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The words mediation and intercession present fundamentally the same idea — a coming between, to bridge over a gulf, or to avert a stroke. Some being to stand between him and God, and to be the interpreter of God's dealing with him, and of his thought about God, was what Job's heart yearned after. The one question which man demands to have answered, as the condition of his peace, is this — Is there any being, having prevailing power with God, who can be touched as a brother with the feeling of our infirmities, and who can bear the feeling of our infirmities with him in all his transactions with God on our behalf? Intercession rests on the fact that there is a complete humanity in God. There is already the human within the orb of the Divine nature. The thought of the creature acting upon God except through a Mediator who is God, destroys that which is most essential in the idea of God. We talk of the love of God in Christ as though it were born when Christ took on Himself the burden of our sins and cares. He but drew forth and revealed, so that every eye could see it, that which had been there from all eternity. Here is the true deep ground of all intercession. We have not to create anything, we have not to change anything, we have but to draw forth what is already waiting to be drawn forth from the Divine heart. Then what need is there of the Mediator? There was a Divine necessity that God should be self-revealed as the Mediator, that this God-like form of God should take shape and appear in our world. Creation is the Divine thought clothing itself in visible form; and it comes forth into form because to give Himself forth is the most God-like act of God. But there were depths in the Divine nature, secret things of the Divine counsels, which no material creation was full enough or rich enough to draw forth into expression. In the Mediator we see the infinite riches of grace and mercy, compassion and tenderness, which had else remained pent-up within God's heart. What must be the form of the Mediator to fulfil the conditions, and to satisfy, not the longings of the human heart only, but the necessities of the human life?

1. According to our wish in God's stead. God only can stand in the stead of God. There is that absolute difference between God and every creature, that the only being who can make known God is God Himself.

2. "I also," says Elihu, laying down the conditions of a Mediator's nature and work, "am formed out of the clay." Is there one who knows both, — the things of God and the things of a man, by interior knowledge, in whom the two experiences meet? Yes, is the answer of revelation. There is one God: there can be but one God-man. The Word made flesh. Receiving Him as our Mediator who is able to stand in the stead of God, and yet wears the form of clay by our side, we see —

1. That He is our peace.

2. He is here to explain and to justify our discipline.

3. He is here to fulfil our largest and loftiest hope.He is made like unto us on earth, that we may be made like unto Him in heaven, that we may behold His glory, and, beholding, share.

(J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

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KJV: Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay.

WEB: Behold, I am toward God even as you are. I am also formed out of the clay.