Mystery Made Known

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”  It is a famous quote that is often attributed to Einstein (who used to vacation and sail here on the North Fork of Long Island…I think that makes me somehow smarter by association, right?), but I have also heard it attributed to Aristotle…which just serves to validate the truth of the statement.  There is so much we don’t know.  There are other versions of this.  When I graduated high school, I thought I knew everything about everything.  When I graduated from college, I thought I knew a little about something.  When I graduated from graduate school, I realized I knew nothing.  Or something to that effect.

I begin this way because we live in a culture right now where there does not seem to be much humility about what we think we know.  We may not think we know everything, at least I hope we don’t, but we are often pretty sure the person or people group with whom we disagree knows nothing.  At best, we see them as ignorant (they don’t know what they don’t know)…patronizing, but at least a sign of a little understanding.  At worst, we see them as actually maliciously trying to suppress and/or destroy the truth…the truth that we know so very deeply and are convinced about.  Our propensity to continually try to rebuild that “dividing wall of hostility.”  And, as I hope we have shown in our previous posts, this is not some new development ushered in with the U.S. or the modern western world.  The Ephesians had the same propensity in the first century.

And in Ephesians 3:1-13 we see Paul continuing to address it.  He shows there really is no room for arrogance, especially when we think and talk about faith and salvation.  Paul says that what he preaches was in fact a “mystery hidden for ages in God” (v.9).  No one knew it.  Paul didn’t all of a sudden come up with it one day.  It wasn’t something he figured out on his own.  Rather, it was revealed to him.  It was given to him by the grace of God because God wanted it that way.  He wanted to use Paul to share this awesome news.  You can hear the humility this inspired in Paul when he refers to himself as “the very least of the saints” (v.8).  He was in awe that God would choose him to be his messenger.

What was the message?  What was the mystery?  “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (v.6).  That promise is forgiveness and salvation for broken and hurting people.  God chose Paul to begin the work in earnest of expanding his family beyond the bounds of just the Jewish people.  It’s why I (a Gentile) am able to write to you today.  It’s the reason for the awesome vision of eternity John gives in the book of Revelation:

“I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (7:9-10, emphasis mine)

This is what Paul marvels at in Ephesians 3, what he calls God’s “eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v.11).  God has flung wide the door to eternity with him, to make known “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (v.8).  That phrase means that “the riches of Christ” are not things you can figure out on your own, but rather must be shared with you, preached to you.  That’s just downright offensive to our individualistic western sensibilities.  

All of it depends on God’s grace to send someone.  It is truly humbling.  “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”  Thank God Ephesians 3 makes it plain as day that he has indeed sent his preachers into the world so that we might know.  Down through the centuries people have continued to share this great news of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ that they received.  By God’s grace, I was first told it by my mom when I was a little boy and then by many others as I grew up, and now I am telling you.

God’s grace in Jesus is for you.  His riches are for you.  His forgiveness is for you.  His love is for you.  You are welcomed into his family to be his heir, his child.  Praise the Lord!  Amen.

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