February 10 – LD 6, Day 6: Christ was the Mediator of the Old
Covenant
by Rev J. Kortering
Romans 1:1-3 “Paul, a servant of
Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which
he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scripture concerning his Son
Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The Old Covenant is the
name given to the church prior to the birth of Jesus.
During that time, God
communicated the knowledge of the Mediator in different ways. Already in the
Garden of Eden, God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, this is called a theophony. Once when He spoke to Satan, He told Satan
that there would be a war between the people whom He would save by the
Mediator, and those who would follow Satan’s evil ways. That war would end in
the coming of Jesus who would destroy Satan and all his followers, Genesis
3:15.
During the days of the
Old Covenant, God reminded His people that the Mediator would come to cover
their sins by instructing them to sacrifice animals. By the shedding of the
blood of the substitute (a lamb), God declared to them the gospel of the coming
Mediator. He held before their eyes a very effective picture of the cross of
Jesus who would come as the Mediator in the future. He added to this many
ceremonies of the law. They had special festivals in which they commemorated
the shedding of blood as the covering for sin. One such example is the Feast of
the Passover in which they placed blood on the door posts of their tents to
remind them of the night in
In the quote above, Paul
mentions prophets. God also sent prophets to the Old Covenant people, who
told them that their sins would be covered by God’s Lamb, upon Whom God would
lay the iniquity of us all. One such prophet was Isaiah. Read Isaiah 53 for an
example of such a prophetic message.
It is good for us to
reflect upon this gospel given in the Old Covenant. There is only ONE Mediator
and ONE gospel because there is only ONE people of God
whom God saves in Jesus Christ. Because of this, we benefit from our reading
and study of the Old Testament (Old Covenant).