Post
by dizerner » Wed Aug 05, 2015 5:49 pm
Trinitarians believe God himself has supplied the Lamb, a promise not conditional upon works; God has become his own Mediator, because no human being could do it due to original sin. Trinitarians believe God is One, in some deep sense, just as Gal. 3:20 and the Shema observe; but not only One. Jesus is not functioning as an intermediary between God and God, but rather God and creation. Paul's point here was to contrast a conditional covenant with an unconditional promise, not to define the nature of God. If God unconditionally promised something, he himself will do it with no outside mediator (Moses was not the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, but rather a separate in-between covenant). We believe in Christ God did fulfill his promise and demonstrate that God is One. But we believe that God himself became the Mediator because the promise is unconditional (only the Law necessitates an earthly intermediary because it is conditional upon works not grace). There is only One Mediator between God and man precisely because of this point: God promised to do it all and be our Mediator. The Old Covenant mediator Moses only ministered death through the Law. The promise of grace is a supernatural exception to Gal. 3:20 and why we "are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:26 NAS) Paul is contrasting Law (the work of man) with grace (the work of God). And the only way God himself can become the Mediator we need, is if God is more than one Person, and comes and fulfills his own Law he required of us that no man could fulfill. So Jesus as an intermediary does not violated Gal. 3:20, since God is still One, and there are still two parties involved (God and humans). The New Covenant is that God will "put a new heart within us" and "cause us to walk in his statutes," and this represents the grace of God doing for us what we cannot do—and it is all done in and through Christ. "But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. (Heb 8:6 NAS)" God is still One and the Mediator still mediates two parties yet the promise is not conditional upon our works, but rather the promise of the Spirit poured out through the work of Christ! We are saved from our old nature by becoming wrapped up in the very Trinity of God Himself! Of God we are in Christ Jesus who has been made for us the very wisdom and power of God, and revealed to us by the Spirit.
The question I would ask is this. If Paul's point was that God, by unilateral monergistic supernatural grace, promised to unconditionally fulfill his promise to Abraham no matter what, and that means that God alone fulfills the promise with no intermediary, what role does Christ play, and wouldn't Christ being an intermediary contradict Paul's very point that he's making?
"'Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one."
If Christ is not God, than God does not even need Christ to fulfill the promise God made to Abraham, since a promise doesn't need an intermediator. But for us Trinitarians, we believe the promise didn't need an intermediator because the promise was for an intermediator who would redeem us from the Law.