One of the most sublime statements in Christian literature outwith the Holy Scriptures of God, is the opening sentence of John Calvin’s chapter on the Mediatorship of Christ in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
“It deeply concerned us,” he says in that place, “that he who was to be our Mediator should be very God and very man.”
Into that statement is poured all the “necessity” that the Sovereign will of God required to reconcile us back to God; and out of that statement is drawn all the remembrance that God undertook to meet that necessity for us in the Second Person of the Godhead – Jesus Christ His Son. As Calvin proceeds through that chapter, he sets both the Divine necessity and the divine provision clearly before our eyes to enjoy. For example:-
It deeply concerned us, that He who was to be our Mediator should be very God and very man. … Our iniquities, like a cloud intervening between Him and us, having utterly alienated us from the kingdom of heaven, none but a person reaching to him, could be the medium of restoring peace.
But who could thus reach to him? Could any of the sons of Adam? All of them, with their parent, shuddered at the sight of God. Could any of the angels?
The case was certainly desperate, if the Godhead itself did not descend to us, it being impossible for us to ascend.
Thus, it behoved the Son of God to become our Emmanuel, i.e. God with us; and in such a way, that by mutual union his divinity and our nature might be combined.
... The work to be performed by the mediator was of no common description: being to restore us to the divine favour. To make us, instead of sons of men, sons of God; instead of heirs of hell, heirs of a heavenly kingdom. Who could do this unless the Son of God should also become the Son of man – and so receive what is ours to transfer to us what is his – making that which is his by nature become ours by grace?
... He declined not to take what was peculiar to us, that he might in his turn extend to us what was peculiarly his own …
Hence that holy brotherhood which he commends with his own lips, when he says, “I ascend to my Father, and to your Father; to my God, and to your God.”
Another principal part of our reconciliation with God was, that man, who had lost himself by his disobedience, should – (1) Offer obedience, (2) Satisfy the justice of God, (3) Pay the Penalty of Sin.
Therefore, our Lord came forth very man; adopted the person of Adam, and assumed his name, that he might, in his stead – (1) obey the Father, (2) present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to the just judgment of God, and (3) in the same flesh, pay the penalty which we had incurred.
However; since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, so he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin – and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory.
... A common nature is the pledge of our union with the Son of God. Clothed with our flesh, He warred to death with sin that He might be our triumphant conqueror; and the flesh which He received of us he offered in sacrifice to wipe away our guilt, and appease the just anger of his Father.
Abundantly sufficient for the solid nurture of the children of God is this sober truth, that “When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them who were under the law.”