One God, One Mediator

1 Timothy 2:5—6

One God, One Mediator

A man stands in the middle --- and a man is not the God he carries us to

One God, and a man between us and Him --- the mediator is not a second God.

--- The Standing Stone ---

Behind “LORD” in your Bible lies a hidden name --- in the Hebrew it is Yahuah Psalm 83:18**; Yahuah is the Father** Isaiah 63:16**; Yahuah is the only God, beside Him there is no other** Isaiah 45:5**; therefore Yahuah the Father is the only true God, leaving no room for a second or third person** 1 Corinthians 8:6**.**

1 --- One Sentence, One God, One Man

Some teachers say that Yahushua is God Himself --- the second of three persons living inside one God. When they come to this verse, they have to slow down, because Paul says something very plain here.

1 Timothy 2:5—6

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

Read it slowly. Paul draws a line in a single sentence. On one side stands one God. On the other side stand men. And in the middle stands one mediator. Paul tells us plainly who that mediator is. He calls him “the man.”

Hold on to that one word. Paul had every word in the language to choose from. He chose “the man.”

2 --- What a Mediator Is

A mediator is a go-between. He stands between two parties who need to be brought together, and he carries the one to the other.

μεσίτης

mesitēs

a go-between; one who stands between two parties to bring them together

The Scriptures gave us a picture of this go-between long before Paul ever wrote. It is the high priest.

Hebrews 5:1

For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God…

Notice the words “from among men.” The high priest is not lowered down from heaven. He is taken from the people. He is one of them. That is the very thing that makes him able to stand in for them.

The book of Hebrews says it plainly: the Messiah was made like His brethren Hebrews 2:17. He had to be one of us in order to carry us before Yahuah.

And we are the people He carries. Scripture calls us a royal priesthood 1 Peter 2:9, made kings and priests Revelation 1:6. Yahushua is our High Priest --- the one man who brings us before the Father.

So when Paul calls Him “the man,” he is not pointing to a weakness. He is naming the very thing that makes Him able to mediate at all. A high priest must be a man. The mediator is a man because the work itself requires a man.

3 --- “The Man” --- Spoken After the Resurrection

Now look at when Paul wrote this. It was many years after Yahushua rose from the grave and ascended on high. The resurrection was long past.

Yet Paul still calls Him “the man.” Not “the God who once became a man.” The man. Present tense. The risen, exalted Messiah is still a man.

Paul says the same thing in another place. He tells the men of Athens that Yahuah will judge the world by a man He has chosen.

Acts 17:31

…he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained…

This is said of the One already raised from the dead. The resurrection did not turn a man back into God. It raised a man to the right hand of the Father. He is a glorified man --- and Scripture never stops calling Him that.

4 --- He Died, and the Father Raised Him

Here is the question the teaching of three persons cannot answer cleanly. Did Yahushua really die?

Yes. He truly died. He gave up the ghost John 19:30. The Messiah died for our sins 1 Corinthians 15:3. This was a real death, not a pretend one.

Then who raised Him? The answer is everywhere, and it is always the same. The Father raised Him. God raised Him up Acts 2:24. God exalted Him Acts 5:31. It was the Father who raised Him from the dead Galatians 1:1. The Son did not lie in the grave and lift Himself by His own deathless life. Another raised Him.

Now lay that beside what Scripture says about Yahuah Himself.

1 Timothy 6:16

Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto…

Yahuah alone has immortality. He does not change Malachi 3:6. He cannot die. So follow it through, slowly. The One who truly died, and who had to be raised by Another, is not the deathless God. The one who died, died as a man. And the Father, who cannot die, raised Him.

5 --- One God, Not One God Split Three Ways

Go back to the first words of the verse: “there is one God.” Paul does not say one God in three persons. He says one. Just one.

Yahuah is echad --- one. You cannot break Him into parts the way men split an atom. He is not three pieces sharing a single name.

And here is where the teaching of three is trapped between two errors of its own making. Call it one God wearing three masks, and you have denied that the three are truly different. Call it three who are each fully God, and you have counted three Gods. There is no third road.

Scripture closes the door. “Hear, O Israel: Yahuah our God is one Yahuah” Deuteronomy 6:4. Yahushua Himself was asked which command was first, and He answered with these very words Mark 12:29. He had the perfect moment to turn Israel toward a God of three. He did the opposite. He repeated that Yahuah is one.

Paul’s sentence keeps it just as simple. One God. And one man who stands between that God and us.

Conclusion

The Verdict

Read the sentence all the way to its end. One God. One man in the middle. Paul could have written “one God in three persons.” He reached for none of those words.

He wrote “the man.” And a man cannot be the God he carries us to. That is not a gap in the verse. That is the verse.

There is one God --- and the one who stands between us and Him is a man, not a second God.