Chapter 108.—A Mediator
Was Necessary to Reconcile Us to God; And Unless This Mediator Had
Been God, He Could Not Have Been Our Redeemer.
For we could not be redeemed, even
through the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
if He were not also God. Now when Adam was created, he, being a
righteous man, had no need of a mediator. But when sin had placed a
wide gulf between God and the human race, it was expedient that a
Mediator, who alone of the human race was born, lived, and died
without sin, should reconcile us to God, and procure even for our
bodies a resurrection to eternal life, in order that the pride of
man might be exposed and cured through the humility of God; that
man might be shown how far he had departed from God, when God
became incarnate to bring him back; that an example might be set to
disobedient man in the life of obedience of the God-Man; that the
fountain of grace might be opened by the Only-begotten taking upon
Himself the form of a servant, a form which had no antecedent
merit; that an earnest of that resurrection of the body which is
promised to the redeemed might be given in the resurrection of the
Redeemer; that the devil might be subdued by the same nature which
it was his boast to have deceived, and yet man not glorified, lest
pride should again spring up; and, in fine, with a view to all the
advantages which the thoughtful can perceive and describe, or
perceive without being able to describe, as flowing from the
transcendent mystery of the person of the Mediator.