellent treatment on this doctrine, I encourage you to read it. Banner of Truth publishes it, and you will be greatly enlightened in your walk with the Lord if you read it.

But here’s what he notes: “Such being the relation of Christ as mediator to His people and their sins on the one hand, and to God and His law on the other, the nature of His redeeming work is necessarily determined by it. If all that He did and suffered was done and endured by Him as the substitute of His people and with a view to their salvation, and if, moreover, all that He did and suffered was done and endured by Him as His Father’s servant and with a view to the fulfillment of His law, it follows that His whole work is correctly described when it is said to have been strictly vicarious with respect to those for whom it was accomplished and also to have been a true and proper propitiation for sin with respect to God and His righteous government.”

He’s arguing there, he’s arguing the point of what the Lord Jesus was about. And so we’re not to see Him—here’s the point—we’re not to see Him as merely being an example to us. We’re not to see Him as simply coming to show us the right way to live. He is coming with a strict purpose in which as you assess the problem, the problem of sin, the position of God as judge, that you have in the Lord Jesus one who is coming specifically to be a vicarious substitute to deal with this issue.

But I want you to know another thing, not only promised as a vicarious substitute, but promised as a voluntary sacrifice—a voluntary sacrifice. Christ coming, His righteous servant, God’s righteous servant, justifying many, does this in a voluntary way. He willingly comes to do this. He takes this on board Himself. He embraces the responsibility and He says, “I will do this. I will take the responsibility.”

Again, Buchanan notes that the death of Christ may be ascribed to various causes, right? He says, “It is ascribed to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” This is why He died. “To the justice of God the Father, who set him forth to be a propitiation for sin. To the love of God, who gave his only begotten Son and delivered him up for us all.” But he notes this then: “It is ascribed to the free, unconstrained will of Christ.” And there he quotes John 10: “I will lay down my life. I lay it down of myself.”

The Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t just come to engage in a work in which He has assigned the responsibility and He has no option or He has no say in the matter, and so He just submits Himself in some servile manner. He volunteers to do this. He willingly enters into this. This mediator does so because He desires it. I think that’s implied by the language, “by his knowledge, shall my righteous servant justify many.” He was fully cognizant of all that was going on. He comes into the role intentionally. It’s not just prophetic concerning His foresight and His ability to see things, but that He has a knowledge—the servant has a knowledge. And He is entering into the role intentionally, understanding the consequence, embracing the outcome, knowing what it would entail. He doesn’t just stumble into the cross. It’s conscious. He does it knowingly. He does it willingly, endeavoring to save. It’s a wonderful thing. I mean, what have we done to deserve this? Where God Almighty, in the second person of the Trinity, takes on the nature of the creature and voluntarily takes all the responsibility of their guilt and the judgment they deserve and embraces that. What have you or I done to deserve that? Why you? Why me?

He came to give His life a ransom for many.

Thirdly, the perfection of the mediator—His perfection. This righteous servant is how He is described. He is a righteous servant. My righteous servant. Well, this is set in a context in which the people were far from it. Go back and read Isaiah chapter 1. The context the prophet is given—he is addressing a people that had it not been for the remnant, a small few who were still believing, they would be like Sodom and Gomorrah. The worst of cities. What sins they were guilty of. And in contrast with that, you have this righteous servant. This righteous servant.

So as you think of the perfection of the mediator, His perfection must be seen in two ways. First of all, in His person. In His person. You see, in His person and in His work—His person, He is the perfect mediator in terms of His person. What do we mean by the person? Here we’re talking about the hypostatic union, right? It’s just a technical term that refers to the union between God and human nature, that it comes together so that God remains God. It’s not a hybrid. Jesus Christ is not a hybrid of the divine with humanity. God remains God. And yet it’s a true human nature He takes into union with His divinity. This is the mediator then. The one who represents us, able to represent God and man, is both God and man. It’s not just a man, not even just an excellent man, not an angel, even the highest of archangels. No, none of them could accomplish this. It must be that they possess the nature of both.

So the mediator takes on—the Son of God takes on the nature of those He represents. And so He is truly man, truly man.

In answering the question, “Why must the mediator be man?” R. L. Dabney says this. He says, “The demands of Christ’s mediatorial work required that Christ should be proper and very man. Mankind had fallen and was conscience-struck, hostile and fearful towards God. Hence, it was desirable that the daysman should appear in his nature as his brother in order to encourage confidence, to allure to a familiar approach and quiet guilty fears.”

