Mystery of the Unity of The Church

Ephesians 3.1. For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. By referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.

To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of his power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things, so that the church, to the rulers and the authorities, in the heavenly places.

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in him. Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father. Now there is a lot there. The word that jumps off the page is the word mystery. When we talk about Christianity, we don’t really usually talk about things that are mysterious because the Christian truth is revealed in the Word of God.

We are not trying to find something that is hidden, or something that is below the surface, only accessed by some esoteric spiritual insight. When we talk about mystery, we’re talking about something very specific. The New Testament refers to things that are mysteries, and by that what the New Testament always means is something that was hidden in the past and is now revealed. There are no mysteries as such in the New Testament that are yet to be revealed, because we have the final revelation of Scripture in the New Testament. So when we talk about mystery, we’re talking about something that has been hidden in the past and been revealed in the New Testament.

And Paul of course is referring here to this mystery in particular of the unity of the Church, that the Gentiles, verse 6, are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. So the mystery that Paul is talking about is that the Jew and the Gentile are one in Christ in the Church. Now we’ve already heard Paul make reference to mystery back in chapter 1. If you go down to verse 9, Paul referred to the mystery of God’s will, according to his kind intention which he purposed in Christ.

What that’s telling us is that in the New Testament there are things that have previously been hidden as to their fullness that are now revealed. Now these are referred to by our Lord all the way back in Matthew 13, when he was talking to his disciples on that day in Galilee. He said to them, to you, verse 11 of Matthew 13, it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. To those who are believers and followers of Christ, the understanding of the mysteries has been granted.

Paul’s language indicates that. In verse 3 he refers of Ephesians 3 to revelation that was made known to him. And then in verse 4 he says, so you can understand my insight into the mystery which, in verse 5, in other generations has not been made known to the sons of men. So there is a reality in the kingdom of heaven, as it’s defined in the New Testament as the church. There’s a reality of the revelation of things that have been hidden in the past. There are a number of these mysteries in specific. Paul refers to the mystery of the full understanding that when the Messiah came, he would literally dwell in his people.

That was not something clarified in the Old Testament. In Colossians 2 he refers to the mystery of the incarnation, God in human flesh, again in its fullness not revealed in the Old Testament. In Romans 11.25 Paul refers to the mystery of Israel’s unbelief. No Old Testament reader would have assumed that Israel would have rejected their Messiah to the degree that they have done that. That is not disclosed fully until you get to the New Testament. Writing to the Thessalonians, Paul refers to the mystery of iniquity. That is to say there is a level of iniquity that is coming to the world that has not been known in the past.

In Revelation 17 there is mystery Babylon, the final form of world society and government that sets itself against God and against Christ at his second coming which will be beyond anything that the world has seen up to that point. And then you have in Ephesians 5 the mystery of the church as Christ’s bride. That too is not seen in the Old Testament. And then you have the mystery of the rapture, 1 Corinthians 15, 51 and 52. So there are a number of those truths that are very familiar to us in the New Testament that were not fully revealed in the Old.

But the one that Paul is focusing on here is this very very foundational and important one, the unity of the Jew and Gentile in the church. And there it is in verse 6. The Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. That was not seen clearly in the Old Testament. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the mystery of the unity of the church. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world.

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