Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 06:1 (Jan 2014)
Article: Jeremiah Burroughs On The Excellency Of Christ The Mediator
Author: James Davison

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PRJ 6:1 (January 2014) p. 155

Jeremiah Burroughs On The Excellency Of Christ The Mediator

Jim Davison

The importance Jeremiah Burroughs (c. 1600-1646) places upon the sufficiency of Jesus Christ as God’s chosen Mediator to bring about reconciliation between Himself and mankind should not be underestimated. It was a subject that Burroughs preached upon on many occasions and in great detail, and in each of these sermons he goes to very great lengths to show that “Christ is all and in all” (Col. 3:11).

As with his sermons on the excellency of God, Burroughs does not handle his subject in a purely theoretical manner, but rather as a means of leading his hearers to a position of exalting Christ by their practical godliness. Furthermore, in making Christ the object of their faith, delight, and adoration, they will give a true testimony to their love for Christ. Indeed, for Burroughs, practical godliness is the privilege of all believers and a testimony to the legitimacy and validity of true faith.

In a sermon on the above text published in The Saints’ Treasury (1654), Burroughs is emphatic that the covenant relationship between God the Father and God the Son, whereby God the Son became the Mediator between a holy, offended Majesty and sinful man, resulted in God the Father being infinitely content with Christ’s willingness to undertake the work of reconciliation and infinitely satisfied with the reconciliation accomplished by Christ.

On this basis, Burroughs proposes that the satisfaction of God the Father is such that “Christ is the only means of conveyance of good that God the Father intends to communicate unto the children of men in order to eternal life.” This proposition for Burroughs is the very heart of the gospel: “the most supernatural truth revealed in all the book of God— God “communicates His mercy through a mediator, through His Son.” Furthermore, for Burroughs, this is

PRJ 6:1 (January 2014) p. 156

“the great point of divinity that is absolutely necessary to be known to eternal life.”1

Burroughs accepts that, based on the light of nature, many can see their great need of God’s mercy, yet they “miscarry and perish eternally with cries to God for mercy because they come to God, but not through a mediator.” Burroughs also notes that by the light of nature it can be perceived that all “good consists in communion with God,” but he insists that “not one drop of mercy that leads to eternal life can be communicated from God but through Christ the Mediator.”2

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