He also mentions, in the second place, that it gives a fuller assurance of His sympathy. In the third place, he mentions that it supplies us with a perfect human example. In the fourth place, he goes on to talk about in order to establish a proper basis for that legal union between Him and His elect, which should make Him bearer of their impure guilt, so He has to take on our nature, and then partakers of His impure righteousness and exaltation.

So he presents all of this, and then he notes also that a created nature was absolutely essential to the mediator’s two works of obeying in man’s stead and suffering for his guilt. So he argues that—that there’s a need for the mediator to have our nature. So He must be able to—

We’ve looked at this in Hebrews 2, that He’s not ashamed to call us brethren. He takes on our nature. Hebrews 2 argues that out. Not the nature of angels, but the nature of those for whom He came to represent. So He stands in our place. So He must be man. That’s necessary.

But He also must be God. He must be God. Why must the mediator be God? Why can’t Moses do it? Why can’t one of the apostles do it? Why can’t someone else who held an exalted position before God and was favored in some way—why can’t they be a mediator? Well, how come Aaron and his line of the high priest—how come they could not rightly represent in a saving way those who need to be saved?

So again, Berkhof gives three reasons. You may wonder, who are these people? They’re just theologians who have written about the topic. I’m not going to get into detail on each one. But he says this—he gives three reasons why He must be God. “In the divine plan of salvation, it was absolutely essential that the mediator should also be very God. This was necessary in order that, one, he might bring a sacrifice of infinite value and render perfect obedience to the law of God. Two, he might bear the wrath of God redemptively, that is, so as to free others from the curse of the law. And three, he might be able to apply the fruits of his accomplished work to those who accepted him by faith.”

So without Him being divine, this is not possible. Only the divine could sustain the weight of God’s wrath. Only the divine could address this issue. Only the divine could have a perfect righteousness on our behalf and without fault represent us and give a sacrifice that was acceptable before God. This is how His death is not sufficient just for one, but His death is able to justify many. Not just one—it’s not just a life for a life. It’s not just Jesus dying and He can bring some kind of salvation to one person, take the guilt of one person, be a substitute for one person. He has to justify many. And in order to do that, to elevate the sacrifice, He must be God.

But also not only as a person, we want to think about His work. The mediator has a work—He doesn’t just have to be the right person, He has to engage in a work to represent, to deal with the problem. And so Christ’s work as mediator can be considered in two ways. We’ve addressed this before. We have His active obedience and we have His passive. Those are kind of terms that aren’t—sometimes terminology gets assigned and it sticks in a way in which you kind of wish it didn’t because it perhaps isn’t the best way to describe it. You know, to describe the cross work of Jesus Christ as passive, it seems to rob something of what’s going on, but the point that theologians are making is that there is an active obedience to God in His obeying the law, and His passive sacrifice, Him being presented in that way on the cross, and so you have this active and passive obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You’re dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ fully obeying the law, presenting a perfect righteousness. We sang of it in Hymn 400, “Jesus, thy blood and righteousness my beauty are, my glorious dress.” What is being communicated there? A sense that what Jesus Christ has provided in His obedience is credited to me, and the beauty that I claim before God is Him, what He has done. The Lord Jesus Christ then came to fulfill all righteousness, to obey the law on our behalf, and this is what He does. He lived perfectly, and He provides for us then a positive righteousness.

I have explained this before, but some things bear repeating. They are important enough to repeat frequently, and that is the emphasis of addressing the gospel, presenting the gospel in such a way as we say, “Jesus Christ, on the cross, paid for sin, and by His sacrifice, and your belief in His sacrifice, all your sins are taken care of.”

Now that’s true. We’ll get to it in just a moment. That’s true. But it still leaves you, at best, it leaves you neutral before God. The problem’s gone. But God is not looking for people merely to be without sin. He is looking for them to be in obedience to Him, to render an obedience to Him, to show their love by their obedience to Him. Our Lord Jesus says that—John 15. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” That’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for obedience. You can’t express love in neutrality. Love is done in obedience, is expressed and proved by obedience.

