Who Is Your Mediator?

A soul welcomed into heaven

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”

1 Timothy 2:5–6

Ask a Jehovah’s Witness at your door whether Jesus is his mediator, and he will almost certainly say yes — and be surprised to learn that his organization’s official answer is no. In print, and for decades, the Watchtower has taught that Christ’s mediatorship operates only toward the “anointed” — the 144,000 who make up spiritual Israel and are parties to the new covenant. The millions of ordinary Witnesses, the “other sheep,” are not in that covenant. They benefit from it at one remove, as associates, the way neighbors benefit from a contract signed by someone else.

This is not a fringe reading of an obscure text; it is the load-bearing wall of the two-class system. It decides who is born again (only the anointed), who partakes at the Memorial (only the anointed), whose sins the new covenant’s promise — “I will remember their sin no more” — is addressed to (only the anointed), and who may call God Father in the fullest sense. Everyone else stands in the courtyard of a covenant made for others.

The verse above is the one the doctrine must survive: one mediator, between God and men, a ransom for all. Whether “all” can be made to mean “144,000” — and what it costs an ordinary Witness to live outside the covenant his Lord sealed in blood — is the business of this page.

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Watchtower View

Jump to the Catholic View ↓

The Watchtower’s teaching is stated plainly in its own reference works, and it should be heard in its own words. The new covenant, foretold by Jeremiah and inaugurated by Christ at the last Passover, is a covenant between Jehovah and spiritual Israel — the 144,000 chosen to reign with Christ in heaven. Christ is that covenant’s mediator, and Insight on the Scriptures draws the boundary exactly: his “mediatorship operates solely toward those in the new covenant.”1

Not the Mediator for All Mankind

The Society has said so without hedging. “Likewise, the Greater Moses, Jesus Christ, is not the Mediator between Jehovah God and all mankind. He is the Mediator between his heavenly Father, Jehovah God, and the nation of spiritual Israel, which is limited to only 144,000 members” (The Watchtower, April 1, 1979). The logic rests on the type: Moses mediated the Law covenant for Israel alone, not for the nations; the Greater Moses mediates the new covenant for the new Israel alone. A mediator, by definition, stands between the parties to a covenant — and the parties are Jehovah and the anointed.2

How the Other Sheep Benefit

None of this, the Watchtower teaches, leaves the “other sheep” unblessed. They pray in Jesus’ name, exercise faith in the ransom, and approach God through Christ as God’s High Priest and the Seed of Abraham — roles wider than his covenant mediatorship. As the new covenant produces its kingdom of priests, the blessings flow outward: the anointed serve as the channel, and the great crowd benefits alongside spiritual Israel, as the foreign residents in ancient Israel shared the blessings of a covenant they were not party to. Associated with the covenant, they gain everlasting life on a paradise earth — the destiny Scripture holds out for the meek.3

Why Only the Anointed Partake

The arrangement explains the Memorial. Since the cup is “the new covenant by virtue of my blood,” those who drink it are those in the covenant; for anyone else to partake would be to claim a standing — and a heavenly calling — he does not have. The other sheep attend in respectful observance and pass the emblems along. Likewise the new birth: being “born again” is begettal to the heavenly hope, and so belongs to the anointed alone; the other sheep need no second birth for life on earth.4

The Texts Read Consistently

On this reading the New Testament’s covenant language falls into place. The letters that speak of being in the covenant, born again, anointed, sealed, and made heirs were written to first-century congregations of the anointed — the “little flock” then being gathered. To read every such promise as addressed to all believers is, the Watchtower holds, to erase a distinction Scripture itself draws between the little flock, to whom the Kingdom is given, and the other sheep, who hear the Shepherd’s voice and are brought into one flock under him.5

Endnotes
  1. Insight on the Scriptures (1988), vol. 2, “Mediator”: Christ’s “mediatorship operates solely toward those in the new covenant”; the sealed number is identified from Revelation 7:4–8 as 144,000. On the Watchtower Online Library. ↩
  2. The Watchtower, April 1, 1979, p. 31 (“Questions From Readers”); cf. November 15, 1979. Galatians 3:19–20 for Moses as the Law covenant’s mediator. ↩
  3. Insight, “Mediator,” on those “not of the 144,000” who nonetheless pray, exercise faith in the ransom, and approach God through Christ as High Priest and Seed of Abraham. ↩
  4. Luke 22:20 (NWT: “the new covenant by virtue of my blood”); on Memorial partakers and the heavenly hope, What Does the Bible Really Teach? (2005), ch. 8 and Appendix, and the Society’s annual Memorial articles. ↩
  5. Luke 12:32; John 10:16. The identification of the two groups is examined on this site’s page One Flock or Two? ↩

Catholic View

Begin by noticing what the left panel just did, because most Witnesses have never seen it done in one place: it documented, from the Society’s own publications, that the ordinary Jehovah’s Witness has no mediator. Not a weaker mediator, not a shared one — none. Christ’s mediatorship “operates solely toward those in the new covenant,” and the ordinary Witness is not in it. That is the doctrine. Everything on this page follows from taking it exactly as seriously as it asks to be taken.

The Verse Says the Opposite of the Doctrine

Paul’s sentence is a single breath, and its two halves interpret each other: “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5–6). The scope of the mediation is the scope of the ransom — the relative clause defines the mediator by the “all” he ransomed. The Watchtower accepts the second half at full width: the ransom is for all, and the other sheep are saved by faith in it. But a ransom paid for me by a mediator who does not mediate for me is a sentence Paul did not write and could not have meant — especially here, where his whole argument is that God “desires all men to be saved” (v. 4), which is why prayers are to be made “for all men” (v. 1). Restricting the mediator to 144,000 requires “men” to mean a subset in verse 5 and the whole race in verses 1, 4, and 6. The doctrine does not survive its own proof-text read aloud.1

Whose Sins Does the New Covenant Forgive?

