Why must He be a true and righteous man?

Because God's righteousness requires that man who has sinned should make reparation for sin, but the man who is himself a sinner cannot pay for others.

My must He at the same time be true God?

So that by the power of His divinity He might bear as a man the burden of God's wrath, and recover for us and restore to us righteousness and life.

Who is this mediator who is at the same time true God and a true and perfectly righteous man?

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is freely given to us For complete redemption and righteousness.

Whence do you know this?

From the holy gospel, which God Himself revealed in the beginning in the Garden of Eden, afterward proclaimed through the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed through the sacrifices and other rites of the Old Covenant, and finally fulfilled through His own well beloved Son.

 

I. Only a True and Righteous Man Can Save Sinners

A. Only a man can make reparation for sin. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans 5:12) But not as the offence, so also is the free gift For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. (Romans 5:15)

B. No ordinary man can be free enough from personal sin to become the savior. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (I Peter 3:18)

C. Isaiah prophesied of a savior who would make the substitutionary atonement. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-5)

II. The Savior Must Also Be God

A. Only the power of God could bear the burden of God's wrath for sin. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living. for the transgression of my people was he stricken. (Isaiah 53:8)

B. As the son of God, Jesus was able both to experience and endure the punishment. Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. (Acts 2:23-24)

C. In Christ the various claims of the atonement come together. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

D. Here is how the substitutionary atonement works.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Ill. Only Jesus Christ Meets the Double Demand

A. Our Lord Jesus Christ was both God and man.

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:23)

B. Jesus Christ not only meets the double demands of the problem but also does it according to the long line of prophecy. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11)

C. Christ satisfies the promises made in the Garden of Eden. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:14-15)

D. The prophets and patriarchs expected a Saviour like Jesus. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; (Hebrews 1:1-2)