And so what we lack is not just the matter—the problem of our sin—what we lack is a positive righteousness that God will look upon and say, “You satisfied. You satisfied the demands of the law. You have perfectly fulfilled what is required.” That then is our Lord Jesus in His active obedience. This is the glory of it. In Jesus Christ, you’re dealing with one who put His arms around all the problems.

And you’re living your life and you’re trying by your best effort to live in obedience to God. But the Christians here tonight, we know—we know we fall short. Every single day we fall short. There’s not a moment that passes in which we can say, “That moment I was perfect.” There’s enough sin in every nanosecond of your life to be in a constant posture of repentance. How do you measure perfection? How do you attain perfection? This is God we’re talking about, and He is looking for perfection to an exactness that we can’t fathom. And the idea that some man could attain righteousness himself, it’s utter folly.

The Lord Jesus then, since man by nature is bent to sin, is corrupt in his nature, we’re “born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” What was Job thinking of? “Man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” I always love that description that is given. “Man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” I just think, what a description of man—bucking and kicking and rebelling and almost impossible to bring into subjection. That’s how man’s born. That’s his condition before God. And the Lord Jesus takes on this role as mediator in which He embraces, “I live perfectly for them.”

So His work, which could not be possible without His person, that He is God and man—His person is what enables Him then to do this work of first of all providing obedience, a righteousness, a positive righteousness for us.

When the Gospels speak of it, and the Gospels discuss—and it’s always quite enlightening when sometimes you put people on the spot. I was in a scenario, I was in a Bible class one time, and we were reading Romans 1. In Romans 1, Paul makes mention there of the righteousness of God. And I pointed it out and I said, “So what is meant by this? Is this referring to God’s inherent righteous character, the righteousness of God?” And there were people sitting before me, some who had been believers for years and held status in the church—not that church in which I was standing at that moment. But their response was, “Yes, that refers to God’s inherent righteous character.” I said, “No, it doesn’t. No, it doesn’t.” The glory of the gospel, which is what Paul is articulating through Romans, there in chapter 1, where he is expressly showing that what man needs in his fallen condition, when he refers to the righteousness belonging to God in the gospel, he is referring to that which His Son procured. It is Jesus Christ. And the righteousness of God we receive by faith is not the nature of God and His righteousness. It is the work of His Son and His righteousness.

It’s an amazing thing that you can come into this space tonight and you can be condemned and guilty and under judgment and the wrath of God abides on you and you have no hope and you look at your past and you see, “I’m guilty of lies, I’m guilty of adultery and fornication, I’m guilty of theft of various sorts, I’m guilty of blaspheming God and so on and so forth.” You say, “I’m guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.” And you can walk out of here by faith in Jesus Christ and you can be adorned with this, what we describe as an alien righteousness, a righteousness outside of yourself that you receive by faith. And you go, as we said last week, go home justified.

What we also have is passive obedience. The demand of the law is that the sins must be paid for. There must be punishment laid upon the guilty. And Isaiah 53, read it for yourselves. See how He stands and deals with this guilt. He has borne our griefs, verse 4. He has carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. Verse 6, “the LORD hath laid on him”—credited to Him, conferred on Him, transferred to Him—”the iniquity of us all.” So by His knowledge, this righteous servant, this righteous servant justifies many. He embraces the task as the mediator. He lives then in what is required of the mediator, that He lives perfectly and He offers Himself as a sacrifice, and by that He justifies many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

You see that second part? He’s not just the righteous servant, He is the one who bears their iniquities. This is His, as I say, His passive obedience—the sin being laid on Him, the guilt being laid on Him. We go to the cross then and we see our Lord Jesus Christ there upon that cross at Calvary, dying the just—He’s the just for the unjust to bring the unjust to God. He is on that cross bearing their guilt and their shame, their condemnation and the eternal judgment they deserve. And it’s so horrifying that the perfect one should bear the guilt of the creature that the very heavens turn black. It’s almost as if creation itself hides its own face. It cannot bear to look upon judgment being laid upon the impeccable Christ. But this is what He did in love for your soul and mine. This is what He did. He bore the guilt.

