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The dilemma of Orthodox Jews, and also of a great many devout in other religions, has been put simply like this.At one and the same time, no human can see God and live,and that no human can live unless he sees God.I don't need to illustrate this, for to see God is to see what our eyes cannot register: the glory of God is too bright, too dazzling, for puny humans to get close. Yet to live without seeing, touching,hearing God, is to be spiritually dead. Bulk and body without breath. Hence the uniqueness of Jesus.
He was not caught up in our dilemma for he is declared to be the mediator. He himself is the meeting place between heaven and earth, between the glory of the Holy God, and the benighted human race.His favourite term for himself was Bar'a'Nasha: Son of Man. The Hebrew word 'Messiah' had become type-cast as a heavenly warrior, super Jew, so Jesus stopped people using that term to describe him. He preferred the words 'Son of Man' for himself.That was a phrase from the book of Daniel, Chapter 7 v. 14, which clearly did not mean a mere human being, but a mediator between heaven and earth, a revelation in full humanity of the Holy, the very glory of God.Not some god or other disguised as a man.Not a man aspiring to be God, but the God/Man. The unique bridge twixt heaven and earth, between glory light and sin's inky blackness. The mediator - the one who never lets go of being God, and never lets go of the creatures he joined and came to change.
When the climax came, Jesus was bound and judged by the Jewish Council. The High Priest eventually demanded:
"I charge you under oath by the living God: tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God"
"Yes, it is as you say" Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: In future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One, and coming on the clouds of heaven." Matthew 26: 63-64
A Prayer Thought:
People who sit in judgement on Jesus never seem to realise that it is not He who is on trial before them, but precisely the opposite.
Now read Hebrews 9: 11-15 and see I Timothy 2: 5-6.
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