now is made manifest to his saints. When Paul speaks of a mystery here, does he mean that this is something mysterious, to be such a secret that no one can discern its meaning? Not at all! A mystery in the Bible is quite different from the mysteries of the world. The latter are secrets which are not made known. The Gnostics of Colosse were progenitors of many of the secret societies of today. They held to certain doctrines, and claimed certain knowledge which was not open to all, but confined to a narrow circle, the initiated. The Christian vocabulary is quite unlike that of the world in some respects, and here is one of them. For in the Bible the word mystery always re fers to something which has been hidden previously, but is now freely made known to all who will hear it. Thus we read in I Corinthians 15:51 ff, “Behold, I show you a mystery...” following which the Apostle commu nicates the great truth that we shall not all die, but shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. So here, Paul borrows a term from the ancient philosophers and applies it to something which was especially revealed by God to him, and which he, in turn, administers to the church of Christ, the truth which had been hidden from ages and from generations, but was now being made manifest to the saints of God, that is, to all those who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament patriarchs had not had this revealed to them. Nei ther in Adam’s day, nor in Abra ham’s, nor in Moses’, nor David’s, nor Isaiah’s, nor Malachi’s, was this wonderful truth told. None of the nations had known it. Even God’s chosen people had been kept in ig norance of this. But to Paul it was revealed, as he declares more fully in Ephesians 3, in order that he might preach it. Finally we are told what the mys tery is, for the opening words of verse twenty-seven, “to whom,” re
fer, to the last phrase of the preced ing one. Rendering it freely, we read: “To whom, that is, to the church of Christ, God would make known what is the wealth of the glory of this previously hidden truth now being revealed among the Gen tiles; which is, Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Specifically, it appears that the particular revelation is t h a t the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of the promise of God in Christ by the Gospel (cf. Eph. 3:6). In addition, however, it appears that at least a portion of this mys tery, this newly revealed truth, is this: that the hope of glory, the as surance of salvation and life eternal, Christianity itself, is Christ in you —“Christ in you, the hope of glory” —not simply Christ for you (though surely that!), nor just Christ with you, “But Christ in you, the hope of glory.” B IO LA CHO RA LE IT IN E R A R Y (continued from page 2) MAY 2nd First Baptist Church Ashland, Oregon MAY 3rd River Road Baptist Church Eugene, Oregon MAY 4th North Albany Baptist Albany, Oregon MAY 5th First Baptist Church Corvallis, Oregon MAY 7th Alliance Tabernacle Vancouver 10, B.C., Canada MAY 8th Central Heights Mennonite Brethren Abbottsford, B.C., Canada MAY 9th Geneva Community Church Bellingham, Washington MAY 10th
United First Presbyterian Bremerton, Washington
MAY 11th
First Baptist Church Salem, Oregon First Baptist Church Medford, Oregon
MAY 12th
MAY 14th
A.M. Central Baptist
Sacramento, California 3:00 P.M. First Baptist San Francisco, California 7:00 p.m. Neighborhood Church Oakland, California
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