So there is finally the praise of the mediator. I’ll just touch on this. But the mediator’s praise—you see it in the language of the prophet: “My righteous servant.” There’s a sense of recognition of Him and the honor that He deserves. My righteous servant. And that righteous servant now then has received the praise that is due for His work. The resurrection itself was a testimony. It was the Father giving validity to what He did. He bears the guilt. He has lived the perfect life. He dies on the cross. And the way in which the whole work of redemption receives heavenly confirmation is in His resurrection. He is the righteous servant. And as the righteous servant, not even death can hold Him. He rises from the dead. He is endorsed by the Father. The sacrifice is accepted, the debt is paid in full, and He now stands in a position to confer justification upon the many.

“My righteous servant, justify many.” It’s a great word, isn’t it? Many. How many? Revelation speaks of an innumerable multitude. So you can’t number it. Maybe you might ask the question, “Does it include me?” The real question is, do you want it? Do you want to be justified? Do you want the guilt removed, the shame removed, the debt paid for? Do you want to know that burden lifted in which you can say, “I know, I’m accepted. I’m not going to live my life striving constantly for the rest of my life trying to attain some kind of acceptance before God”?

Instead, in the gospel, the good news is this, that the sinner finds rest in Jesus Christ. That he is called to abandon his effort and to believe on the Son. And by faith alone he stands then complete in union with Jesus Christ, represented by a mediator who can place His hand on God and place His hand on the sinner and bring reconciliation, because the reason why the gulf was there, He takes all that reason, He takes all that guilt, and He puts the two parties together into fellowship again.

Adam was driven from the garden, but through Christ, paradise is restored. We are brought into a place of union and fellowship with God. The mediator has done His work, and He has done it oh so well. He is a righteous servant, and He justifies many, and He will justify you tonight. He will justify you. He is willing. Oh, how willing He is.

I love the scenes of the gospel, the willingness of Jesus to justify, the joy that He gives. Oh, away with the works religion and all the potpourri and sham that distorts the gospel. And here this woman with her plurality of relationships. When Jesus comes to her, “I can give you water so that you never thirst again.” That woman that was caught in adultery, they were so swift to judge her, condemn her. And certainly she was guilty. The Lord is communicating grace to all these and others. He wants them to know that they can be pardoned. He communicates to them Himself. He’s a good shepherd. And He’s good in ways that far exceed what can be articulated, because He gave His life for the sheep. What shepherd gives his life for the sheep? This is what He has done.

He is a righteous servant. And He justifies many. And with one stretched out hand to your life as you confess your sin—that’s what you have to do. He’s taken all this guilt. And you have to recognize that that guilt includes your guilt. If you’re not going to acknowledge your sin, you can’t come. You have to see your sin. And in the recognition of your sin, when you take ownership, when you abandon your pride and get deliverance from all the sense that “I’m a good person, I’m really not that bad”—away with it! Away with it! We are guilty! That’s what unifies us here. And you need to come into that acceptance. “I’m guilty. I’m done trying to say otherwise. I’m fed up trying to live in such a way I’m trying to convince myself I’m not that bad. I am not bad, I’m worse.”

But He justifies the many. And so you confess your sin—to put it in plain language, when you say the same thing about your sin that God says about it. He says it’s bad, it’s worthy of eternal wrath and judgment. And you say, “I agree, Lord, I agree, my sin deserves hell.” And you come there and then you say, “But I believe in Jesus Christ and that He paid for my sin.” Then this righteous servant confers justification by faith alone. A mediator, a representative. One who will stand on that day having acquit those who were once guilty. It’s glorious.

Let’s bow together in prayer. My friends, should there be any remaining confusion or questions that you have, my desire, indeed my privilege, is to help you to heaven. And I help you to heaven by explaining to you not what I can do for you, but what Christ has done. And if you have any remaining questions, you’re not sure that you are saved and you want to be saved, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Lord, please help us to rejoice in the Lord Jesus, the mediator, and to find peace and rest in the one who has done an all-sufficient work. We thank Thee that Thou didst send Thy Son who took our nature to be the righteous servant. We thank Thee that He did not fail in the task that was given to Him.

God, I pray, please help us to find rest and solace, not in the church and not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ alone. And give to us a freshness about our sense of justification, that daily we will rejoice that all our sins are put away, that Christ paid for them in full. May that support us in the trying hour. May that give us joy in the most difficult seasons.

Help us, Lord, to remember what our Lord Jesus said: “Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” May we go into this week with that confidence. Whatever else is going on, my name is written in heaven.

Bless Thy people then. Be with us in our fellowship and encourage us. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit—may the portion of all the blood-bought people of God now and evermore. Amen.