Now follow the covenant itself. Jeremiah’s promise, which Hebrews quotes at length as the new covenant Christ mediates, climaxes in one benefit: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12). Forgiveness of sins is not a side effect of the new covenant; it is the covenant’s content. So the two-class doctrine faces a dilemma it has never answered. If the other sheep are outside the covenant, they are outside the promise of forgiveness — and no one’s sins are forgiven by association, as though a neighbor’s contract could clear my debts. If instead their sins are forgiven through Christ’s blood — as the Watchtower rightly teaches — then they are receiving precisely the covenant blessing, through precisely the covenant’s blood, which is what being in a covenant means. The “beneficiary” category is a label for people who receive everything the covenant gives while being told they are not in it.2

One Cup, Offered to All

The Lord’s own words at the table draw the circle. “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20) — and in Matthew’s account the command attached to that cup is “Drink of it, all of you,” for the blood is “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:27–28). The commission that follows the resurrection extends the table with the teaching: make disciples of all nations, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20) — the Supper included. Scripture knows nothing of a class of disciples commanded to attend and forbidden to partake; the yearly scene of millions passing the bread and cup untouched is examined on the Memorial page, and the 144,000 arithmetic beneath it on One Flock or Two? This page adds only the covenant’s own grammar: the cup is the covenant. To hand a believer the cup and forbid him to drink is to tell him, liturgically, every year, that the new covenant is not his.3

Children, or Friends of the Family?

The New Testament’s covenant blessings come as a single garment: born again of water and the Spirit (John 3:5), adopted as sons and able to cry “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15), heirs with Christ, sealed with the Spirit. The Watchtower must cut this garment in two — new birth, adoption, and inheritance for the anointed; friendship and association for everyone else. But Jesus made the new birth the door of the kingdom for anyone who would see it (John 3:3), and John’s Gospel gives the right to become children of God to “all who received him, who believed in his name” (John 1:12) — a warrant as wide as faith itself. Nothing in the text rations sonship to a heavenly class; the rationing comes from the system, and the system exists to serve the two-destiny arithmetic, not the other way around.4

What This Costs the Person at Your Door

Step back and look at what the doctrine leaves an ordinary Witness holding. He is a Christian — sincere, sacrificial, door-knocking — who has been taught that he is not born again, not a party to the new covenant, not entitled to the cup his Lord commanded, and not within Christ’s mediation; his access to God runs through an anointed class as theirs runs through Christ. It is the structure of the old covenant rebuilt inside the new: a priestly caste within, a courtyard crowd without — the very arrangement Hebrews announces has ended, since by one offering Christ opened “the new and living way” for all the brethren to enter the sanctuary together (Heb. 10:19–22). The Catholic Church — whatever else divides her from the reader — says to every baptized believer what Scripture says: one mediator, for you; one covenant, sealed for you; one cup, and it is yours. A gospel that reserves the covenant for one Christian in a thousand has not enlarged salvation. It has rebuilt the dividing wall Christ died to tear down.5

The full essay documents the doctrine from the Society’s publications, walks 1 Timothy 2, Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8–10, and the Supper narratives in order, and traces what the two-class covenant costs in doctrine and in life. Download it from the summary below — and if you are a Witness reading this, one question is worth carrying to your next Memorial: whose covenant is in that cup?

Endnotes
  1. 1 Timothy 2:1–6, RSV. The New World Translation renders verse 6 “a corresponding ransom for all” — the universal scope is common ground. ↩
  2. Jeremiah 31:31–34; Hebrews 8:6–13; 10:16–18. ↩
  3. Luke 22:20; Matthew 26:27–28; Matthew 28:19–20; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, where Paul delivers the Supper to the whole Corinthian congregation. ↩
  4. John 3:3–5; Romans 8:14–17; John 1:12; Galatians 3:26–29 (“in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith”). ↩
  5. Hebrews 10:19–22; Ephesians 2:14–18 on the dividing wall. ↩

Summary

The doctrine, in the Society’s own words: the ordinary Witness has no mediator. Insight states that Christ’s “mediatorship operates solely toward those in the new covenant” — the 144,000 — and The Watchtower of April 1, 1979 said it without hedging: Jesus “is not the Mediator between Jehovah God and all mankind.” The millions of other sheep are beneficiaries at one remove, associates of a covenant signed by others.

The proof-text says the opposite in one breath. “One mediator between God and men… who gave himself as a ransom for all.” The scope of the mediation is the scope of the ransom — and the Watchtower grants the ransom is for all. A ransom paid for me by a mediator who does not mediate for me is a sentence Paul never wrote; and in the same paragraph “all men” must be prayed for because God desires “all men” to be saved.

The new covenant’s content is forgiveness — so the dilemma has no exit. “I will remember their sin no more” is not a side effect but the covenant itself. Outside the covenant, no forgiveness; forgiven, then inside — for no one’s debts are cleared by a neighbor’s contract. “Beneficiary” names a person receiving everything the covenant gives while being told he is not in it.

The cup is the covenant, and it was commanded to all. “This cup… is the new covenant in my blood”; “drink of it, all of you”; make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all I commanded. Scripture knows no class of disciples required to attend and forbidden to partake. To hand a believer the cup and forbid him to drink is to tell him, liturgically, every year, that the covenant is not his.

What remains is the old courtyard rebuilt inside the new. A priestly class within, a crowd without, access to God at one remove — the arrangement Hebrews says ended when the one offering opened “the new and living way” for all the brethren together. One mediator, for you; one covenant, sealed for you; one cup, yours. Anything less is not a wider hope. It is the dividing wall, re-mortared.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download Who Is Your Mediator? (.docx) or (.pdf)

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