Will We Need Jesus as Our Mediator in Our Glorified State?

If Adam did not need a mediator before the fall, will believers need one in glory? Today, Sinclair Ferguson considers Christ’s ongoing role as Mediator and why this question matters for our understanding of redemption and the Christian life.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: We‘re joined by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson on this week’s episode of the Ask Ligonier podcast. Dr. Ferguson, if Adam didn’t need a mediator before the fall, then will we need Jesus as our mediator in our glorified state?

DR. SINCLAIR FERGUSON: I think the answer to that question is found just by looking at Scripture. Do we need Christ in the resurrection? Well, if you think, for example, about Revelation 4–5, which is a picture of glory now, looking forward to the consummation of glory in the future, it is pretty clear that Christ is presented there as the One who is still the Mediator. And maybe the best way to get into the answer to this question is to ask: How does Christ fulfill the office of a mediator? And the answer to that question, of course, is He fulfills the office of a mediator as Prophet, Priest and King.

But He fulfills that office, you might say, in a series of stages. So He fulfilled that office during the old covenant. He was the Mediator of the old covenant. There were prophets, but He was the Prophet who spoke through the prophets. There were kings, but the kings themselves were meant to mediate His reign. And there were also priests, but the priests were meant to mediate what would ultimately be the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

So, these three offices in the Old Testament were pictures of the mediation of Christ. You might say they were means by which Christ, as Prophet, Priest and King, mediated His salvation to His people. Now Christ has come and we see in the Gospels His fulfillment of these three roles. But now in the incarnation, He is the Prophet who is here and who speaks. And what strikes people is that He doesn’t sound like the scribes. He speaks with authority. So He is a prophet with ultimate authority. He is the Priest who offers Himself as the victim, the true sacrifice for our sins. And He is the King, the Lord who calls His people to submit to Him, and He rules over them.

When Christ rises again, having finished His work, He finished the work the Father came to do. But the New Testament teaches us that there’s now a third stage to His mediation. There’s the stage when we see that mediation through the three, then there’s a stage where we see that mediation in the incarnate Christ. And He has finished His work; He’s spoken His last word, in a sense, to us in Scripture; He’s shone His kingly power by overcoming Satan; He’s offered the full and final sacrifice as the Priest. But He doesn’t lay down His ministry as Mediator at that point. And we understand that because we all understand that He ever lives to make intercession for us. And those words, I think people tend to apply to Jesus praying for me.

But if I retranslated that, I could put it like this: He ever lives to make mediation for us. He ever lives to be our Mediator. So what would that mean at this stage? Well, at this stage, it would mean He is still King and He reigns over us, and we need Him to be King. So, resurrection and glory are not a free for all. They’re not a democracy, even if, of course, we are living here in a democracy. It’s a kingdom. And He is King.

He is also Prophet, because He continues to be the only One through whom we will have knowledge of God. So even just speculating for a minute, even on the speculation that our knowledge of God will be capable of increase in glory—and personally, I don’t see any reason why that should not be true, because we will remain human beings in the resurrection—then that knowledge of God will be mediated through Him.

His words in John 14:9 to Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” will still be true then. So He’s King, He’s Prophet, but what about Priest? No sacrifice. He’s made that once for all. But sacrifice was not the only ministry of the priest. And actually, there’s a really interesting insight in this, I think, in Hebrews 8:1. Hebrews 8:1 says, “We have such a priest,” in the heavens. And the word that’s used there for a priest is there’s the Greek word leitourgos, and leitourgos you could translate into English as “liturgist.” That is to say, we’re talking here not about the priest in terms of him making a sacrifice but about the priest in terms of him conducting the worship of God. And He will do that. He will be the choir director. He will preach the sermon, He’ll conduct the choir. We will sing the praises of God only, as it were, led by the God-man, Jesus Christ. So that in every stage, all these three stages since the fall, He has been Prophet, Priest and King. And He will be that forever.