<p>2:5- see on Heb. 4:14.</p><p><i>For there is one God and one mediator</i>- The &quot;for&quot; here suggests that we are being given another reason for Paul's statement that the Lord wishes the salvation of &quot;all men&quot;. The fact the Lord Jesus was human, a man, shows God's desire to save all men. A representative man was required to save men. God is not passive to human salvation or the extent of it; having given His only beloved Son to save men, He wants all men to be saved. He wants us saved He therefore has no pleasure in the death or condemnation of the wicked; exactly because He gave His only Son to <i>save </i>men. He wants to see the purpose of the sacrifice achieved. The logic of encouragement here is powerful indeed. The reminder that there is only one God and one mediator may suggest that their total and unique focus is combined upon &quot;men&quot;. There are no other creations God is saving through His Son, because His Son was<i> human</i> and therefore is a saviour of humans. <i>&nbsp;</i></p><p><i>Between God and men, the man Christ Jesus</i>- Against the Judaist background of this letter, it would seem that Paul is emphasizing that God is seeking connection with &quot;men&quot;, indeed &quot;all men&quot;- and not just the Jews. Moses was a mediator between God and Israel, but the Lord Jesus between God and &quot;all men&quot;. The word for &quot;mediator&quot; is mainly used about the Lord Jesus being the mediator of the new covenant (Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). The &quot;men&quot; in view would then be all those who are in the new covenant; and these, therefore, would be the &quot;all men&quot; whose salvation God wishes, the &quot;all men&quot; for whom the ransom was given, i.e. those redeemed / ransomed (:6). However, the problem is that the &quot;all men&quot; is surely that of :1 for whom prayer is to be made, and includes governors. However it could be argued that &quot;for all men; for kings, and all that are in high place&quot; (2:1,2) could refer to leaders within the ecclesia; although <i>basileus</i>, &quot;kings&quot;, is hard to apply to church elders.</p><p>The extent of Christ's humanity is brought out by the RV translation of 1 Tim. 2:5. &quot;There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus&quot;. Paul is writing this after the Lord's ascension and glorification. A mediator might be thought of as being somehow separate from both parties; but our mediator is actually &quot;himself man&quot;, so on our side, as it were. Having received Divine nature doesn't take anything away from the Lord's appreciation of our humanity, to the extent that Paul here for all the other exalted terms he uses elsewhere about Jesus can call Him even now &quot;himself man&quot;.<br />He is described even now as &ldquo;the man Christ Jesus&rdquo;, able to feel the pulse of our humanity. This, in passing, opens a window into what Divine nature will be like: we will be able to completely feel the human experience, to the extent of still bearing the title &lsquo;men&rsquo; even in immortality. On this account we will be able to relate to the mortals in the Millennium.</p><p>Throughout this exposition I take the position that the Ephesian church was under strong influence from the Diana cult. This cult taught that there were many gods; whilst Paul's statement stands true in a global sense, it is clear that as so often in these letters, he is alluding to the specific errors of the Diana cult.</p><p>The Jewish obsession with Angels influenced the early Christians in the area of Christology i.e. theories about Christ, just as it did on the topic of the Devil. Chapters like Hebrews 1 and Colossians 2 deal with this in detail, stressing that Jesus was <i>not</i> an Angel something which the Watchtower movement of today needs to consider more fully. The Jewish <i>Testament Of Daniel</i> 6.1 exhorts Israel to &quot;draw near unto God and unto the angel that intercedes for you, for he is a mediator between God and man&quot;. This is alluded to by Paul in 1 Tim. 2:5, when he underlines that to us there is &quot;one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus&quot;. Clearly Paul is alluding to the apostate Jewish angelology and correcting it- as in Hebrews 2, the point is laboured that Jesus was a man and not an Angel, and He is the only mediator.</p><p>Much has been made of the similarities between Jn. 1:1-3 and the 'Wisdom' literature of the Jews. Judaism believed in a number of intermediaries who interceded between God and Israel- Wisdom, the <i>Shekinah</i> glory, the <i>Logos</i> / word. The <i>Torah</i> law had become so elevated and personified that it was spoken of almost as a separate 'God'. John and Paul are picking up these terms and explaining their true meaning- Jesus is the glory <i>shekinah</i> of God, He alone is the one and only true mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). By stressing that the mediator was &quot;the man Christ Jesus&quot;, Paul is also taking a swipe at the Greek idea of a superhuman mediator between the world and the world's creator, sometimes called a &quot;second God&quot;. And when it comes to the Logos, John is explaining in his prologue that the theme of all God's word in the Old Testament was ultimately about Jesus, and that 'word' became flesh in a person, i.e. Jesus, in His life and death. Understanding this background helps us understand why John appears to use very 'Divine' language about the logos. He's doing so because he's alluding to the mistaken beliefs of Judaism and showing where the truth really lies in Jesus.</p>